The Moral Imagination, Part 2: A Quote and a Question
Read The Moral Imagination, Part 1, as well as S.D. Smith’s excellent reflections on the same theme.
There’s a more in-depth discussion of Moral Imagination on the way, but in the meantime, a quote and a question. First, the quote, from Russell Kirk, back in 1981:
In the franchise bookshops of the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred eighty-one, the shelves are crowded with the prickly pears and the Dead Sea fruit of literary decadence. Yet no civilization rests forever content with literary boredom and literary violence. Once again, a conscience may speak to a conscience in the pages of books, and the parched rising generation may grope their way toward the springs of moral imagination.
I don’t want to pretend that there was some Moral Golden Age of the past - say, the 1950s - and that if only we could return to the good ol’ days, like it “used to be,” we’d be OK. I don’t believe that. There are things that we did in the 50s that it’s a really good thing we’re not still doing now.
But I think it’s fair to agree with Kirk that as far as literature goes, we’re not exactly a culture captivated by a Moral Imagination - one that reads books for the purpose of transformation, of becoming better people:
What then is the end, object, or purpose of humane letters? Why, the expression of the moral imagination; or, to put this truth in a more familiar phrase, the end of great books is ethical—to teach us what it means to be genuinely human.
Most often, we hear books judged on their “escape value” - whether or not they’re page-turners that allow us to escape from the “real world.” This is the wrong kind of escape we should be seeking from literature.
The question, then, is this: If Kirk is right that even in ages of “literary boredom and literary violence,” a generation might “grope” back toward a “moral imagination,” where, if at all, do you see that today? What books have you read that were recently written (within the last 10-20 years) that you would point someone to and say, “Here. This teaches you how to be genuinely human. This book is possessed of a moral imagination”?
A.S. Peterson has crafted a work of compelling historical fiction which begs the question, “Can this really be a debut novel?” With dogged fidelity, Peterson captures the spirit, manners, and social conditions present during the American Revolutionary War. We meet colorful, credible characters who navigate the high seas of life and love, dependence and independence, war and peace, truth and consequence, and despite forays into dark places, The Fiddler’s Gun is beautiful, lyrical, and redemptive.
Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.
Janner Igiby lives in Glipwood, a nothing little village in the land of Skree, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Manhood is on the horizon, but Janner finds it hard to feel much hope for the future. Skree is ruled by foreign oppressors, snake men called the Fangs of Dang, servants of a shadowy emperor named Gnag the Nameless. The Skreeans are weak and weaponless. They’re even tool-less. Any Skreean who needs to use a hoe has to borrow one from the Fangs (and fill out the requisite paperwork). And from time to time, the Black Carriage arrives in Glipwood to carry young Skreeans toward an unknown fate across the Dark Sea.
I am not a fan of Civil War literature; in fact, I have always thought of it as one of those weird sub-genres for obsessive types. They’re almost like Trekkies with their re-enactments and maniacal devotion to detail. It’s just not my thing (although I’m secretly jealous that they get to dress up and shoot cannons).
A Randall Goodgame song is like a great independent movie. Characters deliver lines like they were lifted from a break room, a truck stop, or a downtown diner. Seemingly incongruent scenes are juxtaposed and plot isn’t obvious; in fact, narrative–a good story–is often more evident than linear plot lines. An indie movie, like a Randall Goodgame song, seems to tell itself. Rather than being rudely yanked by a chain through a sequence of contrived events, with a Randall Goodgame song, I have the sense that I’m being allowed a willing, but vicarious sneak peak into the real lives of his real characters.
Sara Groves irritates me just a little bit. With each album she makes, she moves from strength to strength and is always raising the bar with the quality, depth, and lyrical ambition of her work. And as a fellow artist, that’s just a little irritating since it means the rest of us are going to have to work harder if we hope to keep up.
I am outside on my front porch. The yellowed leaves are methodically falling from the black walnut in the yard, my breath is chalky visible in the recent cold snap, and lately I have been exploring the unpleasant nuances of the dark night of a soul - my own, to be exact. It is a strange passion we live out on this over-glorified orb of rock hurtling through space at some rate that I’m sure would astound me were I to know what it was. It is an odd series of days, I am realizing, when you question your own faith more than you question your own doubt. And, indeed, it is these nagging questions which have prompted me to share my thoughts on Andrew Peterson’s 2003 album, Love and Thunder.
