Pointless Pontification: January 2007 Archives
These “answers” to the question "is literary or popular fiction better?" illustrate the problem: no one these days wants to take a stand for anything. Is this question really so murky an area, which such complex nuances, that no satisfactory answer can be arrived at? Just back away and mumble something to the effect that “it depends”? So the fact that, no matter how hard our teachers try to get people to read once they've left grade school, they're too busy making money (got some) and babies (got 5) and chasing their tails (haven't got to bed before 12:00 so far this week) to sit down and read a challenging book every once in a while (I still read over a dozen novels last year; that may not be great, but it's better than some) doesn't have anything to do with it? So when that literary writer, that purveyor of high-concept, inaccessible metaphors comes along and tries to fashion something that, to him, seems beautiful, and people don't like it because they've never come across any metaphor that complicated before because they haven't, since the sixth grade, picked up a novel with words in it they didn't know, then the Jolly Roger goes up and the popular fiction Man O'War turns hard to port and gives a full broadside.
Popular fiction seeks to meet people where they're at. Literary fiction expects people to come to it. Which is better has direct correlation to which has inherently more capacity for reflecting the essence of Him who created Art because He loves beauty: literary fiction is better.
I don't think it's helpful to anyone to dance around the issue that most people don't read enough to stay literate. But if they're happy with where they are intellectually and in their judgement and (non-)consumption of artistic works, then no one, including myself, is suggesting they go out of their way. That they're not literate enough to like-appreciate-desire art for art's sake is the result of their own prioritization in life and that's an issue between them and God, not between them and the writer trying to do the best he knows how.
There's no line in the sand between popular and literary fiction. There's a gradually up-sloping curve of increasingly ambitious use of language and metaphor; a deepening of meaning that withstands ever higher levels of scrutiny. The more art a person consumes, the higher their expectations get for the next period of consumption. Somewhere along the way, some readers stop slogging upward. So what? Art is for enjoyment like the sunset is for enjoyment. If you're happy with what you've got, then fine.
But don't you dare begrudge those who want more. Those whose appetite for Art increases beyond their ability to feed it. Those who devour ever more complicated sentences with great alacrity. And if you do want to hold them back, protect them from the evil, arrogant, literary bourgeois, don't be surprised when they turn on you.
It's just as arrogant to begrudge a fellow pilgrim the enjoyment of his sunset as it is to begrudge another of his apathy.
I think one of the things that has prevented Christian writers from connecting with readers is the hovering presence (in the crap-we-peddle-with-the-christian-moniker-attached world) of the Be Nice Gestapo.
It's a sticky theological wicket, because we have a higher calling. It isn't a good example of Christ if we're muck-chuckers all the time. On the other hand, as artists, our art could (and rightly so) be vilified as mediocre and inconsequential if we disregard the Real World.
I think it's interesting that what we're seeing right now within the Christian writing community is the transition from one Age to another. From post-modernism into something else that will be named later, when it's better understood to where we are moving. I'm excited to see that we're throwing off the conventions that we have been saddled with, which were a reaction to the nihilism and atheism of secular post-modernists. The deafening alarmism of the '80s and '90s is being replaced with a biting criticism of both secular and Christian conventions.
In some ways, this transition resembles that of the early 20th century, when the Modernists emerged from the ashes of the Realists. While we want more realism in Christian fiction, I don't hear many people advocating true Realism, as it was expressed in that time. We're really very much like the Modernists in that we do believe in true good and true evil, in honor and duty and the transcendence of sacrifice and that redemption and salvation (little ‘r', little ‘s') can be achieved in this life. Also like the Modernists, we're twisting the established conventions into a new form. We're testing the limits in the creation of art and we're taking it to new areas that emerge (graphic novels, games, etc…) as a result of technological advancements. In a sense, it's a rebirth of Modernism in the Christian world and that puts us only about eight decades behind the rest of the literate world now. We're making progress.
This world is not for the faint of heart. There are things happening that don't just desensitize but sear the heart. As the Baby Boomers start to finally die off, we actually have a chance to point out just how laughably naive, foolish, and harmful their social experimentation was. We can point out that in their zeal to rebel against "authoritarianism" they have become more violently authoritarian than those they rebelled against. Their infatuation with atheist philosophers like Marx, Freud, and Jung have resulted in several generations of morally ambivalent and intellectually stagnant zombies. One side believes everything they're told from the secular propagandists, and the other believes everything they're told from the religious (little ‘r') establishment.
As if fighting the encroachment of atheism wasn't enough, many in the Christian world have so insulated themselves that it's now chic to war against other Christians. I guess we've learned from the Irish in that respect. Protestant against Catholic, Reformed against whatever-you-call-the-rest-of-us, Church Growth versus Anti, Saddleback versus traditionalists, Rick "If He's not the Anti-Christ he's Damned Close" Warren against retired Alarmists who got bored and now have a new whipping boy.
For some writers, we've just followed our own inner convictions and ended up on the outside. We didn't follow the crowd, nor the wind, nor the latest fad bible study that promises health, wealth, happiness, a better Warm Fuzziness, or whatever it is the next great mega-church pastor is peddling these days. And now we turn around and guess what? We're cut off from the herd. We're theological chum.
Yikes. Too snarky. There I go again, getting on my soapbox and preaching up a storm.
I'll stop now.
