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 Just as theologians have learned from ancient Greek authors, we have much to learn from the modern classics that have superseded Greek literature.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.

PART II, ARTICLE II: THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF A POSTMODERN POET, SECTION X

Poetry like Two Ghazals falls under the category of ‘vain imagination’ (Romans 1.21.) This conduct follows from suppressing the truth of God’s eternal power. And this power the revelation of nature gives us an abundant witness of. The ‘foolish heart’ can become darkened so much that a ‘reprobate mind’ is the end result (verse 28.) John Thompson suffered from mania, depression, and paranoia before he died of drugs and booze (and suicide) in 1976 at the age of thirty-eight. After an unnamed illness (probably a stroke) Patrick Lane, his servile critic, lost his ability to think clearly enough to write, having attempted suicide several times throughout his life. He did put a novel out in 2018 before turning eighty. So recovery, this time and for awhile, was granted by the God of grace. But the God of grace is also the God of wrath. God is also like this: “According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompense” (Isaiah 59.18.) The heart is darkened by vain imaginations; and, if persisted in, the practice of vainly imagining, or playing with ignis fatuus (foolish fire), leads to delusional thinking, abandonment, and, finally, the wrath of God (Romans 1.) The doltish fabrications of a postmodern poet are like these vain imaginations that are cursed by the Creator of man’s mind—our fearsome Creator who must be sought and found before the billows of death discomfit the mortal body to its core. Writing like in Two Ghazals is literary leprosy; every reader who comes across it should declare it to be unclean, and then walk away. This aberrant brand of writing, which is an insult to language and the image of God in man, should, for the sake of one’s mental wellbeing and ever-living soul, be abandoned speedily without looking back. 

Writing dissonant verse might be fun for persons who do not highly aspire or who want to fit in somewhere. Coming up with words that clash instead of contribute is like a game without a goal. An aimless practice is bad enough. But like a woman counting calories or a man counting his ‘gains’ from weightlifting, writing discordant verse can become an obsession through the praise received for participating. Weightlifters are praised by other weightlifters in spite of hazarding their bodies through steroids. Anorexics are praised by other anorexics in spite of endangering theirs. Iconoclastic poets are praised by their likeminded, empty-headed brethren for wasting their minds inventing dissociative things to say. And all self-harming persons have enablers among non-practitioners.  Who wants to hurt the feelings of a bodybuilder by telling him his muscles look grotesque? Who wants to sadden the calorie-counter by telling her she looks like a victim straight out of Auschwitz? Who wants to tell the proud poet that his poetry is illiterate madness? It is tempting to overlook the behavior, feign praise, and change the subject.

Any writer hoping to be noticed can get caught up in the vain practice of far out forms and techniques. Even way back in 1897, it could, with good reason, be asserted that: “The subject-matter of the art of the upper classes growing continually more and more limited, it has come at last to this, that to the artists of these exclusive classes it seems as if everything has already been said, and that to find anything new to say is impossible. And therefore, to freshen up this art, they look out for fresh forms…As soon as ever the art of the upper classes separated itself from universal art, a conviction arose that art may be art and yet be incomprehensible to the masses. And as soon as this position was admitted, it had inevitably to be admitted also that art may be intelligible only to the very smallest number of the elect, and, eventually, to two, or to one, of our nearest friends, or to oneself alone” (Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? pp. 73, 80.) Gibberish, like amnesia or senility, leads to isolation. We are one step further, even, than the author’s art being intelligible to ‘oneself alone.’ Even the author, now, doesn’t know what his poem means. 

The fastest track to popularity is to write what the doorkeepers of literature want to see. But at what cost is it to write like a man gone mad? Should a writer sacrifice his intellect and soul by writing balderdash just because the dandies have decided that balderdash is the new genius? “This wretched brain gave way, and I became a wreck at random driven, without one glimpse of reason or of heaven” (Thomas Moore.) Write one poem that makes less sense than a few phrases of prose cobbled indiscriminately together, send it to a highbrow hipster whose platform sets the fashion, and you might be, on account of irresistible pride and magnetic fame, set on a path to invent crazy verses to the end of your sorry, unsaved life. Go down a road that you should never travel on, God might leave you to it, you will fill up your measure of iniquity, and it will make an eternity of difference. 

