Retaking the High Ground

One of my favorite books about writing is On Moral Fiction, by the late John Gardner. The following excerpts from that book are only a few of the reasons I believe OMF may be one of the most important books in print for writers in general, and especially for those of us who write from a Christian worldview. Much of Gardner's criticism was unpopular–-as is often the case today when members of the writing community venture to insist on the traditional view of writing, indeed of all the arts: that true art is moral.

Gardner says: "In the past few decades we have shaken off, here in America, the childish naivete and prudishness we see in, for instance, movies of the thirties and forties ... but in our pursuit of greater truth we have fallen to the persuasion that the cruelest, ugliest thing we can say is likely to be the truest. Real art has never been fooled by such nonsense: real art has internal checks against it."

Today "heroes" are held to be (a) unnecessary; (b) foolish; (c) archaic; (d) the creation of hack writers. But Gardner says: "Every hero's proper function is to provide a noble image for men to be inspired and guided by in their own actions ... And whereas the hero's function ... is to set the standard in action, the business of the poet (here we can also substitute writer--bjh) is to celebrate the work of the hero, pass the image on, keep the heroic model of behavior fresh, generation on generation."

Think about some of the movies you've seen and novels you've read over the past year. How many featured heroes whose behavior was heroic? I don't mean comic book "action heroes"--but characters or actors whose behavior itself was heroic.  

Have you experienced what I have all too often, the act of stopping a video less than halfway through or giving up on a novel after the first 30 pages or less–-because there's not one single character or actor whom you care about in a story so trivial it seems almost a sinful waste of a tree?

How many award-winning movies would you have given an award to? Who among today's "stars" of film and literature would you want your children to emulate, to elevate as their "heroes?"

Can we honestly take a hard, objective look at our media, our literature, our entertainment industry today and find anything more than "token morality?"

Gardner again: "The traditional view is that true art is moral: it seeks to improve life, not debase it."

Does that view any longer apply to the arts in our time? Gardner again: "For the most part our artists do not struggle ... toward a vision of how things ought to be or what has gone wrong; they do not provide us with the flicker of lightning that shows us where we are. Either they pointlessly waste our time, saying and doing nothing, or they celebrate ugliness and futility, scoffing at good."

Do I really believe it's that bad? Oh, yes. The selections in Gardner's On Moral Fiction were written in 1977 and 1978. Things have only been going downhill since then.

Although it's fashionable today–-and tiresomely predictable-–for "Christian fiction," especially fiction published in the CBA market, to be either hammered or blown off as trivial by the critics, some within the industry itself, it doesn't change the fact that those who want morality in their fiction are turning toward the very books the critics are bent on burying. Many readers might not be able to articulate the lack they sense in some of today's fiction, but they do sense the hopelessness and meaninglessness of it, and it holds no appeal for them.

Gardner says that "art is one of civilization's chief defenses, the hammer that tries to keep the trolls in their place." But if we watch carefully, we can begin to catch a glimpse of the "trolls" spilling over into all the arts, littering them with the worthless and the tawdry as never before.

Who, other than those committed to the creation of what is moral, will keep the trolls away in this generation and the next? It seems to me that the future isn't as bleak as we might first believe. I find much hope in watching the healthy number of writers--and artists and musicians--who are managing to trounce the trolls by sheer dedication and the mastery of their craft, the excellence of their efforts. There are still many who believe in the traditional view of writing and of all the arts: that it isn't art at all unless it is moral.

Several years ago, Dale Cramer commented to me that "I really believe that Christian fiction, if we can just learn how to use it to its full potential, can retake the high ground in literature."

That's as good a challenge as any I've ever heard for every writer of Christian worldview fiction.

God help us to retake the high ground.

BJ