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On Moral Fiction
A genuine classic of literary criticism, On Moral Fiction argues that ”true art is by its nature moral.”
214 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
109 people are currently reading
2155 people want to read
About the author
John Gardner
401 books462 followersJohn Champlin Gardner was a well-known and controversial American novelist and university professor, best known for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth.
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
February 27, 2008
This is a must read for anyone interested in art or interested in the creative process. Gardner calls a spade a spade in his book, drawing a clear line between what art is and what it is not. Gardner is about a million times more intelligent and articulate than I am, but what I gleaned from Gardner is essentially this: Art is motivated by love. Art is not pointing to the black abyss and describing how black and deep and dark it is (which, from what I understand, were what most of the movies nominated for best picture this year were saying). Art, as Gardner quotes Tolstoy as saying, makes people good by choice. This is an incredible book, and I'd say, keep foraging through it even if it feels dense. It is full of treasures.
February 3, 2023
One of the best books on writing and becoming an author I’ve ever read.
April 15, 2015
This book is a breath of fresh moral air in what often feels to me to be a polluted cultural atmosphere—not because I agree with everything Gardner says but because I'm relieved that he's willing to raise questions about morality and art-making in the first place.
The word "moral" is a major stumbling block. But if you put aside your assumptions about the word, Gardner has lots to teach: “What the writer understands, though the student or critic of literature need not, is that the writer discovers, works out, and tests his [sic] ideas in the process of writing. Thus at its best fiction is…a way of thinking, a philosophical method.” He goes on to call “first-class propaganda” that writing that results when writers know what they want to say before they write—when they don’t allow the “mind to be changed by the process of telling the story.” This writing is moralistic, and quite different from writing Gardner calls moral. The art of moral works is “not merely ornamental: it controls the argument and gives it its rigor, forces the writer to intense yet dispassionate and unprejudiced watchfulness, drives him—in ways abstract logic cannot match—to unexpected discoveries and, frequently, a change of mind.” Finally: “Moral fiction communicates meanings discovered by the process of the fiction’s creation.”
In other words, a significant factor in making a work of literature moral is whether or not the writer is open to surprise during its creation. “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” wrote Robert Frost. Or Gardner again: “We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for and analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach.” The artist’s honest exploration of reality through story-telling is what makes work moral—and what makes it art.
I find all three of these ideas (art should have internal integrity; art should “make people good by choice,” as Tolstoy put it; and art should be created in a spirit of inquiry) downright radical in today’s cultural environment. When was the last time you read an article in Poets & Writers or heard an AWP panel discussion on literature as “a force bringing people together, breaking down barriers of prejudice and ignorance, and holding up ideals worth pursuing”? Sure, it’s cool to teach writing as a means of breaking down barriers, but not to use the art-making itself as the means. Writers these days are supposed to be above the moral imperative.
Gardner criticizes contemporary art (which for him was the art of the sixties and seventies—although I suspect he’d find today’s art doubly worthy of this critique) for not struggling as artists have traditionally struggled “toward a vision of how things ought to be” or toward an understanding of what has gone wrong. I understand this as the prophetic voice. “There can be no truly moral art that isn’t social, at least by implication; and on the other hand, there can be no moral social art without honesty in the individual—the artist—as a premise for just and reasonable discussion.” True art is morally and socially engaged.
And loving: “Great art celebrates life’s potential, offering a vision unmistakably and unsentimentally rooted in love. … It is for the pleasure of exercising our capacity to love that we pick up a book at all.” Writers must care about their characters; they must care about the reader. The morality Gardner is talking about is a morality of love, and inquiry, and vision. “True art…clarifies life, establishes models of human action, casts nets toward the future, carefully judges our right and wrong directions, celebrates and mourns. It does not rant. It does not sneer or giggle in the face of death, it invents prayers and weapons. It designs visions worth trying to make fact. It does not whimper or cower or throw up its hands and bat its lashes. It does not make hope contingent on acceptance of some religious theory. It strikes like lightning, or is lightning; whichever.”
Wow! I am hugely grateful to Gardner for fearlessly taking a stand with this book.
The word "moral" is a major stumbling block. But if you put aside your assumptions about the word, Gardner has lots to teach: “What the writer understands, though the student or critic of literature need not, is that the writer discovers, works out, and tests his [sic] ideas in the process of writing. Thus at its best fiction is…a way of thinking, a philosophical method.” He goes on to call “first-class propaganda” that writing that results when writers know what they want to say before they write—when they don’t allow the “mind to be changed by the process of telling the story.” This writing is moralistic, and quite different from writing Gardner calls moral. The art of moral works is “not merely ornamental: it controls the argument and gives it its rigor, forces the writer to intense yet dispassionate and unprejudiced watchfulness, drives him—in ways abstract logic cannot match—to unexpected discoveries and, frequently, a change of mind.” Finally: “Moral fiction communicates meanings discovered by the process of the fiction’s creation.”
In other words, a significant factor in making a work of literature moral is whether or not the writer is open to surprise during its creation. “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” wrote Robert Frost. Or Gardner again: “We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for and analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach.” The artist’s honest exploration of reality through story-telling is what makes work moral—and what makes it art.
I find all three of these ideas (art should have internal integrity; art should “make people good by choice,” as Tolstoy put it; and art should be created in a spirit of inquiry) downright radical in today’s cultural environment. When was the last time you read an article in Poets & Writers or heard an AWP panel discussion on literature as “a force bringing people together, breaking down barriers of prejudice and ignorance, and holding up ideals worth pursuing”? Sure, it’s cool to teach writing as a means of breaking down barriers, but not to use the art-making itself as the means. Writers these days are supposed to be above the moral imperative.
Gardner criticizes contemporary art (which for him was the art of the sixties and seventies—although I suspect he’d find today’s art doubly worthy of this critique) for not struggling as artists have traditionally struggled “toward a vision of how things ought to be” or toward an understanding of what has gone wrong. I understand this as the prophetic voice. “There can be no truly moral art that isn’t social, at least by implication; and on the other hand, there can be no moral social art without honesty in the individual—the artist—as a premise for just and reasonable discussion.” True art is morally and socially engaged.
