Have you ever heard, “Everyone’s a Critic?”

This is the heart of Reader Response Theory. To some extent, all literary theories acknowledge the relationship between the reader and a literary work. While those theories primarily explore the author, the content, and/or the form of a work, the reader is secondary at best, the reader (audience) and their relationship to a work stands at the center of modern Reader Response criticism. Any time someone says, “I liked this,” or, “I didn’t like that,” they are engaging in Reader Response Theory.

For the Geek world, this is our home turf.

If you ever go to a comic con, or a science fiction convention, or a gaming store, or just hang out with a group of geeks, eventually… oh heck… within minutes of any engaged conversation… someone is going to start talking (ranting) about something they love or hate and why exactly that person feels you should share their opinion. Then, someone else in the conversation (or someone passing close enough to overhear) will express exactly why the original assertion is false and why. Come on. You’ve been there. Odds are, you’ve been on one side of that conversation or the other.
Having spent most of my life around geeks, I can already see some of you doing a happy little nerd dance about how you’ve been right all these years, that YOU are the one truly responsible for bringing all this nerdy goodness into the world and that we should bow down, etc, etc, etc. Slow down. Don’t get too excited. Really, chill. It’s true that you are responsible for bringing those things you love to life. So are the billions of other nerds on the planet. They also bring the stuff you don’t love to life. As much as I would like to imagine that the Twilight books don’t exist, because I’ve never read it doesn’t work that way. This is one, remember ONE, lens through which to view a work of art. So… save your happy dance for when the next MCU movie trailer hits. Besides, that’s the very most basic of basic levels, which is why I’ve chosen to start with this. If we want to go to the next level of Reader Response Theory, we’ll say, “I liked this; because…” or “I didn’t like that; because…”

If we go deeper into Reader Response, we discover it’s more than merely being someone’s personal opinion about a work. Modern Academia claims that Reader Response mostly began in the 1970s, particularly in the US and Germany, in work by Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, Roland Barthes, and others. (Names included for those geeks who want to head down the Google rabbit hole.) However, geeks can take pride in the fact that C. S. Lewis was at the forefront of this new way of thinking about literature when he wrote An Experiment in Criticism in 1961. In this book Lewis analyzes the role of readers in selecting literature. While Lewis wasn’t himself a member of geek culture — it was barely becoming a “thing” — he certainly influenced us. It’s kinda cool that he had a hand in the theory that’s arguably closest to the heart of Geekdom.

Since we’re talking about opinions of artists and readers, we find multiple branches in Reader Response Theory. Come on, you didn’t think that with all this personal experience stuff floating around in their theory that some people weren’t going to have a difference of opinion on how to apply Reader Response? (Spoiler alert: this happens in a lot of theories. Each of the following branches explores this theory slightly differently, but in their shared belief that a work is derives meaning from the reader, they have overlapping beliefs and practices, so that categorizing discussions explicitly invites difficulty. (Not that we geeks know anything about arguing over the minutest of details.) Gamers might think of the following branches as sub-classes, specializations, or talent trees.

Affective stylistics, established by Stanley Fish — think of hims as the Stan Lee of Reader Response Theory — believes that works only exist when someone experiences the work, that a work has no meaning independent of the audience. To put it another way: a book (movie, song, show, comic, etc…) isn’t real until someone reads it (watches, listens, etc…) For example, until someone sits down and reads The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf doesn’t cry “Fly you fools,” and no one has to worry about being corrupted by the One Ring…Middle Earth doesn’t exist. The reader becomes a co-creator of the text. Yes. This is a cool idea, especially for those egocentric nerds who things every creator should pay fanservice and appease their every little whim. But, settle your geeky little heart down. The planet is filled with billions of people all over the world who are also sharing the spotlight with J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and J.K. Rowling. And again… Reader Response is one theory among many ways to examine a piece of art. (Wait until we get to New Criticism.)

Transactional Reader-Response Theory is a branch led by Louise Rosenblatt and supported by Wolfgang Iser. This discusses the relationship between the work’s meaning and the reader’s interpretation, which includes all the baggage the reader brings to the work. This baggage includes, yet is not limited to, emotions, experiences, knowledge, traumas, other books the reader has read, etc. We all have a bunch of extraneous crud bouncing around in our heads, and of course, that’s going to color our view of a work. I had a very different experience of Ready Player One than my fourteen-year-old son did. (Well, the book anyway. We were on the same page with the movie.) Likewise, I had a teacher in my MFA program tell me that she wished she got all the Easter Eggs (inside references for those who don’t grok geek speak) in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Knowing and studying this perspective helps us get past our own biases, and it helps us be more aware when someone else is biased.

