I was having a conversation this morning with my son, and, as is our wont, we got to talking about what we’re reading right now. He’s working his way through the Game of Thrones novels, which I haven’t read yet, but undoubtedly will. He mentioned that some people think George R. R. Martin doesn’t write particularly well, but he thought the extraordinary plot construction, characters and story threads more than made up for whatever deficiencies the man may have as a prose stylist. And then my son said something profound. He said ‘reading is supposed to be fun.’

Yes! Yes, a thousand times yes! Obviously, we read for hundreds of reasons–to pass the bar exam, to figure out who-dun-it, to laugh out loud, to use up tedious/terrifying minutes in the dentist’s office. But those of us who love to read mostly do it because it’s fun. It’s fun to learn about the world. It’s fun to explore imaginary worlds. It’s fun to keep up with old friends, or to make new ones. It’s fun to root for the good guys to win, and for the bad guys to lose, and for the ordinary schlubbs in the middle to at least survive. Sometimes, in fact, I root for the bad guys to win, if they’re sufficiently rogueish and attractive. Anti-heroes are a hoot.

I am a theatre person, and I love going to a theater to see a play. While there, I expect to be entertained. Of course, ‘entertained’ is a contested term; I’m quite entertained by plays that some of you may find as exciting as watching grass grow. But I think we’re basically in agreement about some basics. We want to see a play that will move us, touch us, make us think, lead to conversation. We want to see believable characters we can care about (even if they’re bounders). Same with movies. I’m not saying I only want to see action/adventure, with car crashes and ‘splosions and movie stars running unscathed through enemy machine gun fire. What I do want is fun. That can mean a slow-paced film with lots of long conversations, if what the characters say is crackling sharp-witted (or engagingly dim-witted) and full of conflict.

As Kai and I were talking, I asked him what his response would be if I told him that I had two books which I knew he hadn’t read, and he could have either one–one by Elmore Leonard and the other by John Updike. His response was immediate, and was the same mine would be: Elmore Leonard, in a New York minute. To heck with the books lit professors assign to their classes. Though in fact, lots of lit professors nowadays may well assign Leonard.

This isn’t to say that I can’t or won’t read literary fiction, or that I only like crappy genre novels. In fact, I do like crappy genre novels, but my favorite contemporary (or ‘sort of contemporary’) novelist is the famously difficult David Foster Wallace. And I know that Jonathan Frandzen is Wallace’s writer bestie, and I love Frandzen too. But I will go to my grave insisting that Stephen King and Donald Westlake are as good (and as important and as vital and as ‘important’) as any other writers in America. The ‘genre v. literary’ dichotomy is so much nonsense; what I want is a good story well told.

But what I really loathe is the idea of medicinal art. You know what I mean. It’s the idea that seeing Great Works of Art is good for us, is edifying, enlarges our understanding, inoculates us from ‘worldly’ shallowness, teaches us uplifting and morally upright principles. And I suppose that there’s a level at which all that happens. But I don’t generally give a crap about being edified. My morality is my business; what I want from an artist is something, well, fun.