And loving: “Great art celebrates life’s potential, offering a vision unmistakably and unsentimentally rooted in love. … It is for the pleasure of exercising our capacity to love that we pick up a book at all.” Writers must care about their characters; they must care about the reader. The morality Gardner is talking about is a morality of love, and inquiry, and vision. “True art…clarifies life, establishes models of human action, casts nets toward the future, carefully judges our right and wrong directions, celebrates and mourns. It does not rant. It does not sneer or giggle in the face of death, it invents prayers and weapons. It designs visions worth trying to make fact. It does not whimper or cower or throw up its hands and bat its lashes. It does not make hope contingent on acceptance of some religious theory. It strikes like lightning, or is lightning; whichever.”
Wow! I am hugely grateful to Gardner for fearlessly taking a stand with this book.
goldfinch-in-juice
December 12, 2015On June 10, 1976 Jonathan Franzen wrote the following about the then newly published novel by William Gaddis, J R:
So one must ask why John Gardner, whom I had confused with Jonathan Franzen in my opening line, who has written a book entitled On Moral Fiction, could write such an IMMORAL review. And one also asks how such a one, having written such a book with such a title, would totally fail to have recognized a MORAL FICTION when he is paid to read and review one. These two CLOWNS, because I WILL NOT advocate the BURIAL of a book, shall be righteously left on the side of our Literary Landscape, perhaps choking on their own incompetence, for the CRIME of attempting and wishing the BURIAL of one of the greatest NOVELISTS our twentieth century has known.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
We may expect that such a long and long-awaited book as JR will fall into one of two categories; either some work intellectually and emotionally gargantuan, like Don Quixote, War and Peace, Remembrance of Things Past, or The Magic Mountain, or else some huge and magnificent, generous, ingenious, and memorable entertainment, like Our Mutual Friend or Old Wives’ Tale. If one judged by the reviews that have appeared so far, one would imagine JR to be the former kind of work: obscure and full of boomings, perhaps even a true work of genius, which normally means pretentiously exclusive, turgidly self-indulgent, and awesomely unreadable, like Finnegans Wake. According to George Steiner in The New Yorker (and there are signs that Gaddis would like to think it’s true) JR is indeed that fashionable monster “the unreadable book.” Steiner scornfully quotes some passages, and to any one who hasn’t read JR, they’re persuasive. But if one has read the novel, one can only hop on one foot, spluttering in confusion and rage (like young JR), yelling “Crazy! holy shit!”—because Steiner’s right in a way. JR is, finally, bad art, but despite what Steiner thinks, it’s wonderfully and easily readable.[thus breaks off the review before the MIGHT of the NYRB's paywall. I would be interested in seeing the rest of this calamity]
Except for the last two hundred pages or so, where the novel takes a turn toward rant—filling the reader with an indignation he would never feel at a writer’s betrayal of some lesser fiction—JR is a delightful, large and various, technically brilliant entertainment. But it is also false, in the end, because the novel’s self-righteous, emotionally uncontrolled last movement poisons what went before it, casting suspicion on what seemed at first basically generous and fairminded, genially satiric or justly sardonic.
So one must ask why John Gardner, whom I had confused with Jonathan Franzen in my opening line, who has written a book entitled On Moral Fiction, could write such an IMMORAL review. And one also asks how such a one, having written such a book with such a title, would totally fail to have recognized a MORAL FICTION when he is paid to read and review one. These two CLOWNS, because I WILL NOT advocate the BURIAL of a book, shall be righteously left on the side of our Literary Landscape, perhaps choking on their own incompetence, for the CRIME of attempting and wishing the BURIAL of one of the greatest NOVELISTS our twentieth century has known.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
December 31, 2018
John Gardner’s controversial book takes no prisoners in the literary firmament. He has a barb or a laurel for everyone from Aristotle to Vonnegut; rather sassy for a relatively less acclaimed author known more for his academic experience than his literary genius. I was expecting the logical approach of the academic who takes one subject at a time, lays out its pros and cons and then sums up before moving onto the next topic. Instead, I found his approach to this book like a dog attacking a piece of fleshy meat: ravenously tossing it this way and that in no coherent order, unearthing morsels of value in the struggle and then leaving it a shapeless mass in the end.
I tried to come up with some distinct topics within his rambling treatment of this book, and thought I would lay them out in an order that made sense to me:
Art: Gardner claims that art builds, instructs, never stands pat, tells the truth, and destroys only evil. He quotes Tolstoy: “art expresses the highest feelings of man.” He claims why so much art in the world is bad today is because the artist is not well-educated, wise or careful, cannot find beauty in the world, and is thus expressing his disappointment, pain and anger. Trivial artists reflect society’s trivialities. The intermediate artist reflects his time but hints to something greater. The great artist breaks through his reality, makes a new one, a better one, and makes it stick. Gardner gives the great artist permission to drink and womanize in reaction to bad artists. Sanctimonious?
Morality: True art is moral. Morality is doing what is unselfish, helpful, kind and noble hearted, and doing it with an expectation that we won’t be sorry for what we have done. He then goes onto separate moral writers from those who have failed his test. Tolstoy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Henry James and Malamud make his cut while Mailer, Doctorow, Coover, de Maupassant, Barthelme, Updike, Vonnegut (trash culture elevated to art, per Gardner), Heller and Bellow don’t. He explains the debilitating guilt that the failed ones suffer from is caused by (a) the determinism of Freud, (b) the pessimism of Sartre, and (c) the logical and linguistic cautiousness of Wittgenstein. Love is the missing ingredient here; the moral writer needs to share affirmations of love with his reader through his characters.
Modernism vs. Post-Modernism: Being a writer and academic during the period when these two forms intersected and overlapped, Gardner sides with modernism over post-modernism. He claims that the post-modernists seem to favour language over plot, texture over structure. He levels the same charge against other art forms, i.e. drama and music of the period. I found this a bit hypocritical given Gardner’s rambling arguments delivered through complex sentences, digressions and sub clauses that go on forever. He too seems to be in the trap of the post-modernists, indulging in their Linguistic Sculpturing, as he calls it.