PART II, ARTICLE II: THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF A POSTMODERN POET, SECTION IX

Our society was in a shabby state already when experience presided over essence, when ‘eat, and drink, and be merry’ mattered more than who you were and where you came from. But this practical atheism leads to existentialism or nihilism, or to each one of them back and forth. So people commonly go from trying to hope in, or experience, something above what they believe in (existentialism) to feeling hopeless and acting like it because they find no reason to believe that life is meaningful (nihilism.) Not only are words dead; Western civilization is dying. It could live; but it doesn’t have the will. When rationalist man becomes too proud to rely on the God of the Bible, he seeks truth without God’s revelatory help. Finding no truth, he quits looking for it, and tries to be satisfied with eating, drinking, and making merry: drugs, drinks, cars, traveling, sports, sex, or what have you. After this fails to satisfy, existential angst takes over and wins out. So he seeks a grandiose experience to have faith in or he falls into a condition of hopelessness. Seeking no more the truth because they think it can’t be found, the rationalist philosopher and the postmodern poet go about killing off communication; and the lost society that they exhibit goes about dismantling or demolishing everything that a belief in God’s truth once built. “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation” (Matthew 12.25.) We need the power of God in Jesus to exclaim, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23.34.) But ignorance and impenitence may prevail in order to bring judgment down for sin. After Jesus rose from the dead, he stated, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” (Luke 24.25, 26.) It may be that the epitaph of Western civilization will be, “Ought not it to have suffered these things, and to enter into bedlam and hell?” 

The condition of today’s poet is one of despair. He is as articulate as a ‘reconstructed ancyclical’ and as pointless as ‘a tin wing in the wind.’ Like in Two Ghazals, he ‘never sees the sun’ and always ‘looks for the darkest place,’ even when he speaks of ‘the Bread of Heaven’—the Bread of Heaven who is, the Bible says, ‘the light of the world.’ If he had ever eaten this Bread, there would be no despair, his darkness would be flooded with light and color, and poetry marked by entropy would die off. There is no coming out of this condition unless despair is not so far gone as to make dread impossible. Despair is to lose hope, maybe to the point of hopelessness; dread, however, may lead to hope through faith. The poet of our time is in a state of despair because his philosophy is not filtered through faith in a transcendent personality.

About John Thompson’s last book of poems, Patrick Lane says, “The poems are sometimes grim but they are by a poet writing at the farthest reach of his mind.” If the poems are like the Two Ghazals, they must be entirely grim and they must come from, not only the farthest, but the darkest and deadest part of his mind. The character in Two Ghazals, together with the author himself, is in a state of despair that was wrought from the philosophical belief that truth cannot be found and should not be sought. Each soul that has abandoned, is at odds with, or is distanced from, the truth wherein the remedy is for both despair and dread, must not dally with time. He has no time to waste on playing with words to form meaningless verse. Before despair becomes utter despair, it is possible for a sense of dread to lead to prayer, life, and relief. “I have not sought Thee, I have not found Thee,/I have not thirsted for Thee:/And now cold billows of death surround me,/Buffeting billows of death astound me,—/Wilt Thou look upon, wilt Thou see/Thy perishing me?” (Christina Rossetti, Love is Strong as Death.) The voice in this 19th century poem goes from dreading to seeking in an instant. Conversely, the distinguishing mark of postmodernism is resolute skepticism. If you believe that certain knowledge is unobtainable, and you are a writer, you might see no use for reason or rules and no rationale to make sense, much less to create beauty. It will seem reasonable, then, even though reason itself is not believed in, to despair. But if sin has not filled its measure to end in despair yet, the soul may reach up and out to the God that he has been told does not exist, and ask, even while ‘buffeting billows of death astound’—: “wilt Thou look upon, wilt Thou see/Thy perishing me?” The poet of this present age, like the people whose lives reflect the bleak world of the poet’s miserable verse, is fast approaching an irremediable, irredeemable end in the absence of God’s favor.

