Groen’s three points about why literary fiction must be the master art come up again and again in statements and declarations made by persons betrothed to the genre. His point of view amounts to this: literary fiction, by which is meant quality fiction, is its own proper end; and quality fiction is whatever the elitists decide it is. If ever a need for something greater than mundane mortal life is sensed by the elitist author, however, then his fiction will be to this the means, and the something greater will not have anything to do with the traditional God in heaven, much less resemble, or remind one, of sinners being redeemed from iniquity by that same God who must finally judge hardened sinners who are found, in the end, irredeemable on account of their refusal to repent. A leap of faith to a non-judgmental god, or else a libertine’s utopia, is the highest religion that such an author will admit or allow. This existential vault is attempted through the use of grandiose verbiage that often borders on grandiloquence. For some—for persons who value art for the sake of art—literary fiction is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, the All in All. It is used and treated like that, not so much by what is said, but in how the word is spoken. The form is what matters. As Eudora Welty puts it, “Form is the work” (Gary Geddes, The Art of Short Fiction, p. 316.) It was to make the short story respectable and in accord with current tastes that critics insisted on plot in the 19th century, Ian Reid says (Ibid., p. 335.) This is not true—at least it is not the whole truth. Plot points to meaning and purpose, which factors were still in vogue, if not required, because in that century, truth was believed extant or at least possible to find. Postmodernism, which followed the Victorian era, and not even immediately, sees no reason to seek after truth and no possibility of discovering it. It is then—after Victorianism gassed off into the ether of history—that plot began to give way to form as the main thing. If what is spoken can do nothing for us, then it must be in how we say it that matters. This is the prevailing situation in literary fiction today, pulp fiction and Christian novels excepted, of course. The irony, but more the poetic justice, is that while form is the only thing that pretentious writers think they have to learn and get better at, their form is worse than form has ever been. The reason is: the more truth and goodness are set aside, the less of what’s valuable does the writer have to work with, and therefore the uglier his word becomes. Truth and goodness cannot be set aside without detrimental loss. Only insofar as truth, goodness, and beauty are present does the word make sense and have value. In a more enlightened milieu, it would be said that only insofar as truth, goodness, and beauty are present in a high degree, can a book qualify as literary and be in the running to become a classic. I judge books on the basis of content, tone, and style, which rubric comes down roughly to the same thing as judging on the basis of truth, goodness, and beauty. If by ‘form’ is meant the strategic ordering and make-up of what makes a story beautiful, pleasing, or desirable, then form comes close to being synonymous with ‘style’ considered in its broadest sense. Form, in literary criticism, can mean a variety of things. To some, it has less to do with strategic order than spontaneous development. Indeed, to make stories up from thoughts that pass randomly through the mind (though sifted through ideology) is the preferred mode of operation amongst our 21st century CBC-courting, gala-going novelists. Again, by form, some novelists mean the genre. But whether by form is meant the syntax of the parts of speech, a predetermined design, an impromptu approach, a certain genre, or a blend of some of these things together, the form comes down to style. It is unlikely, moreover, that by form the highfalutin novelist means the genre known as the novel because the highfalutin novelist does not esteem novels that are not ‘literary’; and if he means by form the literary novel, well, that kind of novel is a sub-genre (of novel in general) that is too indistinct to admit of any agreement among secular critics as to where the dividing line between it and pulp fiction is. Anyhow, the value of a work of art depends on the level that is achieved in the categories of truth, goodness, and beauty. Truth has to do with the story that is told, or content; goodness treats of moral quality, including tone; beauty is about style, or form; and this form concerns the ornamental element, including the logical cohesion of the whole. A judgment of content, tone, and style is something that a reader will intuit as familiarity with literature is gained. This is as true for non-fiction as for fiction. For example, the sermons of R. M. M’Cheyne score higher in content and tone than style, though their style is still higher than sermons being written nearly two centuries later evince. The short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne score higher in every way than short stories being written a century and a half later. No critic who is both informed and honest would put the short stories of the twentieth century onward on the level of the stories written by him. Why does a demand for the writings of M’Cheyne and Hawthorne persist? It is because their writings are highly valued for content, tone, and style. Readers do not consciously judge according to this gauge; unless they are inveigled to believe that judging is wrong and that texts cannot be measured for quality, they do it instinctively. Not every writer who scores high on truth, goodness, and beauty will continue to be read. But no writer who scores low on all three counts will be treasured for long. This is why almost no one reads award-winning Canadian fiction; it is the reason why authors like Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields have been given nods, nominations, interviews, and awards time after time to keep their entropic brands alive. Elitists never come by their status through merit; it’s about, as F. Scott Fitzgerald puts it in his Gatsby, the ‘gonnections.’ The ‘gonnections,’ in turn, are about recognition that results in praise and profit. It may be that publishing houses believe that it is easier to maintain the popularity of a brand that they are responsible for creating than to start from scratch with an unknown, even an able unknown, writer. And this would be one reason why the same nominees reappear in awards for writing. It is worth mentioning how the media and the professors help this along. It is a network of profit and persuasion. For example, consider the collusion: the same authors reappear on the CBC year after wearisome year; therefore the same publishing houses get mentioned along with the authors’ titles; the professors invited to speak on the CBC always agree that these authors are brilliant; and both the authors and their hosts at the CBC are invited to speak at universities, where envelopes full of cash (typically called ‘a nominal fee’) are handed out for speeches, which money comes from government subsidies and the tuition fees of students.