Fiction: This subject permeates the entire book and gets his most attention. He considers “serious fiction,” i.e. that which the writer starts off knowing what he wants to say and will not be changed in the writing of it, to be propaganda. He prefers the artist to work out of his imagination and have the work change, and change the writer upon completion, allowing him to alter course as he receives new epiphanies. Literary art is not mere language, but language plus the writer’s experience and imagination and the whole literary tradition he knows.
The Critic: “The words of a confident critic can lock up museums, keeps books from publications, and enhance the sale of things unworthy.” He claims that criticism is easier to read as it doesn’t engage as many faculties of the mind. And yet it is incumbent upon a critic to highlight the noble aspects of a work as well as to point out what has gone wrong in that work—(I hope I am doing that here!) Most critics would agree, at least privately, that an “important work of art” needs to be (a) aesthetically interesting, (b) technically accomplished, and (c) intellectually massive.
The Artist: He is kind and makes allowance for the creative artist, claiming that creativity has to do with an obsession, a wound. It is the pain of the wound that spurs the artist to do his work, and it is the universality of the woundedness in the human condition that makes the work significant. Displacement and the moving of homes, be it across countries or across the city, is common among artists and a pre-condition for success. Displacement leads to “a healthy doubleness of vision, to disorientation and emotional insecurity, the anxiety and ambivalence of the neurotic.” This argument than leads onto a discussion on “the artist and madness,” and Gardner quotes psychotherapist Jay Haley who says, “the artist is too complicated to choose a convenient madness.” The true separation between art and madness seems to be that the artist can wake up and psychotic cannot.
Overall, this is a difficult book to get through. Gardner seems comfortable in his world of moral art with nary a thought for his reader who has to drag himself along for the ride, navigating a maze of convoluted ideas and arguments, arriving exhausted and somewhat enlightened at the end.
I tried to come up with some distinct topics within his rambling treatment of this book, and thought I would lay them out in an order that made sense to me:
Art: Gardner claims that art builds, instructs, never stands pat, tells the truth, and destroys only evil. He quotes Tolstoy: “art expresses the highest feelings of man.” He claims why so much art in the world is bad today is because the artist is not well-educated, wise or careful, cannot find beauty in the world, and is thus expressing his disappointment, pain and anger. Trivial artists reflect society’s trivialities. The intermediate artist reflects his time but hints to something greater. The great artist breaks through his reality, makes a new one, a better one, and makes it stick. Gardner gives the great artist permission to drink and womanize in reaction to bad artists. Sanctimonious?
Morality: True art is moral. Morality is doing what is unselfish, helpful, kind and noble hearted, and doing it with an expectation that we won’t be sorry for what we have done. He then goes onto separate moral writers from those who have failed his test. Tolstoy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Henry James and Malamud make his cut while Mailer, Doctorow, Coover, de Maupassant, Barthelme, Updike, Vonnegut (trash culture elevated to art, per Gardner), Heller and Bellow don’t. He explains the debilitating guilt that the failed ones suffer from is caused by (a) the determinism of Freud, (b) the pessimism of Sartre, and (c) the logical and linguistic cautiousness of Wittgenstein. Love is the missing ingredient here; the moral writer needs to share affirmations of love with his reader through his characters.
Modernism vs. Post-Modernism: Being a writer and academic during the period when these two forms intersected and overlapped, Gardner sides with modernism over post-modernism. He claims that the post-modernists seem to favour language over plot, texture over structure. He levels the same charge against other art forms, i.e. drama and music of the period. I found this a bit hypocritical given Gardner’s rambling arguments delivered through complex sentences, digressions and sub clauses that go on forever. He too seems to be in the trap of the post-modernists, indulging in their Linguistic Sculpturing, as he calls it.
Fiction: This subject permeates the entire book and gets his most attention. He considers “serious fiction,” i.e. that which the writer starts off knowing what he wants to say and will not be changed in the writing of it, to be propaganda. He prefers the artist to work out of his imagination and have the work change, and change the writer upon completion, allowing him to alter course as he receives new epiphanies. Literary art is not mere language, but language plus the writer’s experience and imagination and the whole literary tradition he knows.
The Critic: “The words of a confident critic can lock up museums, keeps books from publications, and enhance the sale of things unworthy.” He claims that criticism is easier to read as it doesn’t engage as many faculties of the mind. And yet it is incumbent upon a critic to highlight the noble aspects of a work as well as to point out what has gone wrong in that work—(I hope I am doing that here!) Most critics would agree, at least privately, that an “important work of art” needs to be (a) aesthetically interesting, (b) technically accomplished, and (c) intellectually massive.
The Artist: He is kind and makes allowance for the creative artist, claiming that creativity has to do with an obsession, a wound. It is the pain of the wound that spurs the artist to do his work, and it is the universality of the woundedness in the human condition that makes the work significant. Displacement and the moving of homes, be it across countries or across the city, is common among artists and a pre-condition for success. Displacement leads to “a healthy doubleness of vision, to disorientation and emotional insecurity, the anxiety and ambivalence of the neurotic.” This argument than leads onto a discussion on “the artist and madness,” and Gardner quotes psychotherapist Jay Haley who says, “the artist is too complicated to choose a convenient madness.” The true separation between art and madness seems to be that the artist can wake up and psychotic cannot.
Overall, this is a difficult book to get through. Gardner seems comfortable in his world of moral art with nary a thought for his reader who has to drag himself along for the ride, navigating a maze of convoluted ideas and arguments, arriving exhausted and somewhat enlightened at the end.
February 18, 2013
The first half of this book was an eye-opening perspective for an English major ensconced in literary theory for the majority of her college education. But the second half was downright pernicious--willing to put up with the supposed madness of artists who have so much moral rectitude that they can scorn the way other people live. And it descended into mediocre philosophy while it was at it, departing for the most part from the realm of concrete literature.
