Straw men and courage; clearly I need to fit the Tinman in here somewhere.

[mrissa]

Mostly in locked posts, I've seen people talking about how badly Connie Willis handled the British setting details in Blackout/All Clear, and as a result the comments I want to point to are also mostly in locked posts: it seems that a great many people feel that the appropriate response is to say something like, "Well, when was the last time you saw a book do every detail perfectly?"

Look, people. This is not just a straw man. It's a stupid straw man. Nobody is claiming that Connie Willis's books or anybody else's books need to be flawless to be worth reading. They are claiming that the flaws they're discussing are meaningful. If you don't think they're meaningful, say so. Have the guts to stand up and say that you feel the other person is nitpicking. If what you mean is, "I don't think getting the details of how your country handles things should be important to someone from my country," say so. If what you mean is, "I think that the detail you are talking about will not mislead anyone severely, and I think the author got at some very important emotional truths," say that too. But don't wave it away with, "Well, no one's perfect!" That may be the standard we'd like, but it's not the one anyone is actually using.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I'm still struggling with this, having finished A Discovery of Witches a few days ago. I should say first that it resonated profoundly enough in my head that I had to think for a bit about what would be the right sort of book to read next. (I do that all the time, of course, but usually it's based on what I currently feel like reading and not on having the last book still clanging around in my head.) One thing I've concluded is that the author did a whole cruiseship-load of research for the book. There are unimportant things she got wrong despite clearly having researched them (some small rowing details); things she got a bit wrong because she probably couldn't have researched them (what it's like rowing while trying to ward off a panic attack); lots of things that as far as I can tell she got exactly right (history and details of rare books); and at least one thing that is important to the plot that I'm pretty sure she got wrong (redacted for spoiler).

But that didn't diminish the impact of the book on me, just made me say "hey, wait..." after I emerged from that part of it. So I think even "meaningful" is, as your examples show, something that can cover a lot of ground.