(Sometimes I wish we could just communicate beyond the challenge and burden of language and that I knew more of You–as in AMV commenters–than what I can gather through the printed word.)

We could try a Vulcan mind meld.

As for language, I’ve always thought there must be a way to calculate (mathematically) rhythm and function (you know, like music theory is mathematical), but I have to use a calculator to add 0+0, so I’m not going there. :D

Now if only I could find that damn novel to remind myself of why it didn’t work for me…

[the author] should allow them to act in authentically human ways, should surround them with essentially human realities (situations, challenges, weaknesses, etc.) and allow them to respond to those realities in essentially human ways.

I think what I’m trying to say is that your “essentially human” is not the author’s “essentially human.” Novel X worked for both the editor who acquired it and, as you note, your professor, so the author’s “essentially human” worked for them. They bought the lie.

Your words “real” and “human” and “authentic” are loaded with connotations I can’t begin to assess because they are different from my words “real” and “human” and “authentic.” Since I don’t know what your words mean, I can’t understand where you’re coming from. [And obviously, in this particular instance, I can't know unless I read Novel X (which I'm not asking for, LOL!) and we have a discussion.]

Someone said of my work, “Nobody I know talks like that.” That’s fair. What would not be fair is to say, “Nobody I know talks like that, therefore your work isn’t authentic.”

Having said that, what I meant (at least what I think I meant) was that the change in this author’s character didn’t seem plausible, at least to me, though it may work for someone else. (Obviously the professor thought it worked.) Not having the book in front of me (I can’t even find it on my bookshelves), I can’t lay out a more definitive reading as to why it didn’t seem authentic.

As for the creation of human reality and human response in fiction, I intended that to mean, according to my reading of the failures of X novel, that if an author is dealing with human characters (even, perhaps, un-human characters) that they should allow them to act in authentically human ways, should surround them with essentially human realities (situations, challenges, weaknesses, etc.) and allow them to respond to those realities in essentially human ways.

(If that makes any more sense…)

—
Regarding reader baggage — I prefer to use the term sediment. We all have different layerings and types of sediment and when the narrative washes over us, certain things go in to different grooves and interact differently with the various sands, gravels, rocks and boulders of our psyche. And some of these narrative leave additional deposits. Some more than others.

the character’s journey didn’t make sense in that I didn’t see him change as much as the author assumed he had

which is a fair assessment. You then said:

I guess that goes to show, at least for me, the need for authors to create human reality and human response in their fictive worlds.

So proportions of truth/lies in storytelling aside, I took you to mean that because X author didn’t work for you, that it didn’t work at all. That was my objection.

If that’s not what you meant, then I humbly apologize.

Unless the words “this really happened and all names have been changed so I won’t get sued” are included somewhere in the front matter, the story is a lie because it did not happen.

Yes, but how much truth is there really to the events related in a “true” story? As you say, we all carry our own reader baggage and our particular “reading” of any event will be bogged down by that baggage. Hence, no true story can be considered objectively true because it will be told with the author’s personal slant. Neither can a true story be read as truthfully as it was written because it will be read through reader’s personal lens.

In a sense, then, when we read any story, whether billeted as fiction or non-fiction, we’re simply buying a lie, though some lies are merely more truthful than others.

(Phew! Lots of truths and lies in there…)