And I worry about how he interprets literature in the first place. He made much reference to the Iliad, but I feel like he got it all wrong. He saluted Achilles, disparaged Priam, said that the Greek military ethos should be something we still hold to today. Excuse me? That is perhaps the weakest reading of the poem that I've encountered, and he would have it be prescriptive in life today. Though this book had a consistent goodness to the first half, it was moments like this that made me worry about it.
And I worry about how he interprets literature in the first place. He made much reference to the Iliad, but I feel like he got it all wrong. He saluted Achilles, disparaged Priam, said that the Greek military ethos should be something we still hold to today. Excuse me? That is perhaps the weakest reading of the poem that I've encountered, and he would have it be prescriptive in life today. Though this book had a consistent goodness to the first half, it was moments like this that made me worry about it.
Want to read
May 23, 2024Just glanced at the opening. A strange over-voluble voice here, which may mitigate as we go. We'll see. Most notable were a few clunky metaphors, which I can't imagine ever seeing in Gardner's fiction. Reads like lecture transcripts. But as I say, this is just my first glance.
April 16, 2014
Absolutely ridiculous, reactionary faff, from an arrogant small-time jackass.
December 6, 2017
A bracing polemic, even if Gardner gets into some arcane territory in the second half.
His essential arguments are that 1) art must by its nature be moral, that is, oriented toward or built upon truth, though not necessarily didactic, with instilling or affirming life and goodness as its purpose; and 2) by this criterion most “art” in the twentieth century deserves those scarequotes. Gardner’s thesis is more complex and nuanced than this, and he’d probably quibble with every word of this summary, but it should suffice to convey his purpose.
No small part of the book’s appeal is Gardner’s willingness to name names, and some of the purported greats of mid-twentieth century literature come in for criticism. Gardner predicts that the hollowness, nihilism, and/or plumb meanness of some of his critically well-regarded contemporaries will lead to the virtual disappearance of their work within a generation or two, and with one or two notable exceptions (e.g. John Updike, enjoyable as Gardner’s criticisms were) his predictions are mostly accurate. Anybody picked up any William Gass or Robert Coover lately?
The first half of the book is the meat of Gardner’s argument. The second half gets abstract, esoteric, even mystical, and is harder to follow. Some of Gardner’s chosen exempla (e.g. autohypnosis and the debunked link between XYY chromosomes and criminality) also date his arguments here, and the book feels very 70s as a result. But the first half is vintage Gardner, strikingly similar in tone to his On Becoming a Novelist, and well worth the read.
I have to agree with Gardner’s theses, especially after reading through his detailed arguments and in light of the 40 years that have elapsed since. Art must have purpose, that purpose must be goodness, and if we lose both, we are in danger of losing our civilization at a minimum. Gardner does not shrink from implying that we are in even greater danger of losing our souls.
Recommended.
His essential arguments are that 1) art must by its nature be moral, that is, oriented toward or built upon truth, though not necessarily didactic, with instilling or affirming life and goodness as its purpose; and 2) by this criterion most “art” in the twentieth century deserves those scarequotes. Gardner’s thesis is more complex and nuanced than this, and he’d probably quibble with every word of this summary, but it should suffice to convey his purpose.
No small part of the book’s appeal is Gardner’s willingness to name names, and some of the purported greats of mid-twentieth century literature come in for criticism. Gardner predicts that the hollowness, nihilism, and/or plumb meanness of some of his critically well-regarded contemporaries will lead to the virtual disappearance of their work within a generation or two, and with one or two notable exceptions (e.g. John Updike, enjoyable as Gardner’s criticisms were) his predictions are mostly accurate. Anybody picked up any William Gass or Robert Coover lately?
The first half of the book is the meat of Gardner’s argument. The second half gets abstract, esoteric, even mystical, and is harder to follow. Some of Gardner’s chosen exempla (e.g. autohypnosis and the debunked link between XYY chromosomes and criminality) also date his arguments here, and the book feels very 70s as a result. But the first half is vintage Gardner, strikingly similar in tone to his On Becoming a Novelist, and well worth the read.
I have to agree with Gardner’s theses, especially after reading through his detailed arguments and in light of the 40 years that have elapsed since. Art must have purpose, that purpose must be goodness, and if we lose both, we are in danger of losing our civilization at a minimum. Gardner does not shrink from implying that we are in even greater danger of losing our souls.
Recommended.
June 25, 2016
Reading this collection of essays on moral fiction was like reading The Gospels on the Kingdom of God: the unearthing of the true earth as its true reality is concealed by false realities trying in vein to pose as true reality.
Gardner is fair, funny, and incredibly down-to-earth. Of course, he is brilliant - which helps in his observations, which no one would dare call "ordinary - but his brilliance is used in the service of the reader.
What he finds "immoral" about a work of art is not based on objectionable subject matter in polite society, but the very attempt of the artist to honor only one "ism" at the expense of reality, which he claims literature is uniquely equipped to overcome.
I not only recommend this book to people who love to read; I recommend it to truth-seekers; modern, post-modern, and behinds
Gardner is fair, funny, and incredibly down-to-earth. Of course, he is brilliant - which helps in his observations, which no one would dare call "ordinary - but his brilliance is used in the service of the reader.
What he finds "immoral" about a work of art is not based on objectionable subject matter in polite society, but the very attempt of the artist to honor only one "ism" at the expense of reality, which he claims literature is uniquely equipped to overcome.
I not only recommend this book to people who love to read; I recommend it to truth-seekers; modern, post-modern, and behinds
November 20, 2021
This is a great book with an essential premise for our time, and the time since it was written. That I agree with his premise makes it easier to wade through the sometimes dense voice. The author is a novelist and critic, and one of his strengths is his willingness to be aggressively and brutally blunt. He writes with a chip on his shoulder and a fight on his mind. At times this becomes a bit tiresome. Still, this is well worth reading.
