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So, let me first agree with everyone and say that if it’s purely in there for the shock value, then I’d put the book down. That lets readers down, not just because of the content, but it also shows that the author is implicitly saying that he’s not good enough to keep readers hooked by his writing.

But I think we can go deeper into this. My family’s been reading Reading Between the Lines (a book I highly recommend!) and in one section, the author discusses what sets apart “bad” content from “good” content. Aside from vulgarity and profanity (and I might be missing another group), there is obscene content. Obscene means “off-scene”; the kind of things that, in a good book, might be mentioned or implied but happen off-screen, the shock factor.

The author brings up the ancient Greek tragedies, and Oedipus in particular, a play about a prophecy (that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother) that comes true, despite all the characters’ attempts to thwart it. The story itself deals with some pretty heavy material, besides it ending with most of the characters committing suicide. Yet though the play revolves around such content, none of it is shown.

The author asks why this is. It isn’t because the Greeks were particularly moral people (far from it :P) or shied away from gruesome things. It was because they recognized the aesthetic value of story. If playwrights showed the audience the off-screen material in the middle of an enrapturing story, the people would be suddenly torn from enjoying the aesthetic excellence of the play. It didn’t matter if such off-screen material was central to the play. They still didn’t show it, as Oedipus exemplifies.

Now, of course there are different expectations for different age groups and different genres. If reading a war novel, for instance, readers will expect that there will be description of the battlefield. So there are different places to draw the line. An author can describe the battlefield without unnecessarily shocking readers with a sudden gruesome description.

In any genre, if an author succumbs to showing off-screen material, I usually interpret it as a weak attempt to keep my attention. Such material shocks readers out of the story, so that they are no longer captured by the aesthetic excellence of the story, but by ponderings of why on earth the author included that.