#interpretive communities

Jason Gots: I am a very changeable creature. The magic of a book depends not only on the book or on the author, but also on me and where I'm at at any given time. So I have a certain wariness of pronouncing judgment to say, 'Oh this is a good book.' 

I mean, sometimes I know a book is simply terrible, but there's also a wide band within which I would say, well, it just didn't work for me right now, because I'm so changeable that way.

Neil Gaiman: A book is a door, and the reader is a key. And sometimes you're not the right shape key to that door at that time, and you go, 'There's nothing here for me.' And then you can pick up that same book six months later, and somehow you can feel somewhere on the first page the key click in the lock. You engage, and those characters come to life.

We don't talk enough about this. We talk about books as as if each writer has made one book and that one book is one experience that everybody has. As if you, I don't know—made a plate of mashed potatoes. And you are handing those mashed potatoes out, and everybody tastes the same mashed potatoes. And that's not true.

A book is computer code. The book is raw code, and the reader is running the code. The reader is taking 26 letters, a handful of punctuation marks, and is decoding them, and building them up into something in their heads. And that's what's being experienced.

Jason Gots: I think there's a good case to be made that no two people taste the same plate of mashed potatoes.

Neil Gaiman: I think you're very probably right, especially because if you lined up, you know, 1000 people, and made them all taste the same plate of mashed potatoes, you'd get people at one end of the line going, 'That was the best thing, I just want to eat that for the rest of my life. Are there any more?'

And you'd get people down the other end of the line going, 'I'm really sorry that I vomited, but it was so disgusting!'

Scott Parker: You’re known for your notion of ‘interpretive communities’. What are they?