I struggled with titling this post because I don’t want it to sound like a thoroughly thought through treatise on the topic. However, I jettisoned my original plan for today’s post to respond to Angela Savage’s question on my CWF post on the Robbie Arnott interview because it seemed worth exploring.
If you haven’t read that post, the gist is that Robbie Arnott talked about why he writes fiction and what he likes to read. Responding to a question about whether fiction does something, he made clear that for him it does (or at least that he would like it to.) Fiction, he said, can expand our consciousness, can make us feel things. We come away a different person after reading it. In this way fiction shapes who we become. Later in the interview, he talked about there being a moral aspect to everything we do, which for him, includes writing. This translates into his feeling a strong responsibility, for example, to tell stories about the land in a way that improves our country. My response to this was that I loved Arnott’s absolute commitment to fiction – to its ability to change us, and to its moral (but not didactic) heft.
Enter the lovely Angela Savage, award winning novelist, former director of Writers Victoria, and current CEO of Public Libraries Victoria who comments occasionally on my blog. She commented on the post with:
Interestingly, I just read an article arguing against the premise that literature/fiction needs to be moral or change us. Would be interested in your opinion.
The article appeared in last Friday’s The Conversation, and is by Dan Dixon, Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Sydney. It’s titled “Friday essay: what do publishers’ revisions and content warnings say about the moral purpose of literature?” It was inspired by two recent issues: the controversy about the rewriting of passages from authors like Roald Dahl to remove “potentially offensive material”, and the “precautionary measure” being adopted by some publishers of adding content warnings and disclaimers to some older books.
It’s a thoughtful piece, and I recommend it to you because I only going to discuss bits of it here, the bits that relate to my answer to Angela’s question.
Dixon makes the point that the media only becomes interested in literary stories when there are “moral concerns” and that these discussions are part of a “moral battle which encourages the application of the same ethical criteria to books that might be apply to elected officials or ministers of religion.” He then suggests that writers’ festival programs demonstrate that we “struggle” to talk about books on any other terms.
Dixon looks at the economic drivers behind these controversies and how they can commodify books. He recognises that literature is affected by the marketplace but argues that it also pushes back against that. Do read his argument if you are interested. Meanwhile, I want to focus on his exploration of what literature is about.
A common question, he says, is:
is there a necessary connection between a work’s literary value and its moral quality? When we read a book do we expect a degree of moral instruction, as to how we should or should not live?
He believes this is a worthwhile question, but that it is not the only question. Literature is more than this. Indeed, he argues that limiting discussion to moral debates encourages “definitive judgements” which enables us, he says, to
avoid what Keats described as negative capability: “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.
This is where I want to come in, because I am perfectly happy with what Dixon calls “the unpleasantness of irresolution” – and so, I believe, is Robbie Arnott. In Limberlost, for example, Ned’s daughters confront him with being a farmer on stolen land. Arnott believe it was important for Ned to be confronted with this fact, that to ignore the issue would not be real. But he offers no resolution, no moral closure; it just sits there, as it often does in life.
I’m not sure what Arnott meant exactly by his statements, but I think he’s right that there’s a moral aspect to everything. However, I don’t think he means, as a result, to provide the moral answers. In fact, I’m confident that he knows there aren’t necessarily any, or at least not easy ones. Rather, I understood him to mean that he is aware of the moral implications of the way we live and wants to include those in his books, because that’s real. This is subtly different from saying there must be a moral to the story (to literature, to any art).
Now, I’ll return to Dixon and some things he says about literature. First:
The best literature can be spiky, ambiguous, difficult, cruel, strange, unpredictable, hectoring and unpleasant. It is not the job of a book to ease the life of its reader. Reading a good book might mean having a terrible day, a day in which you are scared, sad, distressed.
I can agree with this. Arnott’s point that you come away changed could work with this!
Then Dixon says:
But literature does not have an obligation to be useful; we do not have to learn anything from it. It need not produce anything except a readerly response.
I also agree with this. My belief is that, at the purest level, the only thing literature (art) needs to be is whatever its creator wants it to be. It is then up to the reader/viewer/listener (whatever the art form is) to decide whether they appreciate the art. I know this is simplistic as creators are, for a start, constrained by any mix of economic, legal, social, political and practical factors, but this is my theoretical starting point.
Returning to Dixon one more time, he says near the end of his piece that “any argument that treats literature as fundamentally therapeutic, self-improving or society-improving, risks reducing literature to self-help”. This is a bit trickier, but I think it hangs on the word “treat”. And it takes me back to my previous point. If I argue that literature doesn’t “need” to be anything, then by definition I should not “treat” it as needing to be something. I can, however, prefer literature that tries to improve or change things. A fine line perhaps but I think it’s defensible.
