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August 8, 2007
Fuck the Average Reader
I've been writing a rather long piece, ostensibly about television, also possibly about skewering the snobbishness of an older generation of novelists, but mostly about The Wire being the greatest thing I've ever seen or read. This quote, from Nick Hornby's interview with its creator in the new Believer, couldn't wait for me to actually finish writing. Take the mic, David Simon:
"My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.
Beginning with Homicide, the book, I decided to write for the people living the event, the people in that very world. I would reserve some of the exposition, assuming the reader/viewer knew more than he did, or could, with a sensible amount of effort, hang around long enough to figure it out. I also realized--and this was more important to me--that I would consider the book or film a failure if people in these worlds took in my story and felt that I did not get their existence, that I had not captured their world in any way that they would respect. "
Posted by patrick at August 8, 2007 9:25 AM
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Comments
"The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing ..."
Is this commentary supposed to be an attack on white HBO viewers in the suburbs, or on media publishing demographers' caricatures thereof, or both, do you think?
Posted by: Tom at August 8, 2007 11:47 AM
I think on a strictly surface level, he's attacking the sensibilities of editors of papers like the Baltimore Sun where he used to work, or say, certain local rags here.
But then when you get into television, I think it's a bit of both things you suggest - what I've always admired about Simon is that uncompromising nature, the belief that good, tough material will find an audience. Whenever I've introduced people to The Wire, they've been a little put off by its denseness, but slowly, when they just realise they've been used to watching (reading, says my old cultural studies academic inside) TV in a certain way and they find the rhythm of it, it becomes something else entirely. Interesting paradox that the majority of HBO subscribers probably _are_ those suburban white people he wants them not to be.
Posted by: Patrick Pittman 
at August 8, 2007 11:57 AM
Exactly. He may have decided that's not who he's writing for, but if the audience of the rest of the HBO stable is anything to go by (not being familiar with The Wire myself), it seems likely that's who's watching it.
The white suburbanite inside me (and outside me? I mean fuck, I live in the suburbs in Canberra for the time being) has his own wounded-dominant-majority-inhabiting kneejerk reaction to being vilified by a TV writer. That's probably what spurred my first comment.
I didn't like Homicide: Life On The Street much ... but I have a clear memory of you going on about how great you thought it was back in about '94 -- at least you're consistent :-)
Posted by: Tom at August 8, 2007 2:10 PM
