PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION VII

Not all contemporary novelists intend readers to interpret their visionary expressions and words like ‘hope’ and ‘faith’ in a mystical sense or try to convey to readers an alternative reality that is loftier than their present prosaic one. Most of them, maybe, are happy to make money, attain modest fame, and provide a few transient thrills. They aim no higher than to please, and are guilty of enclosing their stories in a vacuum where nothing higher than the mortal world is ever hinted at. Novelists of neither camp—existential or skeptical—care to make it appear that there is a heaven from which a knowable Divine Being governs the universe—a knowable God who will hold moral agents responsible for their beliefs, deeds, words, thoughts, and motivations.

If critics are anything to judge the currents by, novelists have become less comfortable with the word, or concept, of ‘redemption,’ and more comfortable with the word, or concept, of ‘liberation.’ If this is so, it is no surprise because the former word connotes more biblical theology than the latter word does. A word that is less suggesting of a ransom from the bondage of sin is desired, for the word that educes more than mere liberty is less tolerated by publishing houses. Rick Groen is an award-winning film critic. His three reasons for literary fiction as the chief art to indulge are: (1) for the aesthetic pleasure derived; (2) for its tragic realism, by which he means: the strain between good and evil from which more questions than answers are raised; (3) for its liberating factor. He enlists the help of Jonathan Franzen for this threefold division, who speaks of a kind of ‘redemption’ through an ‘aesthetic rendering of the human plight.’ A redemption such as that, however, is of no practical or permanent benefit. What effect can a portrayal of plight produce? There cannot be a heavenly redemption in a plight for which no answer is given, only a transient one. This redemption is nothing but a good feeling or a sense of wonder through an ornamental presentation of the author’s, or the character’s, plight. This sense may come about, not only through reading superlative passages of literature, but by identifying with a man on the losing side in a book or movie. The best example that comes to mind is Rocky Balboa in Rocky 1. He loses, but we are lifted up anyway. At first, his loss causes us a sinking feeling. Then we are relieved that he lost, for we cannot help but feel that the fighter is more like us by losing than by winning. Subsequent to our initial letdown from seeing the man we love, lose, we experience a kind of redemption through the vicarious loss. Such is our identification with the character’s unexpected denouement. Notice how minimal and insignificant this redemption is compared to redemption of the biblical kind. In the fictional case, we have a temporary sense of ambiguous redemption from losing vicariously. In the biblical case, we have a definite redemption from the curse of the law through a Saviour suffering in our stead, which redemption, in its fruition and future aspect, entails our resurrection from the grave, which in turn leads to our permanent settlement in heaven instead of the awful hell that we had been condemned to prior to our faith in Jesus Christ.     

Though the word ‘redemption’ is usually made to mean something less, to say the least, than what redemption in God’s Revelation is, it is common to never mind the meaning of the word and to preach it as if it means nothing more than to liberate. This is the norm in black churches and among black ministers, where, and from whom, redemption is preached as nothing more than liberation from circumstantial (often lied about or exaggerated) oppression by capitalist white folks. For example, about four girls killed by a bomb in the basement of a Baptist church in Alabama in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. said: “The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city” (Phyllis Theroux, The Book of Eulogies, p. 147.) So Martin Luther King means political liberation here, not saving redemption. He means ‘liberation’ even when he uses the word ‘redemption.’ His meaning is that the death of these girls could be the impetus to progress in civil rights. And ‘redemption’ is often, if not usually, used inferiorly just like that, even when the subject is Jesus Christ. 

