I did consider, after I hit "reply," how "surprise" is often considered a very important part of good poetry. I haven't reconciled yet but I'm working on it.

I trust I am allowed room to think, consider, and refine.

I don't disagree with your input on Gardner; I can't apologize for taking college level courses at 17, one of which was intro to the novel taught by a prof who was a self-admitted Gardner fan girl. And would have written me a fantastic letter of ref had I ultimately needed it.

The ultimate point is Gardner makes is that, as a writer, you should be able to lay everything pertinent to a story out to a reader at the beginning and still tell a good story. To me this can absolutely include plot.

Who doesn't trust someone who shares their opinion over someone who doesn't?

But what I can't see is what is necessarily fundamentally wrong with distrusting an author or narrator if I choose.

This fundamentally seems a matter of preference over right or wrong. I don't see the problem with having trust issues...with your authors or narrators of fiction, at least. Let's not extrapolate to real life; it isn't real life or necessarily really accurate, I think. In fiction, I'm allowed to opt out. That's half the point: fiction is an area of escape. If I don't like how the escape is going, why should I have to stick with it?