Subjective Reader-Response Theory, brought to you by David Bleich, looks entirely to responses from readers for a work’s meaning. This is probably the most purely “academic” brand of Reader Response. This branch seeks to collect other individual interpretations to a work, compare and contrast them, in order to discover a continuity of meaning. In a way, Geeks love to do this with awards. The Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and other awards are geeky ways of expressing this branch. Book clubs and book blogger communities are other aspects of this branch of Reader Response.

Psychological Reader-Response Theory, spearheaded by Norman Holland, believes that a reader’s personalities heavily affect how they read. It’s an interesting branch because it’s rather than analyzing what a reader’s experience of a work tells us about the work; thus uses the reader’s and experience of the work to tell inform us about the reader.

Social Reader-Response Theory is a relatively new branch where Stanley Fish expands on his earlier ideas. He’s now exploring the concept that our individual experience of a work is influenced by a community. If that doesn’t sound like geek culture, then you need to hang out at a comic con or spend some time on Reddit. Fish suggests that in an interpretive community a reader is exposed to particular and specific forms of interpretation. As a consequence, sometimes it’s hard to break away from those norms in order to have a completely unique experience. I’ve noticed this both in Geek culture and Academia. Each community exhibits traits of this in both positive and negative ways.

Now, let’s talk about engaging with other people using Reader Response Theory. At the core of it’s approach, Reader Response doesn’t have “right” or “wrong,” but if we want to engage with other critically-minded individuals, it’s important to demonstrate an understanding of the work being discussed and clearly explain and support our reactions. We want more than: “I loved this book because it so epic, and I love epic, and the end made me happy,” or “I hated it because it was stupid…had nothing at all to do with my life…was too negative and boring,” or “Meh… Because, meh… (insert MEME).” If we’re just considering something we just read or we’re talking to our friends about the latest geek fad, these responses are perfectly fine. No worries. However, for a deeper engagement and discussion about art, these responses, positive or negative, do little encourage further discussion.
When engaging with a work through Reader Response, we want to take a systematic, analytical approach to the work when explaining and defending our personal experience with the work.

Here are some jumping off points for Reader Response Theory:

• Explain why you liked or disliked your experience of the work. Note that this is different than labeling the work as “good” or “bad.”
• Explain whether you agree or disagree with points in the work, that is, claims within the narrative or things the characters say. Let’s not get into discussing whether we agree or disagree with the author, as we’re unlikely to know the author’s mind or motivations just by experiencing the work. Sometimes we may, but usually not.(We’ll go into discussing the author of the work in other theories.)
• Explain what you believe is the purpose of the work. Not what it actually is, but what you believe it is. Important
• Critique the work by citing sections of the work to support your opinion.

Tone is especially important, even vital, in Reader Response. Since Reader Response Criticism speaks of our personal experience with a work, it’s far too easy to become impassioned and wander into ranting rather than engaging in intellectual discourse. If we fail in civil and mature communication, it’s far too easy to alienate people and ruin a potentially interesting conversation. Whether on the Internet, at a nerdy gathering, or in a classroom, pretty much every geek has experienced that one person who got so bombastic and emotional about their opinion and wound up killing what had been an interesting conversation. We’ve all known that guy, right? Don’t be that guy. The rule of thumb for Reader Response — well any time we engage in criticism, but especially Reader Response — is to write for the smartest person we can imagine using the most precise and direct language we can. As Harlan Ellison said, “You’re entitled to your informed opinion.” Reader Response Theory is best when using our informed opinions to engage with others who also have informed opinions.

We can speak to a work from a position of our principles, our interests, and/or structural issues within the work. Is the work racist? Is the work unreasonably insulting to or religion, or groups of people, such as women or adolescents, conservatives or liberal, etc? Does the work include factual errors or outright lies? Is the work too dark and despairing? Is it falsely positive? Note: In this, we want to differentiate between the work and the characters within the work. Is the text poorly written? Is it bloated, have too much purple prose, wander aimlessly before getting anywhere? Does it have too many facts and figures? Does it give information and back story via too many info dumps? Do typos or other errors keep you from enjoying the text? Does the wander aimlessly without making a point?

In every case, cite examples from the work to support assertions. If we don’t, others may conclude that we are too ignorant, sloppy, or lazy to understand and appreciate the work. In geek communities, it’s especially important to use specific and exact examples to support our claims. As a community, Geeks play close attention to details, sometimes minute details, and if our fellow nerds think we’re being ignorant, sloppy, or lazy in an analysis of a work they love, they will absolutely call us out and tell us exactly why they think we’re ignorant, sloppy, or lazy… and I promise you, geeks will come armed with specific and exacting details.