There’s a difference between saying that a book fails to be entertaining and saying that a book fails as entertainment.
The first is personal taste, but the second is an objective statement. Lots and lots of people have been entertained by the book, therefore the book has not failed as entertainment. It’s a bit off-putting to be told that something enjoyable is **utterly **without merit, since it implies deficiency on the part of the person enjoying it.
Sure. So do I. But that’s not what I was complaining about. What I was complaining about, specifically, was this:
But if you’d like to pretend I’m talking about something else, go right ahead.
Too late to edit but this is almost exactly what he said:
You just chose to ignore the top half of the post and selectively quote and complain about the second half, blatantly ignoring that he says “Again, it ain’t high art” and his follow up about it being a flawed but entertaining bit of writing.
The proper way to experience this book is listening to the audio version, which is read by Wil Wheaton of course. I was amused by him reading the bit about Wesley Crusher.
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The book was forgettable junk that was hugely overpraised by a certain portion of the population (Note: In theory, I am part of the demographic who was supposed to like it. I did not.). Now we’re making a movie about it. It has all the problems of the book, magnified by a few years of the target demographic making an ass of its collective self and calling attention to a bunch of behaviors in the book that no longer really seem like “harmless fun”
So it’s a book that never really had any value, and now people are looking at it and going “Y’know, this crap is really pandering to a lot of the same people who are acting like horrible gatekeepers and general jerks, maybe it’s worse than harmless and forgettable.”
The primary bitch about the book was the “Lists of references” thing which isn’t done nearly as heavily in the film since they can just show it to you instead. It’s not immune to spelling things out but most of it is just on screen for people to think “Hey that’s the [whatever] from [source]. Neat!”
Complaints like Wade “stalking” Artemis don’t hold water in the film either since he doesn’t. In fact, she grabs him after the “break up”.
That’s a ridiculously thin hair to split.
If people not liking things you like is offputting, you need to start investing less of your self identity in your media choices.
This is actually how I experienced it, too, and he does a great job. There is also a brief name-drop where the main character mentions voting for Wil Wheaton for President of the Oasis.
It is not. Imagine the following scenarios:
A friend shares a dish that he enjoys with you. You do not like it.
Response 1: I don’t like this dish at all.
Response 2: This dish is inedible.
A friend shares music that she enjoys with you.
Response 1: I can’t stand this music.
Response 2: This is not music.
A friend shares a book that he enjoys with you.
Response 1: This book completely failed to entertain me.
Response 2: This book fails even as lowbrow entertainment.
There is a difference between saying that you don’t like something and saying that it is completely without value. Again, it is the difference between expressing personal preference and insulting the preferences of the other person.
Not what I said, but okay.
Yeah, I’m standing by my initial response: this is ridiculous hairsplitting.
In fact, there is not. Value, in this sense, is subjective. I found absolutely no value in RP1. If someone else did, that’s fine. I don’t think less of someone for having different tastes in literature than I do. But if you ask me what I thought of RP1, I’m going to tell you my experience: and that experience was, “This is a stupendously shitty book.” It would be dishonest for me to tell you anything else.
“This is a shitty book,” is not a statement that is in anyway an insult to any person. If someone says, “This is a shitty book,” and you take that as a personal insult, that is 100% on you. Art is subjective. Opinions on art are subjective. I expect any adult to be able to understand this, and to be able to separate “opinions about art I like,” with “opinions about me as a person.” If someone can’t make that distinction, they have no place discussing art with adults.
Oh yeah, I forgot another point about it’s novelty value. It’s a book about a quest for a prize that is solved with clues, and it contains it’s own quest for a prize with the same kind of clues.
I’m not at all insulted by somebody expressing their personal preferences and, since I’ve stated that repeatedly, I don’t really understand what you’re so peeved about.
On the other hand, your attitude towards me in your last couple of posts is a little insulting. I don’t know if I’ve hit a nerve or what, but I’m going to bow out.
I imagine I’ll have more fun at the kids’ table.