PART II, ARTICLE II: THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF A POSTMODERN POET, SECTION VIII

Circling back, now, to Thompson’s Two Ghazals to finish off this present put-down of postmodern verse: In his brief commentary, as noted earlier, Mr. Lane quotes Thompson’s reason for using this form of poetry (which has no form): “My interest in the form lies in the freedom it allows—the escape from brief lyric unity.” Mr. Lane interprets: “So the poems move as the mind moves, quickly, leaping from association to association, from image to thought, from idea to rhythm.” They leap because connecting thoughts are not supplied.   

Thompson’s “interest in the form lies in the freedom it allows—the escape from brief lyric unity.” What is he freeing himself from? He is freeing himself from the hard work of composing real poetry: concise, comprehensible verse that is songlike and lucid. He is freeing himself from making intelligible statements. He is freeing himself from the limitations of making sense. This is frightening because the poet represents, to a degree, the age in which we live. The fact is that millions of people parallel Thompson’s broken poetry in their fragmented, disjointed, inconsistent lives. There are souls who hold to no planned routine to advance in life because welfare and charity are no longer linked to responsibility and a sense of gratitude. People leap from association to association because the thread of truth no longer holds friendships together. They leap from fornication to church to fornication and back because connections between faith, obedience, and church discipline have been severed. Or a pastor, in his preaching, leaps from the love of God to forgiveness because love and forgiveness have been cut off from the doctrines of sin, condemnation, and repentance. This is easily demonstrated by the fact that most Christians believe it is their duty to forgive others regardless of whether the duty of repentance is fulfilled by the guilty party. (But see Luke 17.3, 4.) This idea of unconditional forgiveness is a falsehood that comes straight from the pulpit, which, these days, is just the world’s lectern inside the church. Churchgoers even talk of forgiving themselves, which is as unbiblical an act as it is an impossible one. Frustration is rampant because confusion is ubiquitous. If we have no system of truth in our minds—if our minds are not connected to a system of truth—we will not lead systematic, satisfying, orderly lives. The system of theology is as dead to the pastor as the elements of poetry are dead to the poet. It is natural and appropriate to laugh at modern art and staccato poetry. We should laugh these abominations out of every department of humanity. But we should cry at how our lives are walking, breathing Ghazals. Like these Ghazals, we are not defined. We don’t know what or who we are. We are more than ‘tin wings in the wind’; but we scarcely act like it. Large numbers of us are as connected to the philosophy of Thompson’s poems as his poems are disconnected in thought. We must be driven by fear to seek integrity of life. Churches need to teach and enforce the conjunctions between doctrine, faith, and obedience; Christians in name only need actual new life through doctrine faithfully communicated and spiritually applied; and atheistic unbelievers need to start from scratch by acknowledging there is an infinite-personal God to be reckoned with and reconciled to.   

Today’s poet can communicate. He does it every day. He engages very well to get his disengaging poetry noticed by newspaper editors and literary judges. But without knowing it, and thinking his poetry is good and maybe great, he fulfills a fatal role by writing a word that is as crazy as the world is bent. There is a wicked harmony in this. And it is decreed, no doubt, by an angry, offended God. It is not just for the Amorites of old to fill up the measure of their iniquity (Genesis 15.16.) The Amorites are no exception. Filling up the measure, as Jesus puts it, is a principle carried over into New Testament times (Matthew 23.32; Romans 9.22.) It is to the purpose of bringing down wrath ‘to the uttermost’ for the commission of sin (1 Thessalonians 2.16.) It is a principle that carries over unto us. Writers, like everyone else, must fill up the measure of their iniquity because God will have his fill of judging. “But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12.36.)