August 15, 2012
On Moral Fiction: Review
“True art is moral. We recognize true art by its’ careful, thoroughly honest search for an analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach. It clarifies like an experiment in a chemistry lab, and confirms.” - John Gardner
I have of late been on a kick of reading whatever I can about writing, expanding… ah, better, reviewing my sparse understanding of art and craft, the business of it. Seeking ten best lists to guide me in the right direction, avoiding pitfalls of the trite and repetitive, looking for the seminal work, the singularity. Those lists more often than not holding up On Moral Fiction as a must read. With little previous knowledge of Gardner, having only read Grendel in high school, I gleaned what I could from general sources, Okay. The title was at once revolting and enticing, expectations of a preachy diatribe, subjective, anachronistic values; then again taken in morbid curiosity as to what that proposed morality might represent, at least in its’ entertainment value. It was not what I expected.
Gardner’s definition of "moral" was not constrained in context of religious or cultural "morality," but rather that fiction should aspire to discover, and inspire, those human values that are universally sustaining. Values he believed innate in the human animal, values necessary for our advancement.
His statements, his very beliefs (and he always said what he believed) were disturbing to many of his people, readers, friends and followers alike, agreed or disagreed, often displayed to their exasperation… Poor brilliant Gardner! What will he say next? Yet, he’s described as warm and generous with his time, willingly engaged in debate. Against the grain of the old adage - It’s not what you say that counts; it’s how you say it. To Gardner it was indeed what you say that counted, and it better be honest. The ‘what’ was the construct, and vice versa. He longed for “a return to the discussion of rational morality that his (Sartre’s) outburst interrupted.”
I typically skip introductions, forewords and prologues. I’m glad I didn’t. Lore Segal’s introduction is a far cry from the typical patronage, trivial and uninteresting anecdotes, mushy accolades raising the author to deity sprung full grown from the head of Zeus. Instead, taking the occasion to point out positions faithfully held by Gardner proven flawed by more than thirty years of inconvenient history. Specifically his attitudes toward modern art and music, and predictions of their ultimate demise, a natural selection of sorts, victims of their own hollowness and disingenuousness, their celebration of the trivial and nihilistic, “the freak”, victims of their own immorality.
Her personal relationship with Gardner gives her a special insight into his beliefs about what constituted moral art, and as importantly what didn’t, to which he would rail, captured in his words - “Honest feeling has been replaced by needless screaming, pompous foolishness, self-centered repetitiousness, and misuse of vocabulary!” Does that sound mad, or is it just me? (I added the exclamation mark, it deserves it.)
I will not be so presumptuous to put in a few words what Gardner expounds on. But I will say Gardner believed it was an artist’s, and critic’s, responsibility, even obligation to society and its’ betterment that they zealously pursue morality in the process and the product. “Good art is always in competition with bad art.” – J.G. Moral art exerts influence on society, proposing, holding up models of behavior. The artist has intuition in place of scientific hypothesis, but it has to be as carefully examined within integral laws and tradition, “the morality of art… is far less a matter of doctrine than of process.” –J.G.
Gardner’s writing voice solicits sympathy, irresistible, at the same time despairing and hopeful, enraged and joyous, controversial and reaffirming, and always immediate. Mind you, it is not to say I could swim in the depths of his philosophy, missing much nuance, but his ideas, skillfully argued, guided and textured, will take you as far you can or want to go, whether limited by capacity or disagreement. There is something for everyone, artist, critic and enthusiast.
If Gardner were alive today he would very surely dismay with society’s trend toward the devaluation, even demonization of critical thinking. The state of personal communications, bits (a descriptive he would have certainly got a kick out of) of data exchanged poorly formatted, the rise of a didactic morality happier in provocative sound bites and expedient answers: Instead of one welcoming of a thoughtful, and civil, discourse aspiring to genuine solutions, to truth itself. John Gardner we miss you, and your brutal honesty.
“True art is moral. We recognize true art by its’ careful, thoroughly honest search for an analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach. It clarifies like an experiment in a chemistry lab, and confirms.” - John Gardner
I have of late been on a kick of reading whatever I can about writing, expanding… ah, better, reviewing my sparse understanding of art and craft, the business of it. Seeking ten best lists to guide me in the right direction, avoiding pitfalls of the trite and repetitive, looking for the seminal work, the singularity. Those lists more often than not holding up On Moral Fiction as a must read. With little previous knowledge of Gardner, having only read Grendel in high school, I gleaned what I could from general sources, Okay. The title was at once revolting and enticing, expectations of a preachy diatribe, subjective, anachronistic values; then again taken in morbid curiosity as to what that proposed morality might represent, at least in its’ entertainment value. It was not what I expected.
Gardner’s definition of "moral" was not constrained in context of religious or cultural "morality," but rather that fiction should aspire to discover, and inspire, those human values that are universally sustaining. Values he believed innate in the human animal, values necessary for our advancement.
His statements, his very beliefs (and he always said what he believed) were disturbing to many of his people, readers, friends and followers alike, agreed or disagreed, often displayed to their exasperation… Poor brilliant Gardner! What will he say next? Yet, he’s described as warm and generous with his time, willingly engaged in debate. Against the grain of the old adage - It’s not what you say that counts; it’s how you say it. To Gardner it was indeed what you say that counted, and it better be honest. The ‘what’ was the construct, and vice versa. He longed for “a return to the discussion of rational morality that his (Sartre’s) outburst interrupted.”
I typically skip introductions, forewords and prologues. I’m glad I didn’t. Lore Segal’s introduction is a far cry from the typical patronage, trivial and uninteresting anecdotes, mushy accolades raising the author to deity sprung full grown from the head of Zeus. Instead, taking the occasion to point out positions faithfully held by Gardner proven flawed by more than thirty years of inconvenient history. Specifically his attitudes toward modern art and music, and predictions of their ultimate demise, a natural selection of sorts, victims of their own hollowness and disingenuousness, their celebration of the trivial and nihilistic, “the freak”, victims of their own immorality.