I discuss art with adults for a living, and I’m with Johnny Bravo. In fact, I think he’s just articulated why it bothers me when people say “This sucks” and not “I didn’t like this” much more effectively than I’ve ever been able to articulate it.
As for the actual topic of this thread, I read Ready Player One because somebody proposed making it the common reading book at our university and I’m on the committee that evaluates the books, and my reaction was “meh, OK as light entertainment, definitely NOT raising enough interesting questions or ideas to work as a common reading book.” Which is too bad, because I would certainly have been open to choosing a science fiction book, and I’m ordinarily a sucker for literature about the perils and pleasures of games. This is strictly a personal opinion and not intended as a commentary on anyone else’s judgment 
I gotta stand with Johnny Bravo, here, Miller.
You’re arguing that the evaluation of art is subjective. Indeed, it is. Of taste there is no accounting, after all. But you make an objective statement when you say that something fails at any level. You appear to arguing that RP1 is objectively a bad novel instead of saying that you didn’t like it.
As for how this might be insulting to others, I think JB illustrated that well. When expressing an opinion (“I didn’t like it”) you make a value judgement of the book, when expressing an value judgement (“It had no value as art”) you are implying a judgement on those who do like it.
If I express an opinion, I make a value judgement on the book, but when I express a value judgement, it implies a judgement on people who liked it?
Well, that makes good sense.
Let me ask: does this cut both ways? If, “This book is objectively bad,” implies poor judgement on the part of people who liked the book, does “This book is objectively good,” imply poor judgement on the part of people who didn’t like it? You’ve made several comments about the book that weren’t phrased as “I” statements. Should I take those as backhanded comments about my inability to enjoy light entertainment?
When I was reading the book, I thought “This would make a much better movie”. And it did.
The book was not the worst thing I have ever read, but it certainly is mediocre. It’s mediocre in the same way a lot of very accessible fiction is: dumbed down, pandering, simple language, simple thoughts and ideas, all repeated throughout. It does what it is supposed to do.
I found it readable only because it was the running monologue of someone who wasn’t very intelligent but obsessed with pop culture, and I accepted that it wasn’t fine literature. It is what it is.
The movie kept the same simple thoughts and ideas but it was nice to watch and I enjoy nice to watch things. Nerd backlash (“why do people like what I do not like??”) doesn’t bother me.
Any fans of Black Mirror? The episode centering around a video game designer played by Jesse Plemons, who is the evil protagonist in that he creates living clones inside an alternate dimension which plays out in real time in a video game. Nice dark humor show that could inevitably be where we end up, but may not too.
I just gotta say that the 2nd paragraph (and maybe even the first, which I truncated above) sounds a lot like the praise/criticism of the Harry Potter series and, for that matter, of Jackson’s renditions of the Tolkein books (to which the Potter books were often compared favorably and unfavorably, depending who was comparing).
I would argue in the affirmative and I would argue that it is useful to understand the difference between personal and objective value statements.
However, knowing, for example, that Hemmingway’s works are considered absolutely awesome to the fullest extent doesn’t make me like them any better. Nor does it make me feel the need to read them to improve myself somehow; nor does it make me less willing to admit I don’t like them.
–G!
So to summarize: If I’m understanding it, the objection some people have to this movie is that they feel it panders to a certain type of person by telling them a unrealistic story which feeds their personal obsession. The reason the movie is getting this reaction and the book didn’t is because the popular view of this type of person has become more negative in the intervening seven years.
I found the book a simple read (and I finished it, so there’s that) but rather awful. It’s one of those things where I find my opinion of it is only getting worse with time. I like the description of it as a listicle. Or one of those “quizzes” that will figure out which 80s movie character you are by asking a bunch of random questions about where you like to stand at parties and will finally tell you you are Anthony Michael Hall’s character in “The Breakfast Club.” The only one who actually wrote the fucking essay. Whee.
It was casually dismissive of girls in that way that much pop culture is and was.
I won’t likely see the film.