Relatable to What?

The graduate student in NYC who blogs under the name "A White Bear" just posted this meditation, which reminded me of the "Be relatable to readers' lives" criterion in our list of what might make for Good Fiction. Notice that AWB has seen students try to reduce the intensity of poetry to personal struggles in authors' lives --rather than seeing how Countee Cullen was writing about U.S. society, her students say, "Hm, it must have been rough on him to be black." So far, no one has suggested that sort of thing in our discussions: there have been no "Boy, Voltaire must have been mistreated by priests" or "Wow, Kleist must have had a bad time in Saxony" comments. I've tried now and then to argue for the continued relevance of old fiction to the present day: you'll recall that I spoke of Candide and brought up the fact that we still see preachers who blame their fellow citizens for disasters, like the Church in Lisbon did; that torture, colonialism, slavery, and arbitrary execution still occur in this world; that people still trivialize war; in short, that many of the injustices Voltaire tore into are still around somewhere. More recently, I asked if the outpouring of community and mutual aid we see in "The Earthquake in Chile" rang true to you, and we had a good discussion.

AWB, as I interpret her post, likes seeing her students connect with the experiences of people very different from themselves but does not want them, in the name of "relatability," to erase the fact of that difference. So she's sarcastic about students who say their love affairs are Just Like the Gothic adventures of the lovers in Wuthering Heights, 'cause it's like saying "I had an experience with a contractor that was exactly like Michael Kohlhaas's conflict with the Junker!" If you have had a confrontation with an unjust bureaucracy that reminds you of "Michael Kohlhaas" or vice versa, it's not because Kleist is giving us a tale that's Just Like our mundane experiences but because we like to imagine ourselves as Romantic heroes who could shake an Empire, so the extremes of Kleist's story resonate with us.

So here are a few different things I think "relatable to readers' lives" could mean:

• I thought I recognized people in this story like those I know
• I empathize with the feelings of people in this story
• I sympathize with the goals of people in this story
• I enjoy identifying with people in this story
• I feel pity or compassion for the people in this story
• I have discovered similarities between my life and that of people in this story
• I wish my life worked like people's lives in this story
• I fear my life might end up like that of people in this story
• I am relieved that my life does not work like that of people in this story

The great risk, as AWB explains using the example of her bigoted Dad, is that a person will find a way to reinforce a prejudice or narrow world view in a story; the great opportunity is that a person will be changed and have some of his or her blind spots removed by an encounter with a great work of art. I think "relatable" is only a bad thing if it's used to mean "It did nothing but reinforce what I already know, or comfort me by saying what I already believe." Sure, you can make a case that a story confirming your beliefs is Good Fiction, but you'd probably want to make such a case on the grounds of its style or wit or suspense or some attribute other than "relatability."