I therefore like Dixon’s conclusion that the best way to think about literature might be as a “conversation”. He expands this to say that conversations “can be morally nourishing or deadening … neither good nor bad”. Seeing literature this way suggests for him that “reading resembles conversation … an ongoing exchange between reader and writer”. Which brings me back to Arnott who sees novels as a two-way communication between author and reader, one in which he’d love to know whether what he feels resonates with the reader.
I hope I’ve answered Angela’s question, and I also hope I have accurately represented Arnott in terms of the question. What do you think?
Whispering Gums 
The article by Dixon causes rage in this ancient, ST, as you would expect.
Frankly, its double topic gives me the shits bigtime.
I even find it difficult to apologise for my language within your marvellous blog.
I’d love to hear why SUCH rage MR. I’m assuming you agree with Dixon that these are problematic practices? (I wrote this thinking it was a reply to you but it got published as a separate comment, so I am adding it again now in the right spot!)
Because there is absolutely zero excuse for using the “mores” of today (such as they, pathetically, are) to change what’s gone before.
Thanks MR. That’s what I thought you probably meant, but wanted to make sure!
I endorse that. The current fad of removing statues is in that category too.
I think the better approach is to ADD statues. If space becomes an issue or if there are particularly egregious examples of comemoration then some judicious rearrangement or removal could be justified, but wholesale kneejerk removal is not necessarily the answer.
Reading your post and Dixon’s article, I wondered: How many times has the Bible been rewritten to suit the times, or to satisfy the convictions of its editors?
Then was your pertinent reminder that literature “needs to be [only] what its creator wants it to be.”
That irascible artist Whistler contended that art has nothing to say any more than music does. Art (painting, sculpture, etching), he said, is a symphony (or nocturne) of colours, as music is of notes. Art is for the artist.
And that told me more about art than I’d ever learned from art critics. We can surely discuss and reviews books, but is it moot to criticise them?
Good point re the Bible, Phil.
Was Whistler saying that music says nothing or that like art music doesn’t have to say anything? I would agree of course that music (as one of the arts) need only be what its creator wants it to be, but like visual art and literature, music very often, and very clearly says something – just look at its use for all sorts of purposes, sometimes quite nefarious.
Doesn’t have to? Whistler’s gist (direct quotes):
“Art [purposes] in no way to better others. She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only—having no desire to teach—seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest Rembrandt…
“No reformers were these great men—no improvers of the way of others! Their productions alone were their occupation, and, filled with the poetry of their science, they required not to alter their surroundings…
“…the artist is born to pick, and choose… these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony.”
~ Mr Whistler’s Ten O’clock
However, although literature is a creative act that need only satisfy the author, unlike paint strokes and musical notes, words have meaning. Writers can ignore, but not escape, their effect on us. And we can’t be blamed for seeking meaning or instruction in a book.
Few of us read just to enjoy the wordsmithery.
Thanks very much for taking the time to do this Phil. I’m not sure I completely agree that paint strokes and musical notes don’t have meaning, but certainly words have more in-your-face meaning which results as you say in its being harder to escape.
Probably few of us read JUST to enjoy the wordsmithery, but I think many of us prefer books where the wordsmithery is a significant element.
I can see you’re busy with the commentary, so no further response expected. However, re your final reply, I don’t claim that as the absolute, just agree with Whistler that it’s the starting point for all art and literature. He was in full argument with critics at the time, asserting that painting was primarily about harmony of tones and colours. He was taking much flak from critics for his later, more ‘abstract’ works.
And who doesn’t relish a master wordsmith! In fact, Whistler was one such, excoriating his critics mercilessly, including, of all people, Oscar Wilde :0)
Ah, context is all, always, isn’t it. That makes sense re Whistler. (Couldn’t resist replying.)
I’m glad I’m not working today, WG, you’ve certainly set us a lot of homework. You, and the people you’ve quoted have conflated two different questions: should literature be moral? and should children’s literature be moral? The answer to the second is an unequivocal yes. If we are to have a moral society then our children must be brought up morally. And it would seem to me that unrestricted viewing of violent television, movies and games means that by and large, they are not. Books, moral or otherwise, will have very little influence, though more (hopefully) when the children are very young. So I agree that children’s classics should be revised before they are reprinted, and in any case the implied message in the books (and other media) should be discussed with children. The problem of course is getting agreement on what is moral, as we see now in the US South.
Which brings us to censorship. The left, of which I am a part, seems to oppose censorship only when it involves censorship of left wing views. That rule about standing up for the rights of your opponents also applies to censorship. Choosing what to censor, for adults, is so problematic, that all censorship should be opposed altogether.