Her personal relationship with Gardner gives her a special insight into his beliefs about what constituted moral art, and as importantly what didn’t, to which he would rail, captured in his words - “Honest feeling has been replaced by needless screaming, pompous foolishness, self-centered repetitiousness, and misuse of vocabulary!” Does that sound mad, or is it just me? (I added the exclamation mark, it deserves it.)
I will not be so presumptuous to put in a few words what Gardner expounds on. But I will say Gardner believed it was an artist’s, and critic’s, responsibility, even obligation to society and its’ betterment that they zealously pursue morality in the process and the product. “Good art is always in competition with bad art.” – J.G. Moral art exerts influence on society, proposing, holding up models of behavior. The artist has intuition in place of scientific hypothesis, but it has to be as carefully examined within integral laws and tradition, “the morality of art… is far less a matter of doctrine than of process.” –J.G.
Gardner’s writing voice solicits sympathy, irresistible, at the same time despairing and hopeful, enraged and joyous, controversial and reaffirming, and always immediate. Mind you, it is not to say I could swim in the depths of his philosophy, missing much nuance, but his ideas, skillfully argued, guided and textured, will take you as far you can or want to go, whether limited by capacity or disagreement. There is something for everyone, artist, critic and enthusiast.
If Gardner were alive today he would very surely dismay with society’s trend toward the devaluation, even demonization of critical thinking. The state of personal communications, bits (a descriptive he would have certainly got a kick out of) of data exchanged poorly formatted, the rise of a didactic morality happier in provocative sound bites and expedient answers: Instead of one welcoming of a thoughtful, and civil, discourse aspiring to genuine solutions, to truth itself. John Gardner we miss you, and your brutal honesty.
February 15, 2023
This started off very well, with Gardner absolutely roasting modern art and setting down rock-solid principles for literary integrity. He is clearly a very enthusiastic and skillful critic, and his writing is generally very enjoyable to read. But ultimately, he still presents what I think is a flawed view of aesthetics—one which really comes out in the surprisingly rambling and tangential second half, which doesn't really belong in this book. He essentially adopts a Romantic approach to literary theory, which is fine. But even though he despises nihilism and experimentation for its own sake, he still tries valiantly but unsuccessfully to construct a critique of modernity and an affirmation of the Transcendentals from purely secular premises. Sometimes he really hits the nail on the head with this, but other times he just ends up mostly reiterating common talking points about the humanistic exultation of art as a way of life and how "dogma" gets in the way of creating true art. I did, however, appreciate his distinction of moral fiction from didacticism, and his excoriation of nihilism as a type of very flawed religion. Even while sticking largely within the realm of classical theory about the purpose of literature, Gardner still sees art as a religion unto itself—not that he isn't still mostly respectful toward religion in general, but I find most secular criticism like this unsatisfactory because most of it ends up more or less crafting an idolatry out of imagination. Add that to the often condescending tone throughout (even if I agree with what he's saying, the way he says it annoys me) and the blanket dismissals of great writers without real rationale; and you have a book that is worth having on the shelf to pull some juicy morsels from, but which left me feeling far less fulfilled than I expected to be.
September 5, 2009
First, I like it because it offers immense insight into some decent writing (Gardner's fiction). I mean decent.
However, the guy is an asshole. He pans better authors (Gass, Elkin--ELKIN! He dastn't). He is so small and such a shallow reader (I am no great reader of difficult books, but I understand Elkin's work, and see clearly that he has a stringent ethical/moral paradigm) that he must label these other authors--whose only offense is to play with language, to attempt to find exciting new modes of expression well within the bounds of a lay reader's comprehension and pleasure--amoral.
Pathetic.
Don't read this if being pissed-off at an author ruins your pleasure in their good work.
However, the guy is an asshole. He pans better authors (Gass, Elkin--ELKIN! He dastn't). He is so small and such a shallow reader (I am no great reader of difficult books, but I understand Elkin's work, and see clearly that he has a stringent ethical/moral paradigm) that he must label these other authors--whose only offense is to play with language, to attempt to find exciting new modes of expression well within the bounds of a lay reader's comprehension and pleasure--amoral.
Pathetic.
Don't read this if being pissed-off at an author ruins your pleasure in their good work.
February 23, 2015
Gardner challenges readers to think deeply about truth, beauty, and goodness in their relative and absolute forms. The nature of literary criticism is to hold a work up to a standard and consider whether it hits the mark. To read critically, one must know what the standards are, a challenge in our pluralistic world. Gardner deals with that issue also, and in a satisfying way.
Gardner writes with punch. Consider this statement: "...telling familiar lies does not make them true. Art is our way of keeping track of what we know and have known, secretly, from the beginning."
In today's world, where we consume fiction more often than we savor its truth, this book can help readers become more discerning and writers make more carefully considered decisions about how and what they write.
Gardner writes with punch. Consider this statement: "...telling familiar lies does not make them true. Art is our way of keeping track of what we know and have known, secretly, from the beginning."
In today's world, where we consume fiction more often than we savor its truth, this book can help readers become more discerning and writers make more carefully considered decisions about how and what they write.
November 23, 2012
If you think writing can and should make people better, read this book. I found that it gave words to a vague feeling I'd had about what writing can do. Gardner isn't talking about moral fiction like you'd see in a morality play from the 15th century, his interests are much more applicable to the current state of fiction than the title might suggest.
December 9, 2013
A strong book curiously diluted by too much attention paid to authors of his time. The point is excellent, but could have been told with more force in a magazine article. The asides on authors on how they succeed or mostly fail at such loses power the less familiar you are with the literary fiction a 1970's author would count as the canon of his time. Important, but in spite of itself.