To ‘liberate’ is less offensive to obstinate sinners than to ‘redeem.’ Liberation does not communicate a redemptive ‘price,’ and therefore doesn’t suggest a need to be bought from the bondage of sin—sin that must be quit and turned away from. In the Bible the word ‘liberty’ means to ‘release,’ to ‘forgive,’ or to ‘pardon.’ To be ‘set at liberty’ comes closer to encompassing what the word ‘redemption’ imports. But to ‘redeem’ is something more. In the Bible this word means to ‘buy back,’ to ‘purchase,’ or to ‘ransom.’ Even if it is not known (and it is seldom known these days) that to ‘redeem’ is to ‘buy back,’ the Bible has been so influential for so many centuries that the very word ‘redeem’ casts too much light for some committed sinners and authors to tolerate, notwithstanding its use in black churches to speak of liberation from social injustices. The word ‘liberate’ avoids the associations that the word ‘redeem’ continues, after all these years, to cling to. It avoids alluding to the salvation of being set at liberty from the curse of the law—which, in the Bible, is by the bloody ransom provided by Jesus through his death on the cross. Though the word ‘redemption’ fits into his theory somewhere, Groen cannot mean much by it, considering his first two reasons for consuming literary fiction: for pleasure and to raise questions about the stress between good and evil. If his theory is that readers ought to read in order to raise questions instead of nail answers down, his point about reading for the liberty factor (his third reason) means nothing much at all. If raising questions and deriving pleasure are the reasons for literary fiction to be indulged, this fiction is for nothing but maintaining ignorance while being entertained. It is true that he says that ‘more’ questions than answers should be raised, which seems to imply that some answers are okay. But his partial allowance, I think, is rhetorical, not actual. And to raise questions, in literary circles, means to discuss without driving at a satisfying answer. Critics, philosophers, and professors are too much like the Athenians in Acts 17, who spent their ‘time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing’ (verse 21.) Regrettably, I have lost my note respecting what work Mr. Groen’s theory was culled from, though I did find some frame of reference to the words that he borrowed from the aforesaid Franzen.

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION VI

Not all fiction, obviously, is attempting to supply humanity with an alternative to Christian redemption and matter-of-fact eternity. Many novelists claim to possess no higher aim than to please. But an insidious ambition may crouch behind their professed aim; for certain, any author whose end goal is to please (besides generate income) is making pleasure in his art the end, which comes down to treating art as an idol of sorts; this is true whether the author is conscious of it or not. That which is designed for no better purpose than to furnish entertainment is itself the vision. Readers and writers have testified as much. Margaret Atwood: “When I finish a book I like, no matter what the subject matter, or see a play or film, like Kurosawa’s Ran, which is swimming in blood and totally pessimistic, but so well done, I feel very good. I do feel hope. It’s the well-doneness that has that effect on me. Not the conclusion—not what is said, per se…if you have those capabilities, and you see something done very, very well, something that is true to itself, you can feel for two or three minutes that the clouds have parted and you’ve had a vision, of something of what music or art or writing can do, at its best” (Gary Geddes, The Art of Short Fiction, p. 14.) Those of us who have heard Atwood in interviews know that she is not a person seeking after truth.  She wants to be pleased, not preached to. A book, to her, should be an end, not a means, at least not a means to what a conservative Christian would call good. She likes books that overturn traditions, though, or that at least run them down; those are the ones that she reads, and she writes them too. Therefore, she likes books that preach something, after all, as most readers do. If a book was ‘done very, very well’ but was optimistic and swimming in the grace of God through Jesus’ saving blood instead of ‘pessimistic’ and just ‘swimming in blood,’ would she praise it for its ‘well-doneness’? My guess is that she would object on the basis of the book being ‘preachy.’ What she is praising in Ran is a story that is pessimistic and gory but that has nothing but that for its end. The end is insular. By contrast, a redemption story that allegorizes what happened on the cross cannot be its own end because by its very character it points outside itself to a historical event. Once hope that is based in fact and history has been deemed unacceptable, pessimism is often accepted as the norm, pessimistic entertainment is often made the end, and the story is made to fit the situation outside the book: the author’s atheism. If such a work may be called beautiful in some sense, still it is like a statue that has no reference point.  It stands for nothing but to be looked at. In the closed, futile world of a skeptical nihilist, something well done, and in that sense, beautiful, merely on the ground of being true to itself, might cause a sense of wellbeing—even a kind of hope. This hope does not spring, much less leap, or if it does, it jumps into the black hole of the lost society that lies outside the book. 

