If the job of the novelist is to depict the experience of being confronted with an issue without getting to the truth of the issue, what about Aesop’s Fables or Grimm’s fairytales? What about parables and proverbs? Are stories allowed to be instructive?
I’ve always thought about it in terms of which part of you is being engaged. Logic and propositional truth appeal to the mind, but we all know what it’s like to understand the thing we should do and still choose not to do it. Usually those decisions are made because we lack emotional agreement or instinctual knowledge. And that’s what stories do - they contextualize cerebral problems in experiential truth.
Its a fair question. My mantra is Stories All the Way Down, and one of the things that means is that when we argue or explain we do so using stories and references to stories. So it is absolutely true that when you are trying to expound or defend a proposition, you will do so using stories. Aesop's fables and Jesus's parables are both examples of this. So yes, logic and propositional truth are argued and defended with stories.
On the other hand, stories can be used to create and share experiences without their being used as tools to argue a proposition. And this, it strikes me, is what the novel is for. Because when you use a story as an instrument of propositional argument, you tend to use a short stories -- no longer of more complex that is required to make your point clear. Fables and parables are good examples of this. A novel is seldom the best instrument for this purpose.
Of course, that leads to the question of whether there is value in providing experience alone, without trying to make a propositional argument. I believe there is. Firstly because we hunger for experience the way we hunger for food and drink. Secondly because experience builds what I suppose we can call fortitude. The ability to face life with equanimity.
Which brings us to your point about the conflict we all feel between appetite and logic -- understanding the things we should do and still choosing not to do them. This is such a common thing in our lives that we can reasonably conclude that reinforcing the logic side of the equation is not the cure. Perhaps increasing our fortitude is at least a partial answer.
So that is my operational justification for novels to focus on experience and avoid didacticism. If the focus goes to the lesson, the bite of the experience is lost. Creating for the reader the experience of the struggle between logic and appetite -- which we might argue is the heart of every serious novel -- is not aimed at refining their logic but at increasing their fortitude. For without fortitude we will never choose logic over appetite.
But there is something else here too. When we argue a case on logic alone (or what we believe is logic alone) we tend to become very uncharitable towards our opponents. Since our case is logical, their disagreement can only be motivated by malice or stupidity. Therefore (logically) those who disagree with us are malicious and stupid. Logic drives out charity and this often leads to barbarous treatment of our opponents.
Focusing on the experience, I hope, can make us more charitable towards our opponents and perhaps even less purblindly certain of the purity of our own logic.
Fortitude and charity are great virtues, both of which are more likely to be forged by experience rather than logic. The novel, if it sticks to its last, can do much to encourage both.
I admire the intention to build fortitude and charity. And studies have shown that the reading of fiction builds empathy, which seems like the pathway to charity. But don’t most novels take a side? Don’t they, at the very least, show certain ways of living and certain choices as more successful than others? How is that not instructional? And if instruction is one of the results of fiction, shouldn’t authors spend some amount of time thinking about the particular instruction they happen to be providing?
How are protagonists and antagonists decided upon? Is it purely about who has the more interesting life? Or are we trying to present one viewpoint as better (more effective, more moral, less harmful) than the other?
Even stories which eschew the well-trod moral logic of our day - like All the Light We Cannot See, which featured a German protagonist and humanized the Nazi side of WWII - are sending a message by *not* sending the typical message.
If that is an effect our novels have then it seems wise to think about and analyze and perhaps even systemize the way we are presenting our claims.
Do most novels take a side? That's actually a somewhat orthogonal question. When you argue a position, it can either be truthful or false. When you create an experience, it can either be true to human experience or false. So the issue of whether a novel should be truthful or false is orthogonal to the question of whether it should be propositional or experiential.
You can take a side while portraying an experience. John Steinbeck was clearly taking a side when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. But he took that side by giving us an experience of the Joad's and their struggles, making us know and love them as human beings. Other than Tom Joad's speech, he did not engage in polemic or argument. He simple created an experience.
Was that experience truthful. I believe so. Was it balanced by the experiences of the California officials and ranchers. No, it was not. In that sense it was clearly partisan. Steinbeck gives us the true experience of people on one side of the conflict. The fact that the Joad's experience is true is not in itself proof that their cause was just or that any particular policy should have been implemented. But the novel certainly had the effect of raising sympathy for the Okies, and therefore causing others to argue for specific policies.
But the thing to notice is that the book lives on long after the political issues have become moot. It lives on because of the power of the experience of travelling the Mother Road with the Joads. The experience is universal, even if the argument is long over.
There is a difference then between arguing a point and supporting a cause. You can support a cause by creating a truthful experience of the people on one side of a conflict. The people on the other side may deserve an equally truthful portrayal of their experience as well. But my point is that the novelist is sticking to their last, even when they are taking sides, if they stick to creating experiences rather than arguing propositions.
