Thoughts on "artificiality," selection bias, listmaking and trendsetting

Just a few more odds-and-ends to wrap up a few discussions that have been ping-ponging from this blog to others and back again.

Over at The World in the Satin Bag, Shaun Duke raises an important question that has to be considered whenever discussions of reading habits arises.  He wonders if intentionally trying to read more of X and/or Y type of authors/stories creates a sense of artificiality to the reading selection/experience.  My response to that would be that at its best, reading selection tends to be an active experience, in which the reader is self-aware of his/her selection possibility and that s/he takes the time to consider the available choices.  There is nothing "organic" about it; readers end up reading the books they choose, based on a variety of factors both conscious (availability, pricing, blurbs, praise from others) and subconscious (past experiences, moods at time of trying to decide what to read or if to read).  I would instead recast the question as being whether or not readers ought to try to break a reading habit or if remaining in a particular reading habit can be an inherently "good" thing.

Selection bias is an insidious, nefarious thing.  Doesn't matter how well one tries to be cosmopolitan (or not), there is always that creeping, often subconscious, filtering out of certain elements in favor of others.  In some cases, selection bias can be good (as in refusing to eat rancid meat due to appearance and smell), but in other cases it serves to limit exploration and sometimes to blunt curiosity.  Take for example a particular "Best of Decade" list that was brought to my attention in a comment link.  Posted at a George R.R. Martin-oriented site, Tower of the Hand, "Best Fantasy Books of '00s" practically is a paean to the multi-volume serial narrative form. Although an early criticism cited in the comment link I read was in regards to the paucity of female authors, what I noticed about that list is just how devoid that list is of several other narrative modes and storytelling formats that I have emerged in the past decade.  Although the majority of the individual books selected were solid or better, based on my personal experiences, the end result felt as though blinders had been applied, narrowing the field of excellent fiction (and exciting subgenre developments) to a very small percentage of what was available.  No short fiction, nothing much about steampunk, seeing the Miéville/New Weird moment being cast as a primarily British entity (or at least that's how it felt based on the curiously small sample size), very little in the way of the various "urban" fantasies, and so forth - such a list gave very limited insight into what actually developed this time (could note more about podcasts and how a few authors gained major publishing deals off of those, as well as book "remixes" and the like, but that's a topic for another time, perhaps). 

Not directly related to the above comments but worth considering is the comment that Martin Lewis made in an earlier post of mine.  In response to a comment Aidan Moher made about how "the problem doesn't lie with the bloggers making the list, but rather with the genre as a whole and the manner in which publishers," Martin said, "It is pretty pathetic to abdicate all responsibility like this."  There is much truth to this.  If someone is going to construct a list and presume that said list will have value to others, then that list constructor better damn well be more proactive and thus not basing his/her selections on what s/he receives passively from others.  While there are certainly some valid arguments that could be made to the notion that reader/reviewers have the right to choose their "favorites," once any list is presented as reflecting any sort of "authority" (and publicly posting decade's best list, especially those derived from several who have a privileged relationship with the publishers compared to the average reader), then those reader/reviewers have certain obligations to meet in regards to considering more than their own personal tastes if they want their lists to hold any authority and if they don't want to be called out for putting blinders on and failing to see just how diverse and wide-ranging speculative fiction (or other genres of literature and material culture, for that matter) really is.

Doesn't mean that one should not develop such lists if one fears to be unable to cover everything (Lord knows that as much as I have read in recent years, there is a helluva lot that I miss each year).  Instead, one ought to be open to the possibility that one's "authority" is going to be limited in some cases and that if this is at least tacitly acknowledged with the presumption that the honest critic will try to explore more than one's own comfort zones, then such lists will develop a more true "authority" to them.  Plus doing this has the additional benefit of not coming across as a trend follower, but instead a trend setter, for those that put any stock in such things (I don't).  But people like Martin are correct to note that true critics have a responsibility not just to reflect trends in publishing, but also to take note and to praise (or denounce) works that are not being as heavily pushed by the publishers.  Being a trend setter (or advocate, as I prefer to call what I do) is much more than just book pimping.  It is displaying a particular taste for stories that often stands out in relation to other critics, whose tastes presumably are equally distinct and worth consideration.  It is not "artificial," in that it springs from an active, non-passive relationship between the critic and the text/s being considered.  It does not involve more than a casual consideration of what other critics are covering (if something is presented as being worth considering, then explore it, but don't settle for another's opinion.  Makes me happy when others read what I've suggested and found new things to like, as well as things that worked for me but didn't for them.  Makes for great discourse).  It is the development of an "authority" that stems not from what others have proclaimed to be good, but what one has discovered to be worth some people's time, if not everyone's.

It is, simply, daring to question and challenging everything before presenting what undoubtedly will be a flawed list in some regard.  But as I've said before, based off of a quote from Samuel Beckett, "Fail again.  Fail better."