A reader may get a feeling of hope through the recognition of beauty. But beauty by itself lacks the proposition of truth winning out, and therefore can only endow hope that will never arrive. I knew briefly an amiable man for whom Shakespeare was the bible; that is what he told me. He was a hippie with a PhD, and he wore large rings up and down his ears to signify how hip he was; hippie professors are dying out now, giving place to doctors who will not have as much as Shakespeare to look up to and depend on. How did the Shakespeare bible help that professor when he was in the hospital dying? Shakespeare was his bible, he said, and he was hoping for at least one more chapter in life. According to his wish, he did get another chapter. He attributed that grant to the bedside prayers of two Protestant Christians. He has since died, however, still believing, probably, that the Holy Bible is a book of fables. How merciful of God to show this unbelieving man the power of Christian prayer—and therefore, of God—before he died! Fancy a fabulous god answering prayer! He knew that the Creator of the World was responsible for the final chapter that he was given to live. He had to have known this; otherwise he would never have confessed to have gotten help through the prayers of Creationist Christians.

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION V

Joseph Conrad, as compared with Bram Stoker, may with even more justification be placed amongst the masters of fiction. In the front rank beside wordsmiths, his narrative is never far from a compelling word. “What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!…The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires” (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.) This passage is an example of what I call the ‘existential aesthetic.’ Here the author is attempting, through superlative speech, to connect the reader with something higher than himself. By linking nature to splendiferous phrasing, the author hopes to confer an unearthly experience. By the use of word and world together, he reaches for something beyond both. His highest aim is to bestow an impression that will be a ‘moment’ or some sort of psychological launch for the reader. Conrad’s use of imagery, Gary Geddes tells us, ‘reflects his view of art as a sacred trust, a religious commitment’ (Gary Geddes, The Art of Short Fiction, p. 78.) This, I think, is true. In a footnote to a recently written though already forgotten book about Byron’s physician, John Polidori, I came upon the following thought: “The Romantic quest for origins is profoundly connected with the Romantic quest for originality.” The book, then, that I found this cryptic footnote in is called, Poor Polidori, authored by D. L. Macdonald; the footnote is on page 285. The origin of the quote is Paul A. Cantor’s Creature and Creator: Myth-making and English Romanticism; and Cantor may have gotten it from someone else. Regardless, whoever coined this thought is responsible for identifying the mission of avant-garde novelists. “The Romantic quest for origins is profoundly connected with the Romantic quest for originality.” What can be meant by this, more particularly? The context (p. 224 of Poor Polidori) reveals that the quest which is spoken of is the search for a different option for what unfolds in the first pages of Genesis, which prologue has to do with creation and responsibility: man becoming a sinner against his Creator, and passing that sin nature down through posterity, along with both guilt and curse. These florid passages in classic fiction, then, that attempt to disengage from the chains of a fallen world do so in response to the moral predicament that their authors do not want the proffered solution for; which solution: fear of, and faith in, God, runs through the whole of the Bible.        