If the job of the novelist is to depict the experience of being confronted with an issue without getting to the truth of the issue, what about Aesop’s Fables or Grimm’s fairytales? What about parables and proverbs? Are stories allowed to be instructive?
I’ve always thought about it in terms of which part of you is being engaged. Logic and propositional truth appeal to the mind, but we all know what it’s like to understand the thing we should do and still choose not to do it. Usually those decisions are made because we lack emotional agreement or instinctual knowledge. And that’s what stories do - they contextualize cerebral problems in experiential truth.
Its a fair question. My mantra is Stories All the Way Down, and one of the things that means is that when we argue or explain we do so using stories and references to stories. So it is absolutely true that when you are trying to expound or defend a proposition, you will do so using stories. Aesop's fables and Jesus's parables are both examples of this. So yes, logic and propositional truth are argued and defended with stories.
On the other hand, stories can be used to create and share experiences without their being used as tools to argue a proposition. And this, it strikes me, is what the novel is for. Because when you use a story as an instrument of propositional argument, you tend to use a short stories -- no longer of more complex that is required to make your point clear. Fables and parables are good examples of this. A novel is seldom the best instrument for this purpose.
Of course, that leads to the question of whether there is value in providing experience alone, without trying to make a propositional argument. I believe there is. Firstly because we hunger for experience the way we hunger for food and drink. Secondly because experience builds what I suppose we can call fortitude. The ability to face life with equanimity.
Which brings us to your point about the conflict we all feel between appetite and logic -- understanding the things we should do and still choosing not to do them. This is such a common thing in our lives that we can reasonably conclude that reinforcing the logic side of the equation is not the cure. Perhaps increasing our fortitude is at least a partial answer.
So that is my operational justification for novels to focus on experience and avoid didacticism. If the focus goes to the lesson, the bite of the experience is lost. Creating for the reader the experience of the struggle between logic and appetite -- which we might argue is the heart of every serious novel -- is not aimed at refining their logic but at increasing their fortitude. For without fortitude we will never choose logic over appetite.
But there is something else here too. When we argue a case on logic alone (or what we believe is logic alone) we tend to become very uncharitable towards our opponents. Since our case is logical, their disagreement can only be motivated by malice or stupidity. Therefore (logically) those who disagree with us are malicious and stupid. Logic drives out charity and this often leads to barbarous treatment of our opponents.
Focusing on the experience, I hope, can make us more charitable towards our opponents and perhaps even less purblindly certain of the purity of our own logic.
Fortitude and charity are great virtues, both of which are more likely to be forged by experience rather than logic. The novel, if it sticks to its last, can do much to encourage both.
I admire the intention to build fortitude and charity. And studies have shown that the reading of fiction builds empathy, which seems like the pathway to charity. But don’t most novels take a side? Don’t they, at the very least, show certain ways of living and certain choices as more successful than others? How is that not instructional? And if instruction is one of the results of fiction, shouldn’t authors spend some amount of time thinking about the particular instruction they happen to be providing?
How are protagonists and antagonists decided upon? Is it purely about who has the more interesting life? Or are we trying to present one viewpoint as better (more effective, more moral, less harmful) than the other?
Even stories which eschew the well-trod moral logic of our day - like All the Light We Cannot See, which featured a German protagonist and humanized the Nazi side of WWII - are sending a message by *not* sending the typical message.
If that is an effect our novels have then it seems wise to think about and analyze and perhaps even systemize the way we are presenting our claims.
Do most novels take a side? That's actually a somewhat orthogonal question. When you argue a position, it can either be truthful or false. When you create an experience, it can either be true to human experience or false. So the issue of whether a novel should be truthful or false is orthogonal to the question of whether it should be propositional or experiential.
You can take a side while portraying an experience. John Steinbeck was clearly taking a side when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. But he took that side by giving us an experience of the Joad's and their struggles, making us know and love them as human beings. Other than Tom Joad's speech, he did not engage in polemic or argument. He simple created an experience.
Was that experience truthful. I believe so. Was it balanced by the experiences of the California officials and ranchers. No, it was not. In that sense it was clearly partisan. Steinbeck gives us the true experience of people on one side of the conflict. The fact that the Joad's experience is true is not in itself proof that their cause was just or that any particular policy should have been implemented. But the novel certainly had the effect of raising sympathy for the Okies, and therefore causing others to argue for specific policies.
But the thing to notice is that the book lives on long after the political issues have become moot. It lives on because of the power of the experience of travelling the Mother Road with the Joads. The experience is universal, even if the argument is long over.
There is a difference then between arguing a point and supporting a cause. You can support a cause by creating a truthful experience of the people on one side of a conflict. The people on the other side may deserve an equally truthful portrayal of their experience as well. But my point is that the novelist is sticking to their last, even when they are taking sides, if they stick to creating experiences rather than arguing propositions.