11-year old Reuben Land, a character in the 2001 book Peace Like a River, provides narration that is clear-eyed and insightful, yet retains the magic, wonder, and innocence of youth. I found it easy to entrust my imagination to the author’s clever method of telling the story through the sensibilities of a pre-teen boy. An author with lesser skill would have either made the boy too smart-alecky for his own good or impossibly cute.
I just finished a book that upon closing it, I felt like it finished me in a sense. A quiet meditative book that reached down and stirred the deep waters in me. It’s Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner Gilead, given to me by my friend Andrew Peterson.
Eric Peters’s body of work addresses a diverse range of topics, but hope is a recurring theme that gently percolates in the midst of it all. And yet, somewhere between the 2001 masterpiece Land of the Living, and Scarce, the flavor of hope that Peters’s work emits has evolved closer to a tone that is more resolute than what came before. And though the complexion of hope has a broad range, the lyrics from Scarce–while intermittently contrite and timorous as in previous efforts, are now strengthened and bolstered by roots that have grown deeper, radiating an underlying grit and security.
Having read The Great Divorce many times over the years, I’ve found this classic from the great C.S. Lewis to be full of startling clarity and depth on the differences between Heaven and Hell. The only thing both have in common is that both begin in the human will; we can either let Heaven enter us and rule in us to blossom into love and goodness, or allow Hell to infect and reign in our hearts by the daily refusal to submit to Heaven.
Even if you haven’t heard Room to Breathe, its still likely you’ve heard Andy Gullahorn. He’s what I’d call a heavy lifter by trade. He writes lyrics, plays guitar, arranges vocals and adds production help to the work of artists like Jill Phillips and Andrew Peterson.
Allow me to preface this by telling you that I am a great despiser of gushing reviews. I’d much rather write (or read) a scathing dismemberment of the latest Brett Ratner film or Terry Goodkind book than suffer through four hundred words of overblown hyperbole about even the best of things. But when asked to write some thoughts on Frederick Buechner’s Godric, no amount of distaste for high praise was able to intervene. I hope you’ll take what I say with the understanding that I do not say it readily or lightly.
I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and, strangely enough, it truly does have “a moral imagination.” An odd assertion, given that much of the novel is taken up with privation, chronic illness and cannibalism. But it’s also very focused on the love between fathers and sons and the imago Dei. I was pleasantly surprised.
The Harry Potter series has already been discussed on this site (and Travis, you’d certainly know more about that than any of the rest of us, so I won’t try to write about it here). Also, Gilead by Marylinne Robinson, which is a wonderful book about a pastor’s last words to his son; Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, which I believe was listed in the Rabbit Room bookstore, which deals with life and death and faith and hope and healing in a myriad of ways. I do think that if we’re talking about “fantasy” or fantastical literature, we don’t have as many books out nowadays that are in that genre that deal with moral issues as well as those around the middle of the 20th century.
I’m in a Fantasy Literature and Children’s Moral Formation Class right now in seminary, and I just realized that half of the books we’re reading were written more than thirty years ago (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine L’Engle, Ursula K. LeGuin). The other half of the books are more recent, but I’ve found myself less intrigued and less inspired by most of them (The Ice Dragon by George R.R. Martin; Twilight by Stephanie Meyer; Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer; The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman; and, the exception to the rule, Harry Potter by J.K., Rowling).
Of course, we’re reading mostly the “popular” books that are well known. Perhaps there are excellent novels that have snuck under our noses. At the same time, I do think that the quality of the children’s/young adult novel has gone down. Being a person in my mid-twenties, I remember reading C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien while growing up, and comparing them with R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps. (Proof that not all letter period letter period names produce classic books).
I’ve bought Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and, as a fan of Gaiman’s am excited to read it, but haven’t had the time yet. I’ve heard that it deals a lot with issues of love and trust, life and death, but don’t have a review of it as yet.
I’d add Terry Pratchett’s Bromeliad trilogy. Pratchett is one of my favorite writers (I’ve read something like 20 of his Disc World books). He’s wickedly funny, and while the Bromeliad books are ostensibly written for young adults, they’re shot through with jokes only adults will truly get. In addition to great characters, the they have some great lessons about seeing a world bigger than the one around you.
Marcus - in case you haven;t read it, Gaiman and Pratchett collaborated on a book called “Good Omens”. It’s the one that turned me on to Gaiman. He (Gaiman) was recently on the Colbert Report - you can probably find it on the Comedy Central site.
