I recall hearing the name John Gardner first in my undergrad days and, since then, it has lurked in the shadows of all my creative writing and literary education. The guy was a big shot, particularly in the realm of literary criticism. Still is, really, even though he died in 1982 in a motorcycle accident. And while lit crit was his main game, he also wrote fiction. Most famously, I think, the novel Grendel, in which he examines the Beowulf story from the critter’s point of view. (“Hrothgar. My guy. Cool if I bring my ma to your party?…she’s not invited?…I’M not invited?…Shiiiiiiiiit….”) But, while I have not read Grendel, I just finished reading Gardner’s book of general criticism, On Moral Fiction, which was published in 1978.
Let me get my gripes out of the way, because I’d like to make a positive point in toto. But the book is undeniably, highly gripe-able. Gripe-able, but also, actually flawed. Gardner, and maybe this is true of 100% all writers, is quite guilty of saying one thing and displaying just the opposite. Once or twice, he makes the point that, for fiction writers, the sound of their own voices is the least of their concerns. Writing should be done in the service of others. And yet. The Gardnerian style, at least here, is supported entirely by Gardner’s self-bloviation. It’s not so much that he talks directly about himself (though he does), but the way in which he talks about writing calls attention to his own literary look-at-me’s first, and then, for example, the example texts he means to either praise or criticize. We are never not aware that we are in Gardner’s car as we drive around to the book’s different ideas. And, had Hemingway ever been able to put an editorial eye on it, taking out of account the actual points made and including only the mechanics of the writing, On Moral Fiction would be a pamphlet. At most. And could probably still say all it means to say.
And while Gardner’s point that good fiction, good art must in some way better society, he defines “art” as though looking at the entirety of it through a hole in a fence. Everybody sees art this way at first, until they realize they can stand up and see over the fence or, hell, buy a ticket and get into the actual ballpark. It’s the mistake of the rookie to see a thing for the first time and then tell everybody that all you first saw is the totality of the thing you saw. Again, a fairly normal mistake. Except that Gardner isn’t a rookie. What art is, while definitely difficult to directly define, should certainly have attained much greater scope and nuance in Gardner’s heart and mind by the time he wrote On Moral Fiction. But, no. I can’t say the following is true in every case with Gardner—maybe 90% of the time it’s true—but for him, older writers = good art, and newer writers = not good art. Up with Leo Tolstoy, down with Donald Barthelme! One can almost hear a chorus of whatever the late 70’s version is of, “Okay, Boomer.” Art by Gardner’s working definition excludes self-reference, sarcasm, experimentation, and messing too much with or even blending forms.
Though I think Gardner would say that good art should elevate the society in which it is produced—the artist leaving the place better than how he found it—Gardner neglects to fully consider this: that societies come with varying moralities. Even within the same societies, morality fluctuates. And that artists come from these societies with the central obligation, for lack of a better term, to report on them. A morally pure artist isn’t one who tethers himself to Tolkenien goodness and seeks to replicate it in his own stuff no matter what. A morally pure artist dares to reflect honestly, both in subject matter and in the mechanics of his delivery, the society in which he lives and makes his art. He is under no obligation to first imagine a better society—if the one in which he does live and make art doesn’t or can’t pass muster—and then attempt to reproduce a version of it in his work.
Crudely, it may be said, and may operate, like this: “Hey, y’all, look at what we are!” is of greater value than, “Hey, y’all, look at what we could or even should be!” The danger with the latter is that it’s apt to produce a laziness in readers, a self-removal, a holing up until such a time comes when society has improved. An assumption that the day-in-day-out work of improving society is someone else’s. Fewer muscles are worked on behalf of the greater good, in the waiting, so that when the society inevitably shapes up (Societies seem always to be in the midst of moral flux.), the reader is unprepared and doesn’t know how to plug in to the new, greater good.
The former (“Look at what is!”) incites the reader to participation, perhaps instills urgency. The sense of dissatisfaction the work leaves in the reader is, on the writer’s part, on purpose. For example, Nelson Algren’s great novel The Man with the Golden Arm (set in Chicago’s desperate underbelly, with drugs and scams and homelessness and violence and cuss words) is morally sound because it asks the reader to respond morally with real actions in their own real lives. “What can I do about homelessness? Well, at least volunteer serving meals at the community center. That’s a start.” This novel, and artistic work in this vein, comes with a vitality absent in the former. An immortal vitality produced by Algren in the work, then handed off to the reader.
Okay. That’s enough for now. More to come..
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