Listening to Voices

           The New York Times Book Review editors asked Dean Koontz what book he thought was most "disappointing, overrated, just not good."  I didn't care that he listed Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse because I never liked it much either.  But he also says he stops reading when he realizes the author has embraced his character's nihilism.  But why stop there?  I stop reading when the author embraces his character's religious faith, Marxism, capitalism, feminism, politics, sexual preferences, psychological school of thought--just about any agenda.  I don't go to fiction to be instructed in the author's way of looking at the world.  I go to fiction to hear a voice telling me about people and places, moods and feelings, the sort of thing we used to call "universal" in our stories and poems.  And even then, if I don’t like the voice, I’ll stop reading pretty quickly.  There are simply too many books out there to bother with the voices you don’t like listening to.