Today’s celebrated literary troop is not descended from the writers of classics. There is some resemblance in terms of posing and self-promotion. But our privileged progressives are not lettered individuals, really; it is no exaggeration to assert that their loose grip on the English tongue betrays an ignorance of the history of literature. They are elitists, which is as different from being elite as a global warming professor differs from Isaac Newton. They are frauds whose books are foisted upon us through state-run media and by agenda-driven publishing houses. In reading their works, there is more danger of being confused and contaminated than deceived through cunningly written prose. Writers of classics have written somewhat morally and quite compellingly, while our most acknowledged novelists write clumsily and have base morals or no morals at all. To show what I mean may be done with ease in few words. From a not-so laudable, indecent, and therefore soon to be ripped up book (of literary criticism?) by Alex Good, I quote what he quoted from the overrated, multi-prize winning Michael Ondaatje. Apparently, in point of fact, we read this in Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost: “A leaf will come down. Its click of applause. The music continues furious like blood moving for a few more minutes in a dead man” (Alex Good, Revolutions, p. 68.) Does a leaf dropping evoke the sound of applause? And why compare music continuing ‘furious’ to blood moving in a dead man? This comparison could inspire us only if we had heard blood moving in a dead man before, which no one has because a dead man’s blood does not move. Has anyone even heard blood moving in a living man? To make matters even less literary, this macabre passage is somehow about Anil dancing. And we may even take issue with Ondaatje for writing sentence fragments instead of sentences and for using the word ‘furious’ where he should have written ‘furiously.’ Proper grammar should always be in vogue. (Not that I ain’t never made a mistake before.) Using an adjective where an adverb is called for should be regarded as a fault more than an elegant way of putting something. And while the sentence fragment is sometimes useful, it looks and sounds dumb when habitually resorted to. In one of his other books (who cares which one?) we read this: “They heard nothing, not the sterile thunder or the mock of the bird or the millions of insects carelessly yelling. Just their breath, as if they were dying beside each other” (Ibid., p. 135.) Why would thunder be sterile? And ‘the mock of the bird’ is poor enough, but ‘insects yelling’? and ‘carelessly’? Lovers are lying by each other, and the best the author can come up with is that their breath sounds like death? How intimate! This desperate clutching at style is like the effort of a young amateur who has not begun to read any of the masters in literature yet, but who has, instead, been attending local guilds to gather tips on writing. Ondaatje was in his fifties and sixties when he wrote these passages; and these passages are parts of books that have won major jackpots. He was fifty-six years old or so, to be more precise, when Anil’s Ghost came out in the year 2000. The nods in his favor are as merited as the applause by that leaf is believable. He is a Sri Lankan Canadian on the political left; this greatly helps to explain why the CBC has tried so hard to make him a household name. In Canada, identity is merit, unless you’re a non-hyphenated white male. If you are a non-hyphenated white male, you must pretend to hate yourself by preaching identity politics; then, if your self-hatred is shrill enough, you might get noticed and then maybe pulled up to join the others on the pedestal that stands on the sinking sand of miscarried composition. Michael Ondaatje is one of the elitists; no merit is required by him. Compare Ondaatje’s ‘prose’ to that of Bram Stoker, who’s best known book, I admit, is plodding in places, and mushy sometimes too: “No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. When the sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if the dove from the ark had lighted there. My fear fell from me as if it had been a vaporous garment which dissolved in the warmth” (Bram Stoker, Dracula, p. 54.) This is meritorious fiction—elite fiction. Though the name of God is used unthinkingly in the book at times, it is theistic, and not only by biblical allusions. It is an unchristian book that a Christian may cautiously learn writing skills from and be moved to profitably meditate on. The danger is that well-written theism often passes for Christianity and that if we give it this pass, we lower the bar below what Christianity is. Then if we immerse ourselves in literature of this sort, to the neglect of theology, we are negatively influenced; and so not only do we lower the Christian standard below a passing grade, we begin to live a lower degree of faith, through our writing or what have you, than a Christian ought to live.
My purpose in juxtaposing quotes from Ondaatje and Stoker is this. The faults in contemporary fiction are so easy to spot that we should instantly be provoked to shun it. Contemporary fiction, like that by Ondaatje, should not attract us at all because poverty of word and loose morals, especially when wedded together, are so obviously revolting. If a Christian reader is drawn to contemporary fiction, either he has not read better or he simply likes to read what is flat, indecent, or confusing. There is no danger of mistaking it for Christianity; its faults and dangers are plain.
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