So should (adult) literature be expected to have a moral purpose? No. Though you and I might choose only to read literature which has morals we are comfortable with.
Thanks Bill … my, there’s a bit to chew over here. I take your point about conflating the two but I wasn’t really wanting to engage with that aspect. Anyhow, I’m not sure agree that children’s literature SHOULD be moral, though there’s definitely a place for the exploration of values on the page for children. I think there’s an argument for at least some children’s literature being fun and silly, for creating a joy in words and their sounds, with how you can play with them, because that can surely bring them into a joy in reading.
And haha, re your final point. It’s true that not only do I like literature to have a purpose but I also I struggle more with reading fiction that seems to espouse values I don’t like. Not a good look perhaps.
Yay Bill !!!!
During the recent campaign for the arts to be taken seriously by the new government, all kinds of values were articulated as part of the submissions (coordinated by ASA) that went to the minister, and among them there were moral claims for literature… not in a didactic sense but in the empathy sense, bringing awareness of issues and understanding of others not like ourselves. As a teacher, whose job it was to read stories to children, that’s what I aimed for, talking with the Preps about how the poverty of the couple who killed the Golden Goose might explain their foolish greed, and with the Year Sixes about the ambiguities of the Othering in the story of Beowulf. It is what Arnott does so well in Limberlost.
But that is not all that I want from literature. I balk at reading books based on gratuitous violence as entertainment, but I’ve read some very unedifying books in my time. They’ve been fun, or interesting, or thought-provoking or they’ve introduced me to something outside my experience. Books don’t necessarily have to do this, and I make no judgment about the kind of books that others may want to read… but that is what they have to do for me to want to read them.
Thanks Lisa, good point about the moral claims in those submissions. I did briefly reference the point that I liked what seemed to be Arnott’s moral but not didactic heft, though the idea of didacticism wasn’t broached in the session. None of us want to be lectured or finger-wagged at, but many of us want our consciousness raised in all sorts of ways.
I agree that this is not the only thing I want from literature, but I do know that whatever I read, I want to like the writing. I don’t mind escapism, for example, but if the writing and characters are stilted and cliched then I get bored.
I think everything that you have said here makes sense. Then there is the selection of literature for study in schools – when I think there must be a criteria for that which is illuminative of some moral or other positive focus…
Fair point Jim about what is selected for school study … there has to be something to study, and usually that involves the ideas being presented alongside how they are presented. Both, I’d say, need to be there.
I don’t mean anything clearly “preachy” – but I recall Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart or Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird – such classics from 50 years ago and more on the text-book shelves in high schools in NSW and certainly when I was teaching in Japan and taking a university prep class during George Dubya’s horrific invasion war in Iraq in 2003 reading Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword and with succeeding classes various of Roald Dahl’s books (Danny, Champion of the World; his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood) and an award winning book recommended by NSW Children’s book prize judge Ernie Tucker – “holes”, by Louis SACHAR – a moral tale). Measuring of growth and understanding of self via relating to the dilemma’s encountered by the protagonists – as and if the reading (and the teaching) allows for reflection on those elements, I would say.
Yes, I understood that Jim … I can’t imagine your liking something preachy. Cry the beloved country is one of those books I read in my teens that has never left me, What I took away was a sense of generosity that can exist between different people and cultures, even where there are formal power imbalances. I love that so much.
To your last response re Alan Paton’s book – we had a noted South African writer friend in Port Stephens – she came along to the school to meet my Monday Club students – Daphne Rooke. She’d had a bit of back-and-forth between Australia and South Africa (ended up in Cambridge in England – passed away a decade or so ago). During one lengthy period back in South Africa with her family she was a friend of Alan Paton – on cheek-kissing terms, she told me – and she remarked on how similar his speaking voice was to that of Desmond Tutu. I met Ian Glen/n? a Professor from South Africa who came to do a lengthy interview on her as he was preparing to introduce her writing into his university’s literature course – with the ending of the apartheid system – all her books banned during that period were being rediscovered as it were. She was as amazing a face-to-face storyteller as she was a writer… If I recall correctly I was on Samos in 1988 when I read in an English language newspaper that Alan Paton had passed away.
How interesting re Paton’s voice Jim.
I hadn’t heard of Daphne Rooke.
I looked up Prof Ian Glenn after posting this last night and exchanged a couple of mails back-and-forth with him – he suggests not all Daphne Rooke’s novels were banned during the apartheid years. So I stand corrected – some of her titles were: Mittee, The Greyling, Margarethe de la Porte… Oh – and at a catch-up meeting with Newcastle writer Zeny Giles this morning – she praised Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost – now in my digital soon-to-be-read pile!