Some authors that came to mind: Anne Rice, Leif Enger, Marilynne Robinson, Wendell Berry.
I’d also include things like Moore’s Watchmen and Card’s Ender’s Game in any list of fiction that explores what it means to be human and live with the the consequences of our actions.
Pete, that was actually the book that got me into Gaiman as well. A friend lent it to me and I just recently found a hardcover copy at a book sale. I haven’t read much of pratchett, unfortunately.
Pete (2?), I actually just received Card’s Ender’s Game for a Christmas present. It’s on my (quite long) list of books to read this summer.
Pete- I completely have to agree about Terry Pratchett. His books begin as parody and then slowly grow into so much more than that. By the time you reach later works like Night Watch and Thud he has created a world with rich characters about whom one cares deeply. He tells wonderful stories that move quickly between delightful and heartbreaking. And he really does speak to the larger world and I think really does have a strong moral imagination.
I enjoy some Neil Gaiman, but a lot of his work is just too dark for my taste.
Pete Peterson- I really want to like graphic novels because they are such a great tool for storytelling, but I often have a hard time getting past the relentlessly dark world they inhabit. I think I would like to give Watchman a try since I have heard so much about it, but I’m nervous.
The relentlessly dark world they inhabit?
There are gobs of lighter stories out there. Stardust comes to mind right off the bat. Bone would be another (although I haven’t read it.) At the moment Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extra-ordinary Gents) and Frank Miller (Sin City, 300, The Spirit, The Dark Knight Returns) are the poster children for the graphic novel medium so that might be where you get that impression but graphic novels are every bit as various as written word novels.
Right now I am one-third of the way into Life of Pi. I don’t know if I will turn out to love it or hate it in the end, but it has been the catalyst for some really interesting thoughts about the state of man and our “search” for God.
Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow. Also Frederick Beuchner’s Godric. E. B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan. To name a few (mostly) recent books.
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I read A LOT. And I find that there is value in all kinds of different books. You just don’t know when you open a book if it will change your life.
Seriously, I understand what you’re saying, but a lot of people struggle with the act of reading itself. It’s difficult, not easy. I work with adults who would never in a million years choose to read a book on their own. (I tutor them in reading) So when my student finishes a James Patterson book, and comes to ask me what an epilogue is…those are the kinds of moments I live for. And she’s learning. I seriously doubt she would have gotten past the first page of many of the books listed here.
Sure I think there are books that are complete and utter rubbish out there, but I know that to someone else…it might the gateway into a whole new way of thinking.
Amy, I see what you’re saying, but I think we’re talking about two entirely different issues.
A thing cannot simultaneously be “complete and utter rubbish” and of value. I know the old “one man’s trash…” statement and all. But if something is truly “complete and utter rubbish,” it is that for everyone. I’m talking in particular not just about works that are poorly written, but about finding books that embrace a moral imagination in a pile of books which primarily embrace and celebrate that which is immoral. It’s easy to embrace and celebrate the immoral when one doesn’t believe the purpose of great literature is ethical, but mindless escapism.
But if we’re talking about people who are struggling just to read in the first place, by all means, hand them a fast-paced quick read if it will get them in the door of reading!
I realize this post has been dormant for a bit, but I have been wanting to read it for a while and finally got around to it today. . .
Books that speak to what it means to be human!
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon is a great read about an autistic boy who finds his neighbors dog dead writes a mystery book about it for school. The story is told from his perspective as he relates how autism affects his view on the world and relationships. I read this book without stopping on a plane to Phoenix and I cried at the end. On the plane. With people around. And I didn’t even care.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel is also a beautifully written story about survival and how we deal with struggle.
And I have to agree with Loren, that ‘The Road’ was powerful. It hit me hard with the conflict that is sometimes present between doing what is ‘right’ and ‘good’ and self-preservation. How do you balance the two for yourself and how does the dynamic change when you are responsible for someone else’s welfare.
David:
As long as you’ve opened the “autism” door, I’ll add another - The Speed of Dark” by Elizabeth Moon. It’s a near-future sci-fi piece where autism is now curable in the womb. This leaves the last generation of autistics, who now work doing data analysis for corporations. A cure for existing autists has been developed, and the book details one autistic’s struggles (written from his point of view) as to whether or not he should undergo the cure. It’s a great book, and a fast read.
‘The Speed of Dark’ sounds good! I just may have to check that one out. Seems like it would raise a lot of interesting questions about our strengths and weaknesses as people and the ways we identify ourselves by them. . .