Is there a 'moral fiction'?
 Is
there a genre called 'Moral Fiction'? Yes, there is claimed one American
writer and academic some four decades ago. He was John Gardner. But in
the 21st century do his views have strength and sustenance is another
matter. And yet some of his statements were impressive.
For the benefit of younger students of English Literature let me give
a few details about him. He was a novelist, poet, university professor
and a scholar in medieval English literature and librettist of several
operas. Some of his novels were Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues and
October Light.
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John Gardner |
He gained notice in the 1970s when he said that in much of
contemporary fiction nihilistic and cynical attitudes were prevalent. It
was true because at that time, if one may call it, the 'fad' for
Existentialism was fashionable among the European literati. The
philosophy of existentialism, as we know, has traits of nihilism and
cynicism.
His book titled On Moral Fiction is worth reading if we care for
moral base and humane values.
Here are some excerpts from the book that speak for themselves.
Says John Gardner:
"The art is moral: it seeks: to improve life, not debase it. It seeks
to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us."
But the same time he concurs that "I do not deny that art, like
criticism, may legitimately celebrate the trifling. It may joke, or
mock, or while away the time. But trivial art has no meaning or value
except in the shadow of more serious art., the kind of art that beats
back the monsters and, if you will, makes the world safe for triviality"
Gardner is emphatic that "the art which tends towards destruction,
the art of nihilists and cynics, is not properly art at all. Art is
essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and
death, against entropy."
What are the everlasting literatures does the writer consider?
The Iliad, The Odyssey, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Commedia, the plays of Shakespeare
and Racine, the novels of Tolstoy, Melville, Thomas Mann, and James
Joyce. Such works - all true works of art - can exert their civilizing
influence century after century, long after the cultures that produced
them have decayed."
John Gardner's thesis is that " Wherever possible moral art holds up
models of decent behavior; for example, characters in fiction, drama,
and film whose basic goodness and struggle against confusion, error, and
evil - in themselves and others - give firm intellectual and emotional
support to our own struggle."
At this point may I add that just as much as I like the 'brilliant'
(for me) summation of philosophy in his work The Outsider, I also like
Colin Wilson's murder mysteries and sexual escapades in his fiction.
John Gardner continues: "Moral fiction communicates meanings
discovered by the process of the fiction's creation. We can seethe
process working when we look through the drafts of a certain kind of
writer's book."
Reading John Gardner' excerpt I found the following passage extremely
important in clarifying the power words
I am sure most of us agree with this statement: "Words have
associations, and group of words form chains of association. Words
conjure emotionally charged images in the reader's mind, and when the
words are put together in the proper way, with proper rhythms - long and
short sounds, smooth or ragged, tranquil or rambunctious - we have the
queer experience of falling through the print on the page into something
like a dream, an imaginary world so real and convincing that when we
happen to be jerked out of it by a call from the kitchen or a knock at
the door, we stare for an instant in befuddlement at the familiar room
where we sat down, half an hour ago, with our book."
One may agree or not with the ideas of John Gardner but his mode of
writing and the style of writing pleases me immensely.
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