The diction in that extract from Conrad’s story does not insinuate a theistic worldview, but a world undiscovered or a history not yet told. It alludes to the hazy, arcane philosophy of existence that the stories of Conrad evoke. Even the presence of words like ‘faith’ and ‘hope’ in classic fiction, moreover, should not fool us into assuming that a Christian, or even theistic, philosophy is being hinted at. Redemption, to secular writers, is nothing more than what a materialistic or evolutionary worldview allows. Their highest end is to provide some alternative to literal redemption. This is done because while they eschew the biblical redemption and hold the materialistic worldview, the craving for redemption remains. The materialistic worldview will not bear a real redemption, only a blind leap into an uncharted firmament. But, in the words of a Puritan: “Is salvation per saltum (obtained with a leap)?” (Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance, p. 100.) The biblical redemption involves the holy making contact with sin: Jesus taking on sin, what the Bible calls Jesus ‘becoming sin’ to save sinners. Faith in this is that which saves. The blind leap, contrariwise, is made by persons who would rather take a chance trusting in something less convicting, which something is always undiscoverable; the existential leap is attempted when the closed universe of atheism becomes intolerable. The authentic redemption is convicting because it reminds a sinner about the cross where sin was paid for with the blood of a sinless Saviour who, though born of a woman, is nevertheless from heaven. Even if the impenitent author has gotten only a vague impression of this through his acquaintance with the word, or account, of redemption, it may be enough convicting information to put him off. So he is careful to compose an alternative form that will be something less than an allegory, or even reminder, of the authentic historical redemption. This is what Conrad commonly does. Here, in contradistinction, is a specimen of sublime composition which does not reach up into a void: “Before the first morning of creation dawned, ere ever eternal silence was broken by the angel’s song, or primeval ether had been fanned by the seraph’s pinion, God was the supremely Blessed One; and this blessedness of His nature, by the Beatific Vision, He will impart unto His children” (James Killen, The Inhabitants of Heaven, pp. 54, 55.) Unlike the high-flown prose of Joseph Conrad and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Killen’s exalted utterance is grounded in biblical divinity, and thus, eternity. Objective truth has influenced his message. The tone is Psalm-like; the content, even without context, makes us suspect that its author’s thoughts are tethered to the cross—to where the only bona fide redemption has taken place; and the style is as luxurious as, if not more luxurious than, anything that Conrad was able to compose. When classic fiction is read, it is well to keep in mind that the mysterious worlds that we are led into by it are often varieties of never-never lands that do not parallel the metaphysical reality that Christians believe in. It is not wrong to write a narrative like that if it is made clear that a biblical worldview stands apart from it as the standard by which everything is judged. The fiction of Joseph Conrad is instructive, especially for atmosphere and style, or tone and eloquence; but its worldview is mystical in a dangerous way. His kind of fiction contains gins and snares that we are apt to step into.

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION IV

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.

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION III

What is a classic in the world of fiction? My arbitrary rule is this: Generally speaking, classic fiction does not include literature that has been published after the year 1900. A good rule of thumb is that Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) marks the end of the fiction classic. Dracula is elite fiction still, as high beside present-day award-contenders as the stovepipe hat is beside the Irish cap of Joyce. James Joyce, by the way, is one of the authors that we are so often told to read, and who is not even read by the people doing the telling. Not reading his Ulysses is no cause for flagellation. His merit may be judged, and should be judged, by something that takes minutes to read, not dozens of hours; therefore one should read his story called Clay. Like real clay, Clay is grey and inert. Reading Clay is comparable to eating clay, I suppose; it is tasteless consumption. When snobs are being self-critical for having never read Ulysses, the reason must be that word has gotten around about how unapproachably boring it is. When the subject is about never having read Dickens, the self-judgment seems to whisper ‘really should,’ while for Joyce it’s ‘do I really have to?’

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION II

Classic fiction should be used by us as classical Greek literature was used by seminary professors and preachers of the 19th century and before: as a handmaid to Christian knowledge and rhetoric. These professors and preachers courted familiarity with the writings of the Greek masters in order to learn ancient history, hone their skills in New Testament Greek, broaden their understanding of literature and philosophy, and develop their rhetorical skills through the Grecian example. Aware that to ancient Greek writers, God usually was, at most, an impersonal absolute, an indefinite principle, or a pantheon, they read with caution. They knew that perilous bypaths and hazardous emphases would be encountered in these secular demesnes; and they were always on guard because of this. Just as theologians have learned from ancient Greek authors, we have much to learn from the modern classics that have superseded Greek literature. But there are dangers. Many readers—even readers who are treated as spokesmen for the Christian faith—commonly mistake theism for Christianity, and morality for a state of grace. This they do as they read classics like The Brothers Karamazov and Moby Dick. Then they pass their mistaken assumptions down to the students they lecture to. A piece of literature is not Christian even if it is a classic containing ethical overtones and even if moral lessons can be gleaned from it. Oliver Twist, for example, is not a Christian novel. Neither is The Scarlet Letter, though Puritan Christians are caricatured in it. Even Samuel Johnson’s History of Rasselas is not Christian, though it is about as morally flawless as fiction can be. A solid example of Christian fiction would be R. L. Stevenson’s Misadventures of John Nicholson. It parallels the Parable of the Prodigal Son so straightly that I have no doubt that this was one reason why Charles Neider excluded it from The Complete Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson was not a Christian; but that story is a Christian story. A non-Christian story is one which contravenes the Christian worldview: its presentation of the world. A story that does not contravene it, however, is not necessarily Christian.

