11 Comments

Ok G.M. I'm hooked (yes, that means I will try a novel or two of yours). Though this piece immediately brought to mind Conrad's "Preface," you retained your focus on promoting a type of fiction that you want to see created and read. It is interesting writing and well done! I have one thing that I would like you to clear up for me: the first time I encountered the phrase "moral-weight," the story in my brain shouted "importance!" After that, every time I saw the phrase, I was seeing my own yellow phone case: "importance." You obviously chose the phrase carefully. What does it add? (If you answer "moral weight" I'll be laughing my friend).

Expand full comment

Yes, I subbed ‘significance’.

Expand full comment

You subbed better.

Expand full comment

Thanks. So here's why I used moral weight, and not importance.

Suppose you are crossing a bridge. The design and construction of the struts that maintain the structure of the bridge is important to you. If they fail, you will die. But they don't have moral weight for you, so you don't pay any attention to them. The design of those struts has moral weight for the architect who designed the bridge. Their installation has moral weight for the contractor who built the bridge. Their current state has moral weight for the highway department inspector whose job is to make sure the bridge is safe. But you have no responsibility for them at all. You just assume that the other people are doing their job and drive on, paying no attention to the struts at all.

Conversely, when a ball bounces out in front of your car, the child who may or may not have just lost control of it, is not important to you. If they run out in front of a car five minutes after you pass by, you will never know or care that they were killed. Nevertheless, you slam on the brakes because that hypothetical and unseen child has enormous moral weight. Killing a child, even accidentally, even a child that means nothing to you, bears enormous moral weight. Thus the story your driving instructor told you conveys great moral weight to the ball, which affect your vision even though the child in the story is never seen and might not even exist.

So moral weight and importance are not the same thing. You can have one without the other. And we are talking here specifically about how vision works. Vision is local and of the moment. The moral weight of things obviously goes back to some deeper seated principle of value, but in the moment it is about your conduct towards the things that enter into your vision that determines how you see.

Significance perhaps comes a little nearer to it, but things can be important or significant without affecting your conduct in the moment. As far as vision is concerned, moral weight is specific to ones need or intention to act, which is in turn driven by story you are telling yourself about what is important.

And it does come back to moral weight. A skillful storyteller can give moral weight to the fall of a sparrow. The fall of a sparrow is not important, nor is it significant, but a story can make it so. We often give moral weight to things that, on sober analysis, are neither important nor significant. Perhaps that is something literature should seek to correct. Then again, maybe it is something it should seek to celebrate. I'm honestly not sure on that point.

I'm not sure this is an adequate explanation of my thought on this, though. Perhaps it will require an essay of its own. More to ponder here.

Expand full comment

Appreciated! That's an answer. I should have mentioned that I like the phrase, but wanted to know why. You've pointed me in a direction worth exploring. Thanks for that.

Expand full comment

Thanks for another meaty read, Mark. Not convinced by ‘contemplative realism’. I think the quandary/conversation is about what actually counts as real. Stories present visions and it’s hard to judge just how popular a countercultural vision is going to be. I’m personally more concerned with trying to reveal what cannot be seen by what can (as per Flannery) - I think there’s still miles to go in unpacking this.

Expand full comment

I'm not convinced by contemplative realism either. Despite lengthy conversations with one of its practitioners and advocates, it seems poorly defined, and I am not convinced that its methods are well fitted to its purpose. Part of that conversation was my advocating for the capacity of fairy tales to give faces to things unseen, which seems very much in the same vein as your thinking. More on that in a later essay.

Expand full comment

Oh yes, I followed that conversation closely so pretty sure we’re on same hymn sheet. And yes, also agree about fairy tales (as per Chesterton) - perfect form for carrying this. My own cross is an obsession with realist fiction where it’s so much harder to convey but, hey ho, we’re called where we’re called. Look forward to continuation essays.

Expand full comment

The whole "contemplative realism" thing made me think of a book sample I tried reading years ago (I can't remember the title) where the author took multiple pages to recount walking a path through a hedgerow and described each leaf, insect, bird, pebble, dapple of sunshine, and every imaginable emotional and physical sensation associated with the above to the point of ridiculousness. There was a self-indulgence to it that I found really tiresome and, frankly, unrealistic. There is such a thing as too much "seeing."

You make a convincing argument with regard to moral weight and selective attention. I've thought something similar about my own writing choices for a while now. Why I choose to focus on certain topics, themes, characters, or details while excluding others is a bit of a mystery, but it's something I've chosen not to fight because I assume it's part of my "vision" (for lack of a better word, though that sounds pretentious... ;-) It's much the same as painting in oils. I can't depict every detail in a painting; I have to filter for the ones I feel are essential to the image I'm creating, while de-emphasizing others. We're always prioritizing some details over others. It's also largely why I'm drawn to or turned off by other writing, as with the piece referenced above. So there must be an element of moral compatibility about it.

I'm not totally convinced that stories alone can (or should) deliberately "change" culture. There's an effort underway to do just that and it's not doing literature any favors. But there's certainly nothing wrong with writers filtering for their essentials in their work and letting readers decide if they like what they see.

Expand full comment

I agree entirely about the kind of writing you describe. I don't know if that is what contemplative realism is advocating for -- it's really difficult to tease out what it is advocating for -- but the one contemplative realist novel I have read -- Katy Carl's As Earth Without Water -- isn't like that.

But there is, absolutely, such a thing as too much "seeing." Precisely because meaning precedes vision, and visions are constructed from partial information, the brain leaps ahead of the words and constructs a picture. If you keep on pouring in new words after that the brain has to keep correcting that picture, which is tiresome, and eventually it forgets what the initial words were and the whole picture becomes muddy and collapses and you are just left with a big old pile of words. Knowing when to stop is at the heart of the art of description.

There is a tendency, too, to value slowness and stillness over rapidity and movement. But seeing is not less active in movement and rapidity. In many ways you have to attend in a more focused way when moving. And you see more of the world, which is always in movement. You can sit an contemplate a single leaf all day, but you will learn more about trees, and more about the world by taking a brisk walk through the woods.

And yes, on that walk through the woods, there will be moments of stillness, moment when you pause to drink it all in. Wordsworth, the great poet of spots of time, was a great walker. You can try to force such spots of time by sitting in your own garden all day staring at a leaf, but I prefer to put on my boots and go for a hike with Wordsworth.

Expand full comment

I think Contemplative Realism is meant to imply that writers who have faith should have the courage to write about the spiritual realities that are invisible to sceptics and are scorned in our society.

Expand full comment