I love that your did this Jim … and I love that Limberlost is now on your reading list! I’d love to hear what you think when (I hope it’s not if) you get to it.
WG: I am at 40% (it’s on my Kindle app – everything seems to be percentages). Poetically written – and insightfully – into the head of the protagonist as a mid-teen years lad – missing his big brothers at war – one especially so – coming to understand that his Dad loves him – building the boat shed – and that others in the midst of their own anxieties and/or lives can see him – as he begins to see them more clearly. That’s where I am at – up there in the far north-east of Tasmania – and just to-day reading bits from a book (Hobart River Craft & Sealers of Bass Strait by Harry O’May – a foreword by the Premier Eric Reece is the only indication I can find for a possible date of publication and I think during his first period – 1958-1969) – purchased from a Second-Hand bookshop on a visit to Hobart in March 2017 – as I pull out everything from my study and slowly get to reshape it – the easier to find books and files – The book references an ancestor of mine involved in the sealing trade in the islands just to the north – Cape Barren, etc – in the earliest years of the 19th century – and some commercial confrontation with Captain Amasa DELANO (ancestor of FDR). One thing informs another – as is usual – yet somehow comes into view as I am reading Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost at just the right moment.
I love that sort of serendipity Jim – and very glad you are enjoying this book.
You nailed it!
Thank you for an extremely thought-provoking post. I’m not going to wade into the revision of children’s literature (it’s a huge topic and I’m not sure that revisions are necessarily the total answer) but for me it boils down to this – I turn to literature for all sorts of reasons: to be challenged; to be entertained; to be comforted etc At any one time, I can find a book that meets what I need. If that book doesn’t align fundamentally with what I value (from a moral point of view), then it will be ‘challenging’ or ‘thought-provoking’ but regardless, I think literature is intrinsically moral because authors have to take a position in order to create a story.
No, I didn’t want to weigh in on that issue either Kate. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Your point that “literature is intrinsically moral because authors have to take a position in order to create a story” makes a good deal of sense, particularly if we understand moral in its widest meaning. The author doesn’t have to specifically intend it for it to be there.
Yes, another fundamental of writing. Although hardly a moral stand, even the purist with nothing to say, claiming to write for the sheer joy of it, and in private, is taking a position: “look at me” or “here I am” or “I exist.” :0)
Exactly!
I think the bigger question is who gets to be the arbitrar of morality? Why should I be denied the chance to read a certain book because someone has decided it’s immoral?
Also: I’m a big believer in freedom of expression but this does NOT mean you get to say what you want, such freedoms come with consequences / responsibilities, an important aspect that many fail to take into account.
Yes, good point kimbofo … re who gets to be the arbiter of morality. It’s complex though isn’t it as decisions about what to publish are being made all the time, on all sorts of grounds but morality (by whatever name the decisionmakers call it) is, you have to presume, up there.
And I agree with you on freedom of expression, and that it is a responsibility as much as a right.
All those parents who claim certain books are immoral but have never even bothered to read the book really get up my nose. I get outraged when I hear of books being pulled because they feature a gay character, for instance, because how dare they censor a reader’s potential to perhaps see someone like themselves in a story. What right do those parents have to do that? And do they think reading about gay characters is infectious, that their children will become gay by osmosis? I honestly don’t understand the mentality.
I think it’s ever been thus kimbofo in this regard. I remember some parents being outraged when I was a teen in the 1960s about To sir with love and the tampon scene (and not for the reasons we might question it now!) In the 1990s I volunteered in a US elementary school library where books with famous nude art (Michelangelo et al) were removed for K to 2 because they were deemed inappropriate. I couldn’t believe it. Parents worry. Doesn’t make it right but it’s not new!
There’s an old saying that always springs to mind when we start talking about freedoms and responsibilities – “Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins”.
Love it!
I’ve never heard that before Brona … good one.
It’s either one my Pop used to say or I read somewhere a long time ago.
Whatever, it’s a good’un! What do you think you or Mr Books say that the Bs will remember and repeat?
It’s hard to know; they’re still at the eye rolling stage. I suspect it won’t be until they have their own children that certain sayings will suddenly pop out and they surprose us all 🙂
Are there any your kids have taken on board from you & Mr Gums?
Hmm … I know they remember my “less is more” mantra, but I hope they also remember some of the more life-guiding ones. Our son idolised my father and tries to do things that he believed in.