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION I

 

Once in awhile it is interesting to grow an article by degrees and to allow it to branch off in various directions without worrying about it imparting anything more than a sense of the subject being considered. A thesis that is permitted to gnarl and curl might produce some admirable effect that a methodical arrangement is incapable of. The reader of a discursive article has the advantage—if told beforehand of the article’s discursive character, that is—of being relieved of his duty to pinpoint each and every connection that the loose-jointed article sketchily exhibits. By a relaxed hold on the article, moreover, the reader’s mind may be eased into that elastic humor from which musing prompts follow-ups if not projects of one’s own. This article came to be as I began to muse on common dangers that I noticed among sophisticated writers and critics of fiction. It is more academic than I am in the habit of writing. Despite this drawback, the dangers pointed out in it require me to extract it from my cabinet and include it as one of my installments on cultural criticism. Though ‘classic fiction’ and ‘literary fiction’ may be used synonymously, for the purpose of this essay my categories are these: classical fiction (ancient Greek or Roman), classic fiction (modern classics), literary fiction (post-classic highbrow), and pulp fiction (lowbrow.)  

Recently an excellent discussion came over the radio about how the Hindu religion is introduced into communities where other faiths predominate. One method is to offer seemingly innocuous Yoga classes. This brings Hinduism in gradually and by stealth. Mantras are assigned for new clients to repeat, the true meanings of which are withheld or lied about. Thus, unsuspecting newcomers who have adopted Yoga for no other reason than to unwind are tricked into worshiping false gods. Once the connection to the spiritual world has been made in this way, forces have begun to exert their pull; subsequently, these new enthusiasts are drawn to continue what they had never started if only they had known that Yoga is a conduit to Hinduism. 

Just as Yoga is a channel to Hinduism, classic fiction is an avenue leading to more sophisticated compromises. The hook is not a mantra in an unknown tongue, but a tongue well-spoken in a handsomely bound book. 

Because the novel is usually about characters moving toward the end of a storyline, fiction is more apt to addict readers than non-fiction. Add a literary aesthetic, or an ornate style, and the appeal is enhanced even more. Some readers are hooked on fiction of an inelegant sort, which, invariably, is contemporary if not scatological as well. If such persons were to develop a taste for genteel composition, they would soon be, unless grounded in something more beneficial and satisfying than fiction, prostrated before the 19th century classics. Should their palates be made sensitive enough to savor refined productions, their attachment would be more decided than their former obsession with baser material because that which is more beautiful more strongly attracts and holds. This attachment would be more hazardous because the better written word may be so adorned with beauty, that sin gains, with little protest, the approbation of the reader; furthermore, because of its ingenious presentation, the reader can be hoodwinked into falsehood. When it comes to books, delicacies are more dangerous than common fare. C. S. Lewis, though not in the same league as John Bunyan, nevertheless exhibited more panache than most famous authors of the 20th century have. There is no doubt that the man was too fond of fiction, and that, because of this love, he did not adequately ground himself in theology; therefore and thereby, his theology, informed and influenced by mythology, accidentally endangered his readers. C. S. Lewis was influenced to a fault by the literature of the fabulous. This is evident in the way spiritual realities are sometimes described in his writings, like when (I can’t remember where) he speaks of Jesus heaving sin upon his shoulder, which reminds us, not of what literally happened, but of something that a mythological god might do. This is dangerous to the reader, for it can induce him to romanticize the cross. C. S. Lewis was the victim of fiction; his readers are victims through his non-fiction, notwithstanding his valuable contributions. Is it extreme to assert that his non-fiction is jeopardous? Well, he says this in his essay, Christianity and Literature: “I am not here supporting the doctrine of total depravity, and I do not say that the New Testament supports it.” How wrong is C. S. Lewis on this point? How total is man’s depravity since the Bible says that the sinner is ‘dead in sins’? (Ephesians 2.5.) Man is totaled; this is why he must be born again. The reason why C. S. Lewis made this fundamental trespass in theology was because he was a man of fiction more than non-fiction. It is anecdotal that he read the works of Shakespeare in the space of just one year. That is misdirected dedication.