Oy.
My contention is that this sort of approach - judging fantasy by the same criteria as one would judge literary fiction - is misplaced and, overall, not worth the trouble, in a similar sense that many fantasy apologists bend over backwards trying to point out how some fantasy is worthy of literary attention.
That is a fine, pure specimen of why "fantasy" remains the butt of so much scorn from outside. What do you suppose the criteria by which one judges "literary fiction" to be, and why are they not applicable to fantastic fiction? You are, in one extended sentence, damning all readers of what you feel "fantasy" is to the status of semi-literate apes who can only understand and enjoy the childishly simple and simplistic.
A tale is a tale. Whether it is set in an alternate history, or an alternate world where magic works, or in an apartment building down the block where everything is ordinary, are things that don't matter to the quality of the tale. It is certainly possible and reasonable to have a taste for tales with exotic settings, but separating out tales by setting type is a vertical segregation; separating them by the quality of the work is a horizontal segregation. The two are utterly unrelated.
Generally, what do we want of a book? Traditionally--and I think it a sound tradition--four things: plot, characters, setting, and language. For the first three, we want coherence, plausibility (within the context of the tale--internal consistency), richness and depth; for the last, we want words and phrases that well lay out the first three elements without grating on our sensibilities, and preferably by pleasing them. The more the elements of the tale expand our feelings about and our understandings of, as Douglas Adams famously and charmingly put it, Life, the Universe, and Everything, the better the tale is.
Those requirements are not different for any given genre (even, or especially, if we include "mainstream" as just another genre): they are the universal lifeblood of tale-telling.
But there is a fact, possibly an ugly fact, that needs to be recognized. Borrowing from
an earlier dialogue on the topic, if one sneaks up behind a human and behind a cow, and in each case swats the unsuspecting subject across the rear with a stick, the emotional reactions of the two are probably going to be much alike. But if we walk up to each and say
I will show you fear in a handful of dust, their emotional reactions will be utterly incommensurable. Literature is, of all the arts, the one that absolutely requires intellect for participation. Music, dance, sculpture, painting, and the rest of the Muses' domains--all of them are augmented by some intellectual comprehension of the art, but appeal chiefly and originally to the senses: a child or an idiot can enjoy them to a substantial degree; maybe even a cow. Not so with reading.
In the very first place, one has to comprehend the meaning of the arbitrary sounds or images that constitute language. But it goes beyond that: even equipped with a sound dictionary, a reader is limited in what he or she can get out of a tale by his or her ability to translate the author's sentences into the thoughts and emotions the author intended. Naturally, one can unload no more freight than the author laded the tale with; but if it is heavily laden, not all readers have the equipment to shift the full weight of the cargo.
That is not a politically correct view. We are constantly bombarded with minor variations on the idea that everyone is exactly equal to everyone else. In a free society, that is true in the moral and legal senses; beyond those, it is patent nonsense. I am not equal to Barry Bonds at playing baseball; I am not equal to Jack Vance at writing; there is a virtual infinity of things at which each of us is manifestly and nontrivially less competent than some, perhaps many other folk out there. It would be folly to pretend that that is not so of the sorts of abilities wanted to fully absorb what authors of great ability can put into fictions.
I cannot see how anyone could disagree with that elementary proposition. The problem that arises does so because wit (like various other cards from the deck of Fate) has been falsely associated with personal merit in some vague, unspecified manner. To have even the slightest implication offered that one's wit is not equal to or superior to some other one's wit is, sad to say, seen as a deadly insult. No one would be insulted by having it remarked that he or she is not as tall as Manute Bol; but imply that he or she is not as smart as even Marilyn vos Savant, and you have trouble on your hands.
But if there is no harm or demerit in not being at the acme of reading comprehension, there is harm in disputing in consequence that there is no such differential, that it's "all subjective, all personal taste". That severely bemeans the abilities of both authors and readers of a certain sort. Now as someone or t'other once remarked, "There is nothing in this world that anyone is obliged to like," and I wish more people would take that to heart. No one in his right mind contends that not liking any given work commonly held to be of meritorious quality somehow damns the non-liker. What damns is a campaign to assert that the work is inherently unlikeable, that those who do like it are pretenders and poetasters: in a word, fakers. Or, not much different, that they have tastes for things frivolous and immaterial to the quality of--in this case--a fiction.
Being able to make the distinction between a work one likes and a work of quality is extrememly important. I like quite a few works that I recognize as being of poor quality, but which have some quirk that appeals to me. I would not recommend them to others, because i recognize that my liking is based on some personal quirk, not any general inhering quality in the work. Likewise, there are works that I can recognize as being of excellence, and which I would recommend, but which I myself do not enjoy much owing, again, to some personal quirk. It is when we try to expand our set of quirks to the status of universality that we err.
That problem is exacerbated when people who find that they share some quirks of taste congregate. Then the Jonestown phenomenon arises: like speaks to like, and soon all are persuaded that because they agree, they are perforce correct. The more the world begs to differ, the more hardened the opposition to the ways of the word becomes. Sentences like those atop this post appear.
To outsiders--those who, in this case, do not read speculative fiction--the matter is of little interest or significance. They are wrong in their appraisals of the quality of speculative fiction, which are like judging mainstream literature solely by a selection from supermarket paperback racks; but when they find the readership itself fervently disclaiming connection with literate writing, what else are they to think? The problem is that to insiders--those who read and write speculative fiction of quality--that is damaging. It is damaging not because of the sneering attitude of folk like Gina Bellafante (as being discussed on
another thread here) matters, but because it reduces the market value of speculative-fiction works, and hence punishes the authors of it, and indirectly (by reducing the enticement to write such under-valued work), the availability of it to readers.
As I said, I regard all this as blindingly self-evident, but I suspect it will be a poke to a hornets' nest.