PART II, ARTICLE II: THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF A POSTMODERN POET, SECTION VII

The apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to hold fast the ‘form of sound words,’ by which he means, ‘Christian doctrine’ (2 Timothy 1.13.) How lamentable is it to have to exhort our anti-intellectuals (our university professors and their radical students) to hang on to English sense! In that same letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul prophesies the coming of a ‘form of godliness’ among professors of Christianity; in other words, a religion in outward form only, without authenticity and power. Our phony poets are like these empty professors of religion; they are empty professors of literature. In fact, their poems are not even on the level of outward form, as hypocritical professors of Christianity are. Even though they are extolled as the gurus of literature, they are counterfeits in their field; and, it is regretful and biblical to say, fools. (But for the grace of God go we.) If postmodernist poetry is groundbreaking, it breaks ground, not toward a new primitivism merely, but beyond primitivism toward that which is ‘without form, and void,’ where ‘darkness’ is ‘upon the face of the deep.’ The authors of monstrous verse like this must be lost souls indeed! Our prayer for these creatures of the deep must be, Let there be light, O God! Formless poems originate from darkness. Light from the voice of God is what their authors need the most. “O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles” (Psalm 43.3.) 

Undecipherable poems come predominantly, if not exclusively, from leftist milieus; this makes perfect sense. Leftist Duckspeak strikingly aligns, not with socialism merely, but with 1984’s socialist party, Ingsoc. By flipping through the parts of 1984 that I have highlighted, I am struck by how much today’s Left has in common with Ingsoc. Like Ingsoc, it came of age in the 1960s (p. 120.) Like Ingsoc, it tries to control the future by controlling the past; that is to say, by rewriting it (pp. 119, 125.) Like Ingsoc, it likes to keep small rules (like whether you can provide straws in your restaurant or not), but feels free to break big ones (like assisting illegal migrants and facilitating terrorism, p. 209.) Really, it will break any rule if it thinks it won’t get caught (p. 230.) It censors its opponents (p. 126) to such a degree as to remind us of ‘Thought Police’ (pp. 97, 100.) Its members are so robotically subservient to this ideology that they seem unconscious (p. 139.) Its most prejudiced adherents are young women (p. 97.) Its object is persecution for its own sake; and its end is power. Mark it, power is not its means, but its end (p. 338.) Its notion of Freedom is Slavery to the State (p. 339.) And, which brings us back to the subject at hand, its ‘heresy of heresies’ is ‘common sense’ (p. 162.) The Ingsoc of 1984 and the Postmodern Left are virtually the same thing. It is from this wicked womb that the worst of the worst writing is born. Stillborn literature may be given a semblance of life; but it cannot truly live; so it is destined not to last. If our neo-Marxists would use the embryotomy scissors on their literature instead of on the heads of babies in the womb, how much better off would the world be and how much less deserving of the LORD’s indignation and fury?         

When it is no longer deemed necessary for words to come together to form rational thoughts, writing has become purposeless employment. Maybe it has a little purpose, for words are still being used and the fingers are getting some exercise. The next step on the descending ladder is the use of non-words, like those CAPTCHA words that we are made to type in order to prove we’re not robots on internet sites—words like ‘tbilin’ and ‘baliti,’ the last two ‘words’ that I had to type into ‘Google Books’ in order to access a public domain document. We are already, to a degree, on this next step, for non-words like ‘ancyclical’ and ‘Ghazal’ are not hard to find in contemporary poems. It is now popular for poets to perplex instead of enlighten or even inform. Commenting on a poem by another blinding poet, Rita Dove, Mr. Lane says, “I leave this poem as mystified as I was when I entered it...Questions follow questions. A great poem does that. Sometimes there are no answers” (The Globe and Mail, June 17th, 2000.) Offer such poetry to 19th century England and you might qualify for a room in a lunatic asylum. Questions are more desired than answers because postmodern philosophy is about truth being undiscoverable, and therefore, unprofitable to look for.