Dear Sue, it gives me such a frisson to inspire a post from you! Thank you for taking my question seriously and for your thoughtful response. It will not surprise you to know that I share your views, believing that literature does not have to be uplifting or enlightening or even entertaining—all the while preferring to read books that deliver on at least one of these aspects.
I think Lisa makes an interesting point re: how we as artists justify—or feel the need to justify—our art. Morality, money and art make for uncomfortable bedfellows (no pun intended) and yet political (and maybe community) support for the intrinsic value of art seems to be at an all-time low. We need to be careful about where our arguments might lead us, especially in light of kimbofo’s comment re: who gets to be the arbiters of morality.
Thanks Angela for the question. I really enjoyed reading that articles s I subscribe to The Conversation but I don’t always catch the reads that would appeal to me! I was nervous about responding because I feel you can spend hours, days and weeks on these sorts of questions. It is so easy to get bogged down – or it is for me – with on the one hand this and on the other that, in this situation this and in the other that, etc. But I tried to keep to the broader essence, and no, I’m not surprised to find you share the ideas.
But, thanks too for taking up Lisa’s point, and kimbofo’s. Nothing is simple, and you are so right about needing to be careful about the arguments and claims we make. All those potential unintended consequences.
All excellent responses – I am with Kimbofo in her forthrightness and I am opposed to bowdlerising of children’s or others’ works in the interest of some warped idea on sanitisation. These are the markers of growth – and if we obliterate the markers there is no visible growth in awareness or sensitivity to certain issues. And thanks to Angela, too.
I am so glad I decided to write a post in answer to Angela’s question because the discussion has been so enjoyable. I agree of course re fiddling with children’s literature – either just don’t give the children the books if you really don’t like them, or share them and discuss them. I liked Lisa’s discussion of how she discussed the Goose Girl with young children. Our aim is to encourage flexible, open-minded people able to understand contexts and nuances, isn’t it?
Jim, I’m a great believer in the expression, ‘Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ I love the way you phrase a similar concept in terms of preserving visible markers of growth. Thanks for that.
Oh I like this too, Angela. The thing that makes me sad is how slowly we learn from history. It feels so much like two steps forward, one step back, but I guess that does mean we are moving forward!
I must say that Dixon’s essay goes nowhere in particular. And “of which our society appears increasingly to comprise”? From a university lecturer?
I would first say that he who does not like the language in Huckleberry Finn is free to write his own novel. If he sets it on the Mississippi River about 1840, the language may be a challenge. If he sets it on the campus of Oberlin College about 2020, well, let him hope that no further taboos come along before the book gets into print. And he who does not care to read Huckleberry Finn is welcome not to read it. But he had better not set himself up as well acquainted with American literature.
I would say second that yes there is a moral element to literature; but setting out to write moral lessons into a work is likely to be disastrous. The works that teachers imagine to be most useful in getting students to think about this often are inferior.
For a meeting of the neighborhood book club in October or November, I am thinking that we might choose the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. I don’t remember that his diction offered anything to offend. (But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the original Italian did). However, Cellini reveals himself as violent felon, a homicide, a beater of his mistress, and generally someone you would not want to know. Still, his book is worth reading.
Fair points all, George, though I liked his essay as a conversation starter which is mostly what I look for these days. I like your Huckleberry Finn analogy on all fronts. And I agree as you’ve probably guessed that there’s a moral element to literature – whether intended or not. As you say, it’s the intention that can bring people down. Children’s books can be particularly egregious in this regard when writers don’t think children are sophisticated enough to see the moral issues without having them rammed down their throats!
And generally I agree with you re the art versus the artist.
I worry about the tend to rewrite the fiction of the past because it reveals a very patronising attitude towards readers.
Oh, that’s an interesting way to see it, Ian, “patronising”, and one I’m inclined to agree with. I, and clearly you, like to think readers are capable to understanding the context within which they are reading.
I too like Jim’s comment about “the markers of growth”, I have said a much more rambling incoherent form of this many times before in relation to this topic, but old books should be able to exist as they were. Commission others to write thoughtful, thought-provoking introductions in new editions that show the growth, that provide the context and discuss what still needs to be done.
To follow on from Kim’s comment ‘whose morals’ and to send it forward…how will future generations judge us? About the climate? New technologies and social media? Cancel culture? Treatment of First Nations peoples? Domestic violence? The widening gap between the haves and have nots? How will modern day artists and authors feel if the art that they have created to reflect their current situation is edited/cancelled/revised to suit the future’s sensibilities?
That question about how future generations will judge us is one I’ve often thought about too, Brona, and was also raised by Rebecca Solnit in her review of Wifedom that Lisa shared. Like you I think adding a good introduction, for example, is the way to go.