<p>The posts about the difficulty of reading a book, whether there is anything wrong with a dense, complicated writing style and so forth does come down to taste, but it also comes down to the question about what writing is for, what is the author trying to do? Are they trying to get a point across in what they write, is it a story they are trying to tell, or are the words and the way they are written the intent? Where I personally have problems is when a writer seems more caught up in exotic wordcraft and showing how clever he/she is, then in putting forth an idea or story…</p>
<p>There is a direct parallel to this in modern concert music, where you had the rise of the atonal/12 tone music of Schonberg and such and much of this music is not easily accessible and much of it IMO is academic music where the whole point of the music seems to be in creating out there constructs probably understood by very few people, then actually making music people will listen to. The same arguments have been made there, that it forces people to think, that people ‘need to do their homework’ and such, but the reality is much of this music never really gets listened to by audiences (and despite claims that it is too soon, etc, Schonberg’s revolution happened almost 100 years ago, and it still hasn’t caught on with most audiences). Milton Babbit, one of the big movers in that school of music, once reputedly said something to the effect he didn’t care if audiences came to hear his music…but if no one comes to hear it, which after all, is what music is about, what purpose does it truly serve?</p>
<p>There is the obvious obverse side to this, something written for broad audience appeal alone (like some sort of novelty song in music that sells millions of copies) but with nothing underneath it…</p>
<p>When something is written or done merely to please the artist, where they decide to do something because it can be done, and they end up with an audience of few, do they have any more impact then the schlockmeister who gets read by millions? The true geniuses of the arts often were able to do both, Shakespeare was wildly popular with audiences yet he created something that still staggers the mind, Beethoven was acclaimed as a genius in his own time yet he was pretty revolutionary, was quite popular, had something of a falling off when he died, yet within 20 years became an icon ; Stravinsky literally caused riots with his music for “Le Sacre Du Printemps” yet within 10 years, despite being modern and revolutionary, it became a major piece of the concert repertoire, whereas in contrast the music of the Schonberg school of things is still difficult for audiences, and it has been around roughly 100 years. Writers have to write what their muse tells them, but to me a writer writing for the very few ‘enlightened’ isn’t really doing all that much. And yes, that is strictly my opinion, my taste…</p>
<p>I agree with the last poster, it isn’t about making people think, as ‘popular’ as Beethoven or Stravinsky or Prokofiev or Shastakovich are, their music is not trivial, it takes thought to comprehend them, and understand the message, some of it quite challenging, but they also are approachable; with books, something readable can be challenging, Hemingway’s writing was some of the more simple, straightforward prose written, yet it is rightfully considered some of the best writing in the English language IMO and quite frankly, the impact is going to be more then some book written by an esthete that is appreciated by a handful…</p>