Having High Expectations of Creators

First, my nigh-obligatory film anecdote:

When I first learned the Christopher Nolan was making Interstellar, I was jazzed. A combination of two of my favorite things—Christopher Nolan films and astronomy? My goodness, yespleaseandthankyou.

Not to bash him or his creations, but…actually, Interstellar was just okay.

In discussing it with my wife afterward, though, an interesting point came up:

Am I disappointed because the movie itself wasn’t so grand, or was it more disappointing because Christopher Nolan was the one who made it?

Further, if it is more the second one, is it really fair to judge a creation differently based on who made it?

This might be surprising, but the short answer, I believe, is: yes, it is fair.

Now here’s the long answer (which is the literature tie-in to the film anecdote):

One day while perusing Barnes and Noble, I stumbled upon a brand-new book called Looking for Alaska by John Green. (This was back in 2005, of course.) I bought it, read the entire book that afternoon (by the way, this is the first novel I read all in one day), and LOVED it. My goodness, it was incredible. In fact, it held the role of my “favorite modern book” for a few years.

The next year, Green’s next book, An Abundance of Katherines, came out. Of course I picked it up right away. Though it wasn’t quite as FANTASTICBEAUTIFULAMAZING as Alaska, it was still very, very good.

And then, a couple years later, Paper Towns came out – which, as you may have noticed by now, is my favorite modern novel. My very very very favorite. (Directly taking over the crown from Alaska.)

John Green was, quite simply, THE author.

Next up was Will Grayson, Will Grayson. And there’s really no easy way to say this – and I’m deeply sorry, John; I still love you – but…I couldn’t even finish Grayson.

I wonder: if someone else had written Grayson, would I have at least liked it a little more? Was I only disappointed because it was John Green?

Possibly, though it’s impossible to say for sure.

Here’s the rub, though:

I suppose it might not sound fair to say I dislike Grayson even more because it was John Green. And yet, the definite fact is that I only even bought it in the first place because it was by him. If I had never heard of John Green – or if, say, it was his first book – I think I would have read the back cover while standing in B&N, then set it back down. (That’s if I even picked it up in the first place, which I very well might not have, since it has both the least interesting title and the least interesting cover of all his books.)

That said, if I only read a book at all because it’s by a certain author, then I think it’s perfectly legitimate to judge that book against that author’s other work, and to hold it to a slightly different standard (than if it had been written by a different author). I mean, he got my money from that book because it's him - so doesn't it make sense to judge it differently based on the fact that it's him?

What do you think?

(Let me throw an extra little tidbit in here, so that I don’t seem like a complete jerk: John Green is still amongst the highest caliber of living authors. His follow-up to Grayson – The Fault in Our Stars – was back to being more typical, amazing John Green. And I’ve already pre-ordered his next book, Turtles All the Way Down, due out in October. So I certainly didn’t let Grayson leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.)