Jack Badalamenti: "To Carmen Maria Machado: How to Make Me Hate Your Book"

To Carmen Maria Machado: How to Make Me Hate Your Book

 By Jack Badalamenti

            In a nutshell, I’ll quit reading your book if you piss me off. That really covers it, but since you’ve come all this way, I’ll elucidate.

            I recently read a novel called Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Zelazny being somewhat of a big name in the SF world combined with an interesting premise and, yes, an appealing cover, to catch my attention. Of course, the most compelling reason for me to read this book was because I was required to for the sake of my grade, but let’s put that technicality in the phantom zone for now. Zelazny instantly made me really mad, and for that reason I put down the book in the middle of page three. Lord of Light demonstrates one path to alienating the reader: the first few minutes of reading are nothing but name dropping and references to the story’s world and specific terms that the reader has no way of understanding. I really did get the sense that Roger didn’t actually want me to understand his dumb book, so I stopped trying. For a bit.

Unfortunately the phantom zone burst open and my GPA put me back to slogging through it. When I found that the book is actually quite interesting and enjoyable, I honestly just became even more upset. Here was a perfect good book that wouldn’t get out of its own way. I would never have read that story all the way through if it weren’t for extenuating circumstances, which would have been a bummer both for myself and Mr. Zelazny.

The only other time I can recall putting down a book, never to return, was when I attempted Stephen King’s The Stand at the tender age of 14. I came across the book at the recommendation of my father, who has lined the shelves in our living room with The Dark Tower and The Gunslinger, among others. I got into it and enjoyed the book a great deal. I recommend it and any other Stephen King to anybody who has the time for it. Seriously, the guy is a genius, albeit a bit troubled. The best part of his writing is the constant slow build – King pushes the dial oh-so-slowly towards 11 with every word, careful never to rush or give anything away. Somewhere near the middle of the novel, I had had enough. Everything in the story was going poorly for the good guys, and it honestly looked like everything was going to shit. I decided I was gonna step back and jump into whatever YA nonsense they were selling us that year. Here again, the thing that pushed me away was too much of the bad stuff.

You see, readers like reading the good parts of stories more than the evil or sad parts. Don’t get me wrong, you need some of both – nobody wants to read something with no conflict. That’s called pushing your feelings down, and it’s unhealthy. Necessary evil notwithstanding, though, the only reason I put up with terrible things happening to good people (or at the very least the characters I like) in stories is because of the payoff of justice being served, them being rewarded, and everything being Good again. How this applies to The Stand and other fiction is that, and I do realize what I’m saying, I don’t want to read stuff that makes me feel sad. Say what you will about how mature of a reader or person I am, but at the end of the day, I want my stories to hit the spot in a positive way more than in a negative way. Nobody wants the bad guy to win, and nobody wants the heroes to not be heroic. That last bit is what almost ruined my viewing of The Dark Knight Rises. I mean honestly, who the hell wants to see Bruce Wayne dangling around like a rag doll in a hole for half of a film? Nobody, that’s who. And nobody wants to see evil rule the world. And nobody wants to see the good guys lose. And so on.

Long story short, just make sure your fiction feels good and doesn’t make me hate you.