Anthony Doerr and the Science of Enjoyment

The same silver-haired English teacher I had in my youth who succinctly told me I suck at reading also had an affinity for music. Bands that I’d never heard of (e.g. Genesis) being not only a source of enjoyment, but also a source of deep wisdom that I don’t think I truly appreciated until recently.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is subject to some harsh reviews. It’s rated at 4.25 on Goodreads and was also nominated for the 2021 Readers Choice Award, it was a Goodreads Choice winner, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2021.

The harsh reviews come from the seemingly minority of people who consider Cloud Cuckoo Land a “monstrosity” because descriptive prose just doesn’t quite hold a reader’s interest and not all characters are as lovable or enjoyable as the others.

Similarly, All the Light we Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer and ranks slightly higher at a 4.31 on Goodreads. One review cites his 2 star review of this novel to the lack of moral or ethical decisions the two young characters had to make during the novel and thus it lacks complexity and at best feels superficial.

The silver-haired English teacher who appreciated Genesis more than anyone else I know went off on one of his characteristic tangents, this time not about literature, but about music. He broke down the song “Nothing Compares 2 U” into chunks well beyond the standard verse, chorus, and bridge. He identified something a bit deeper in his love for classic rock that isn’t as obvious.

Generally, when we like something, we say we like it and even more often, at least for me, we leave it at that. The complexity of why I like something may be too much to expound on for the circumstance, if I’m even lucky enough to verbalize it in the first place. Silver-haired English teacher likened this to why we like certain music because much less often are we asked to write a paper on why a certain song resonates with us. Dealing with a shorter medium (i.e. 3 minutes for a song compared to 10 hours for a novel) can be useful in identifying, quickly, the things we do and do not enjoy. The beat or tempo of a song may make us feel relaxed or just the opposite and instead inspire movement and motion. A novel may have a pacing or cadence that captures the reader into a world that lies specifically within the space of being completely absorbed.

The language we use to describe enjoyment is particularly interesting. To say that a song resonates with us is quite literally to say that the song matched the frequency in our mind to produce some sort of harmony. And with music, it may almost be easier to find words that describe our feelings. Cacophony, resonance, harmony, up-beat, up-tempo, on cue, misses the mark: these are things that describe very well why or why not a song may have made a lasting impression–something that you’d be happy to return to.

In essence, the pattern-seeking part of our brain identifies a pattern that it responds to positively (or negatively) and identifies that piece of art with something positive (or negative) and we may now go on to seek those same patterns out. And the wisdom of Genesis is such that I think this applies to all mediums, not just music or a specific song you resonate with.

Reading reviews of Anthony Doerr’s works made me question my own ability to like something. Am I flawed if I do not really agree with the critique of the children characters not being forced with a moral dilemma? Maybe there is an objective answer to this and maybe the objective answer is that it won the Pulitzer Prize, anyway. Objectiveness is a different game and one that I’m not really playing here. Instead, I think it may be enough to say that Anthony Doerr writes in-line with a pattern that I identify (resonate) with.

This is already more descriptive than saying “this is beautiful” or “it’s just so good.” Rather, it begs the question, what pattern? and it naturally leads the conversation that way. This is what rhetorical analysis really is though, isn’t it? The identification of patterns that persist throughout a work or several works that you are trying to figure out the purpose behind. Why does John Steinbeck describe a leaf or turtle in such great detail? Why does Stephen King place a child orgy as a plot-defining moment in It? Aren’t these just part of larger patterns that both authors stick to and are you really surprised when they happen?

The pattern in Anthony Doerr’s works is something akin to describing mundanity and the day-to-day life of just normal people. Werner going to the Nazi school and feeling troubled but not necessarily acting on it is not a story-telling failing on Doerr’s part. That’s just the nature of being a child in the middle of a war. If there were to be some moral challenge Werner somehow overcame and also made the “right” decision in, it would be strange because we do not identify heroes in Nazi Germany, much less child-heroes. (Author’s Note: this is not a value judgement on the children in Nazi Schools during WWII Germany, this is an identification of a theme in a novel). There is seemingly no moral challenge because for most people, there really isn’t one. Doerr has an incredible ability to capture life’s moments without putting a value judgement on it. And that’s a pattern that I know I like. Alternatively, we can say that Werner had a moral challenge every single day, but the desire to survive rather than take down a system overcame any heroic feelings he had.

The ability to describe life as it moves and progresses is, in my opinion, much more challenging, and takes much more skill, than coming up with a fantasy world that allows the author to get out of any situation he may find himself in. When describing life, the only way the author can get out is if he commits to the cruel perspective that this is life and within the infinite combinations of things that could take place, picking the least interesting is aligning with the most probable, and arguably the most painful. It is painful to identify with a character who you can see yourself acting like or with whom you can see your choices aligning. The claim that Werner was not faced with a moral challenge in the Nazi School completely misses the mark. It is coming from a reader who probably believes that if he was in the same situation, he would have taken down the whole system in under a year because he would have made the “right” decision. It is painful, yet true, that Werner had but no choice. Because oftentimes that really is true and fiction or fantasy that believes anything else is pulling God out of the machine and hoping for a miracle.

When faced with comments like “well he should have done something,” I am reminded that my generation grew up in stories of heroic characters who took down dystopian governments in fantasy worlds that may have deep meanings and influence from real-life, but really, truly have no bearing in reality. Thus, I have little sympathy for this critique. If you want fantasy, read fantasy.

So, there’s another identification: fiction versus fantasy and even perhaps the frustration one may feel in having to clarify that they indeed are not the same. The perversion of literature is such that critiques like Werner not having a heroic enough life is becoming more common-place. Doerr is actively working against the narrative that a character has to be morally supreme and heroic to be “enough.” Reader, I ask you, what was the last heroic thing you did? Do you feel less valuable as a person because the answer to that question is “I haven’t done anything heroic?”

When Zeno does make his heroic move in Cloud Cuckoo Land, we do not see the him showered with glory and love afterward. Doerr did not make him a martyr and in fact, his final moments are cruel, full of regrets and things that could-have or should-have been. Goodreads user, there’s your moral dilemma.

Good art imitates life. A good song is a song that your mind resonates with because your brain identifies with its patterns. A good novel is a novel that similarly is in-line with a pattern you enjoy and though this may all be subjective, it is true that there are categories of art that individual works fall into and if it meets the criteria for being in that category, then it has done a good job. To enjoy something is to know the types of things you have previously enjoyed and thus using this as a baseline for things you may enjoy in the future. And as iron sharpens iron, your tastes become more defined and you begin to notice things you enjoy that you may not have previously enjoyed and the pattern repeats. Because the science of enjoyment is the identification of a pattern that we resonate with. Resonating is a type of high that can only be replicated when you and the art completely align and that is something to enjoy in itself.