May 12, 2014
This book should have been entitled, "Thor's Hammer: The Quest for Literary Perfection." The word "moral" carries too much baggage to convey what Gardner meant for it to mean in regards to Art. Similarly, Ayn Rand's use of the words "selfish" and "ego" didn't mean the same thing to her that they did to her detractors. Nevertheless, if you can wade through Gardner's dense, over-wrought arguments, there are many pearls hidden in this ugly oyster. Gardner laments the Postmodernist trend in literary fiction that today's good book is a bad read. He challenges the fools (who fail to understand) and the boors (who pretend to understand) to shun decadent fiction that is linguistically opaque (texture over structure) in favor of life affirming clarifying fiction that discovers and passes on the values of a free society. Gardner contends that the true artist must be a master at observing and scrutinizing real people in order to write permanent/timeless fiction, and should not limit themselves to a historical perspective (holding up a mirror to their age) or getting involved in social justice (the cause du jour). Gardner maintains that we read in order to attain sublime communion with the writer or to fall in love with the characters with plot existing only to give the characters a way of revealing themselves and setting existing only to give the characters somewhere to stand. Gardner shoots down several prominent writers like Gass, Pinchon, Vonnegut, Bellow and Barth. I liked Gardner's description of good writing as giving the reader "the queer experience of falling through the print on the page into something like a dream…" I was intrigued by the metaphorical 20 Questions Game called "Smoke" played by the Iowa Writer's Workshop crowd. Gardner argued that "the medium of literary art is not language but language plus the writer's experience and imagination and, above all, the whole of the literary tradition he knows." Gardner warned against focusing too much on cynicism and despair, sex and violence, or staring too long into the "black abyss." A good book, according to Gardner, "is one that, for its time, is one that is wise, sane and magical, one that clarifies life and tends to improve it." Art is made up of Truth (intellectual pursuits of the mind), Goodness (ethical, moral pursuits of society) and Beauty (aesthetic pursuits of the soul). Ezra Pound defined beauty as a particular feeling of release, of "freedom from the limits of Time and Space." Gardner defines Art as "civilization's single most significant device for learning what must be affirmed and what must be denied." In essence, "Art affirms value." Art is Thor's Hammer which keeps the trolls away and remains civilization's chief defense. Powerful stuff!
July 5, 2013
On Moral Fiction was first published in 1976, and is author and critic John Gardner’s view on the necessity for morality in fiction, arguing that fiction displays the beliefs of the author. I don't agree with his view on religion, but I suspect his view is tainted by the accident that killed his younger brother, that he apparently felt responsible for.
His opinion of many of the foremost 'literary' authors of his day (the 1970’s) is nothing short of scathing, and I can't help wondering what he would say about the fictional giants of our century, authors like EL James, James Patterson, Stephenie Meyer and George RR Martin.
He is also critical of the ‘professional reviewer’, who follows the nineteenth century model “which avoided talking about the work by talking, instead, about the man who created it”. I suspect he would both applaud and decry Amazon in the same breath: applaud for the ability of the Amazon review to reflect the opinion of the reader rather than some ivory tower critic, but decry because of the lack of insight of some of those opinions (I doubt Gardner would be a fan of the OMG Best Book EVA!!! review, even on his own titles).
He says:
“Writers do communicate ideas. What the writer understands, though the student or critic of literature need not, is that the writer discovers, works out, and tests his ideas in the process of writing.”
This is why rewriting and editing is vital—any worthwhile writing will change both the reader and the writer. If the writer is changed by the writing, the purpose of revising is to clarify and bring out this new understanding, to ensure consistency of thought and theme throughout. Self-published authors: take note.
While I don't agree with everything Gardner says, I do have to acknowledge that his arguments are intelligent, well researched, well written and coherently argued. It’s not an easy read but it is well worth reading, both to understand his point of view and, perhaps, to understand why we read fiction.
Thanks to Open Road Media and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. I actually reviewed the 2013 edition of this, but can't find it on Amazon or Goodreads. If you can post a link to the correct edition, I'll move my review.
His opinion of many of the foremost 'literary' authors of his day (the 1970’s) is nothing short of scathing, and I can't help wondering what he would say about the fictional giants of our century, authors like EL James, James Patterson, Stephenie Meyer and George RR Martin.
He is also critical of the ‘professional reviewer’, who follows the nineteenth century model “which avoided talking about the work by talking, instead, about the man who created it”. I suspect he would both applaud and decry Amazon in the same breath: applaud for the ability of the Amazon review to reflect the opinion of the reader rather than some ivory tower critic, but decry because of the lack of insight of some of those opinions (I doubt Gardner would be a fan of the OMG Best Book EVA!!! review, even on his own titles).
He says:
“Writers do communicate ideas. What the writer understands, though the student or critic of literature need not, is that the writer discovers, works out, and tests his ideas in the process of writing.”
This is why rewriting and editing is vital—any worthwhile writing will change both the reader and the writer. If the writer is changed by the writing, the purpose of revising is to clarify and bring out this new understanding, to ensure consistency of thought and theme throughout. Self-published authors: take note.
While I don't agree with everything Gardner says, I do have to acknowledge that his arguments are intelligent, well researched, well written and coherently argued. It’s not an easy read but it is well worth reading, both to understand his point of view and, perhaps, to understand why we read fiction.
Thanks to Open Road Media and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. I actually reviewed the 2013 edition of this, but can't find it on Amazon or Goodreads. If you can post a link to the correct edition, I'll move my review.
September 7, 2010
This book was featured on a list of books to inspire writers in Paste magazine. It is basically a critique of how literature should be judged based on the writer's exploration of morality. Gardner argues through most of this book that both Art and Art criticism are filled with jargon and removed from discussing anything on an intellectual or emotional level. He credits his examples of what art should be by drawing from the likes of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and Dante. He thinks their work represents universal truth, such as "The traditional view of art is moral. It seeks to improve life, not debase it (5)."
Already my main reaction against this is all of Gardner's heroes are too traditional. Not one woman! Not one person who isn't white. I do agree that art should feel more constructive than destructive though.
Gardner does make some interesting points. He makes a wonderful case for criticism, [The critic] knows art loses in the translation but also gains: people who couldn't respond to the work can now go back to it with some idea of what to look for, and even if all they see is what the critic has told them to see, at least they've seen something (8)."
However, Gardner rants for the majority of the book. He makes his best points early on and then repeats himself. He also comes across as a snob. His sense of morality seems flowery. He thinks social issues are sort of trite to focus on because once they are "solved" what else is there. As if these issues are easy to fix and don't point to making us all better people.
