More on the Writing of Books
My last blog concerned itself with the responsibility of the author to create characters of worth. Since then I have received pithy critiques on the home front. “Why should an author have the responsibility to raise the reader’s moral standard?” asked the other half of the household. “Stendhal once said, “the novel is a mirror going down the road of life. Isn’t that what it is about? What about anti-heroes? Is your approach not too simplistic?” Well, no, I think, because if you go down the road of life in your story, as Stendhal does, then you, as the writer, always come to the cross-road where you have to make a moral decision. You can either allow the louse of a being in your story get away with murder, indulging in psychological excuses for his passion to hurt and maim, while glowing with perverted excitement, or you can allow the creep to fall into the hands of righteousness, ending the story with a grand vision of evil exterminated.
As to anti-heroes, some authors, whose works I truly enjoy, had anti-heroes, upon whose despicable deeds and characters, very funny, hilarious moralizing occurred. (I am thinking of the Flashman series by George McDonald Fraser and the German Till Eulenspiegel.) These are great works, teaching moral conduct by showing asocial behavior in the anti-hero, who is doing really well, and then, wittily and sarcastically condemn him by exposing his flaws and schemes.
So, in the end, what it comes down to is this: Do I have the moral obligation to moralize or am I free to write, uplifting immoral heroes as in the school of hedonism? Hugh Heffner is a great example of the genre. I believe, in the end, every author stands for his works. If, for example, a writer believes that a pimp selling under-aged girls is doing nothing wrong, then he/her will defend this point of view. I have come across this type of writing in the novels of J.M. Coetzee, who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. In one of his books, I think it was Disgrace, I read several and can’t be sure at the moment, he writes about the rape of a lesbian woman by several black men. He handles the entire occurrence rather matter of fact. It was, after all, just a release of pent up anger against the white oppressors and, therefore, just tit for tat. That the woman’s car is stolen, her dogs, source of her business, are killed and her property usurped by the rapists—it all seems to matter little—no moral outrage there. After all, the lesbian now carries the rapist’s child—the bridge to the new future of the country. In all of this Coetzee seems to forget that Nelson Mandela had called for forgiveness, for a higher moral road than the one often trod by the Boers and other whites. And he forgot, in my opinion an important tenet, “two wrongs never make a right,” although he makes it seem to be so.