Already my main reaction against this is all of Gardner's heroes are too traditional. Not one woman! Not one person who isn't white. I do agree that art should feel more constructive than destructive though.
Gardner does make some interesting points. He makes a wonderful case for criticism, [The critic] knows art loses in the translation but also gains: people who couldn't respond to the work can now go back to it with some idea of what to look for, and even if all they see is what the critic has told them to see, at least they've seen something (8)."
However, Gardner rants for the majority of the book. He makes his best points early on and then repeats himself. He also comes across as a snob. His sense of morality seems flowery. He thinks social issues are sort of trite to focus on because once they are "solved" what else is there. As if these issues are easy to fix and don't point to making us all better people.
December 29, 2012
I give this book cinco estrellas because it is one of the most thought provoking reads that I have come across. Sometimes you have to sift through some relatively extreme views on certain authors or artists, but this book makes clear that Gardner has not arrived at these positions arbitrarily. He has developed a strong personal criteria for those elements that he believes essential to art, and to the process of creating it. Whether or not you agree with those elements is almost immaterial. He puts them across so articulately, so colorfully, that you are forced to wrestle with them and come out the other end with your own belief system regarding what makes art art, or more specifically, what makes fiction art.
In addition to the substance of the book, it is without question one of the most quotable works of modern times that I've read. There are some gems in there, e.g. "In corpses, entropy has won; the brain and the toenails have equal say," and "Nevertheless, the revolutionary artist has a great advantage over the society which, if he is right, stands like a high-pocketed pig surveying its ladies magazines and decorator lamps and styrofoam chairs, unaware of the butcher on the landing."
This is a must read if you are a writer.
In addition to the substance of the book, it is without question one of the most quotable works of modern times that I've read. There are some gems in there, e.g. "In corpses, entropy has won; the brain and the toenails have equal say," and "Nevertheless, the revolutionary artist has a great advantage over the society which, if he is right, stands like a high-pocketed pig surveying its ladies magazines and decorator lamps and styrofoam chairs, unaware of the butcher on the landing."
This is a must read if you are a writer.
February 21, 2009
Although I don't agree with all of Gardner's criteria for "moral fiction" (he almost acts as though there are only three authors who have the ability to write such literature), this book made me think about the importance, role, and value of literature more than many books I've read. Gardner is very concerned with the process of writing (discovering as he/she goes) and is frustrated with authors (and critics) who only focus on technique. He feels that literature (and all art) always affects us, whether for good or bad, and that authors have a duty to discover through writing the Good, True, and Beautiful.
I found it interesting that these qualities are sort of "intuitive," and are felt by the authors and readers--that we will sense truth when we see it. Authors need to be true to their emotions and are just more sensitive to their emotions than the average bear.
I found it interesting that these qualities are sort of "intuitive," and are felt by the authors and readers--that we will sense truth when we see it. Authors need to be true to their emotions and are just more sensitive to their emotions than the average bear.
June 5, 2011
This seemed a little dated, and also very obstreperous. Gardner really doesn't like lots of writers, and he's very very convinced that he's right about almost everything. Still, he's a great advocate for the importance of literature, and for the value of the poet, I'm just not positive that I agree with his difinition of what constitutes "the moral" and that so many people fail at it. The last couple of chapters were my favorite, perhaps because I know so little about Wittgenstein and the Greeks both that I was a little lost in the earlier, more philosophical parts of the book. This was definitely helpful to read as a critic.
May 12, 2022
"The writer who is out to do something, not merely pass the time, must recognize that nothing prevents his trying to talk to readers as sensitive and intelligent as himself."
Pg. 196
There are books you meet on your journey as a writer at a crucial junction, a book that's like a roadmap. They point in a certain direction. It's one such book for me. I needed to know why the art needs to be bigger than the neuroticism of the artist. Gardner makes a compelling case for treating one's art with the respect that the art deserves.
Pg. 196
There are books you meet on your journey as a writer at a crucial junction, a book that's like a roadmap. They point in a certain direction. It's one such book for me. I needed to know why the art needs to be bigger than the neuroticism of the artist. Gardner makes a compelling case for treating one's art with the respect that the art deserves.
April 14, 2011
Gardner argues that moral fiction is life-affirming, the product of an author's discovering the truths his or her characters embody by faithfully engaging a fictional process he lays out in greater, more accessible detail in "The Art of Fiction." Pointed, terse, and confrontational, this book, as do all of Gardner's treatises on the art, challenges the would-be writer to think honestly and carefully about craft.
March 17, 2018
Gardner is not writing from a Christian worldview, nor is he writing in the contemporary era, but he nonetheless makes some very good, timeless points on how any form of art should not degrade or degenerate its audience. The section towards the end on the old role of poet-priest was especially interesting. Overall, I enjoyed seeing how an artist outside Christianity could still see and affirm some of its values.
August 17, 2007
Gardner proposes a strong moral stance for authors to follow if we are to produce good writing. He moves into ethical territory that few critics dare enter and states his views with conviction. Even though I have not seen him follow his ethical definitions in his own novels, he puts forth good and solid principles about how to judge a classic. Fascinating reading.
April 22, 2011
Man, that guy disliked some good writers. Not my favorite Gardner book--as much a cultural critique as book about fiction--but worth reading. I'd stick with On Becoming a Novelist, unless you are a real Gardner fan, or want to see who he annoyed/savaged with his critical eye. Very readable, even though the subject is difficult.
September 23, 2024
I was properly gobsmacked after reading this one and it will take awhile to digest. It’s one of the best polemics I’ve ever read on the relationship between art and morality, and even when I disagreed with Gardner’s arguments, they felt so carefully considered and sharply presented that to challenge his position felt like a formidable task. I will certainly return to it for years to come.
May 1, 2014
Really? A few things John Gardner says make sense. The majority of it on the other hand is asine conceited bullcrap. Though it would be fun to see him explode at all the modern fiction, e-literature, blogging travesties everywhere.
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