Reveal the Particular, Then Stop

Don't try to reveal the universal. It's too hard and it's not your job.

In her essay on the decadence of modern writing about sex, Lisa Libes writes:

While I am not personally a fan of Lawrence, I recognize his contributions to the literary world; to be sure, Lawrence is a Great Writer™ in the traditional sense of the term because he uses language to reveal the universal through the particular.

No, no, no. That’s not what makes a great writer. A great writer should reveal the particular and then stop. It is the attempt to reveal the universal that turns a hack into a bore. Give me a hack every time.

Just so it’s clear that “universal” is not an off-hand reference in Libes's essay, she goes on:

My beef, then, is not with sex scenes per se but with sex scenes that do not aspire to comment on a universal aspect of human nature.

By the way, if I seem to be picking on Lisa Libes lately, it is because she is interesting and prolific and has a growing audience, which makes her worth commenting on when I disagree with her. And I disagree with her that universality is the measure of good literature. Indeed, this focus on universality leads Libes to a rather strange assertion:

Lawrence’s writing, therefore, is an example of what we call aesthetic beauty. His sex scene is universally recognizable because it is fundamentally not about sex.

This is odd. A sex scene is only good if it is not about sex? Does this apply to other types of scenes as well? Is a battle scene only good if it is not about battle? Is a riding scene only good if it is not about riding? Is a dining scene only good if it is not about dining? Is a courtship scene only good if it is not about courtship?

If there is sex in this scene, it is overshadowed by desire, spiritual bonding, and intimacy. Notice, again, that Lawrence’s writing is not particularly graphic—that is because he writes about sex in order to make a more universal statement about the human soul.

Is that what other scenes that seem to be about particular concrete things are really about too? Are the battle, riding, dining, and courtship scenes all trying to make universal statements about the human soul? If so, do they all make the same universal statement, or different ones? Surely if the statements are universal, there can’t be that many of them. The statement can’t even be a universal statement about sex, since it is not about sex. It’s about the human soul. And if all the other kinds of scenes are not really about what they are about but about the human soul, then are they all making a universal statement about the human soul? And if so, are they perhaps all making the same statement? The universal statement?

If so, of course, you only need to read one great novel. It doesn’t matter which one. They are all making the universal statement about the human soul. Then you can go back to reading entertaining pulp that is about particular things. And yet it seems to me that great novels are notable not for their similarity but for their distinctiveness and particularity. Indeed the great novels are far more distinct and particular than most pulp.

Libes appeal to the universal is part of her attempt to justify her objection to certain kinds of writing about sex. But while I would, by and large, object to the same texts she objects to, I don’t think Libes's appeal to the universal makes a good case against them, largely because it misrepresents the nature and purpose of stories. Libes attempts to make the ancient and vexed distinction between pornography and art by referring to the universal, but brings in a new idea to go with it, beauty:

What Tolly misses is that there is a fundamental difference between the use of sex to explore the human condition and the use of sex to titillate under the guise of fiction. I would characterize Gaitskill’s writing as pornography far before I would deign to characterize it as literature simply because it does not aspire to literature’s more sublime purpose: to comment on a universal aspect of human nature through beauty.

But neither universality nor beauty are particularly effective arguments against pornography. They are open to the riposte that lust is indeed universal and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.¹ It is a universal statement to say that sex is titillating, because, of course, it is. The whole point of the thing is the arousal of the sex organs so that procreation can take place. You can’t be truthful about sex and leave that out or abstract it away. And are we really willing to say that the act is not beautiful? Are we willing to say that it is ugly? Or is that just a matter of camera angles?

Before I go further, I want to make it clear that my subject in this essay is the purpose of stories, or, if you like, the purpose of literature. I’m not setting out to defend, attack, or define pornography. But if you are going to make a literary case against pornography, you have to make a case that pornography (which is to say, a particular way of writing about sex) does not fulfil the purpose of stories. And to do that, you have to say what the purpose of stories is.²

Making universal statements, even through beauty,³ is not the purpose of stories. Any small boy with his nose in a book could tell you what the purpose of stories is. He might not articulate it elegantly, but in his heart he would know. The purpose of stories is to make us wise and to make us brave.

This is not an aesthetic claim, but a biological and psychological one. The boy needs food so he can grow up big and strong. He needs stories so he can grow up wise and brave. He knows that he will be required to act in the world. Being wise and brave are prerequisites to any kind of effective action. If we are not wise, we will not know what to do. If we are not brave, we won’t have the courage to do it. The brain craves stories to become wise and brave so it can face the trials of life. Thus, as Lisa Cron points out in her book of that name, we are Wired for Story.

If we ask if pornography makes us wiser and braver, the answer is obviously no. Even its advocates will agree that pornography merely satisfies desire. They will argue that satisfying desire is sufficient justification in itself, but they won’t argue that it makes you wise or brave.

This argument does not get us out of the woods completely though because stories also give us pleasure. As it does with other things it needs, like glucose, the brain rewards us with pleasure to make sure we keep bringing it the stories it needs. But just as we can get pleasure from junk food that does not nourish us, so we can get pleasure from junk stories that do not make us wise or brave.

What is a junk story? It is a story that gives us a false experience, an experience that does not match the nature of real experiences. We could say then, as a matter of category definition, that pornography comprises stories that give a false experience of sex. In short, pornography is junk stories about sex.

Are all junk stories immoral simply for being junk? Is it always wrong to eat candy bars and French fries? Or can we consume junk stories in moderation, as most would agree we can consume junk food in moderation? After all there are lots of junk stories out there. Much of the romance genre, for instance, is false about courtship, and much of the military genre is false about soldiering. Unless we are willing to condemn these genres as well, why condemn pornography? Are junk stories about sex any worse than junk stories about courtship or soldiering?

That, fundamentally, is a moral question, not a literary one. And we should note that just because a story is true does not inherently mean it is above moral reproach. There are real-life experiences that are illicit. True story experiences could be illicit too. Even a story that is completely truthful about sex will often titillate. If we accept the proposition that Lawrence’s sex scene, which Libes cites, is not pornographic, we can’t escape the very obvious truth that generations of people folded down the corners of the “good bits” of Lady Chatterley’s Lover which they used for purposes of titillation. (By the way, if those are the good bits, they are the only good bits. The rest of the novel is a tedious bore.)

But just because an experience is illicit in real life, it does not necessarily follow that it is illicit in stories. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, for example, has a pivotal scene in which the protagonist murders an old lady. Can reading Crime and Punishment make us wiser and braver? There is a large body of opinion that thinks so, even though it involves the experience of an act that would always be illicit in the flesh. Can the same be said of truthful depictions of sex in stories, even if they do titillate?

Are there experiences that are dangerous or illicit to have even in stories? Stories do give pleasure, and most moral systems require us to limit or abstain from certain pleasures. Also, it is possible to become addicted to various pleasures. Such addictions can affect our bodies and our minds in ways that are dangerous to ourselves and others. In other words, addictive pleasures, including those provided by stories, can make us craven and foolish and even vicious.

Again, these are not literary questions. It is for the theologians and ethicists to decide which pleasure we may take in which forms and to which degrees, and for individuals to decide which licit pleasures are personally safe for them to enjoy. The literary question is not which pleasures are licit. The literary question is which stories are true⁴ and which are junk. The question of whether it is licit to consume junk stories is a separate, moral question. The literary task is simply to make the distinction, to draw that line between good stories and junk stories, between stories that are truthful and help make us wise and brave, and those that are false and which at best give transient pleasure and at worst may make us craven and foolish.

This does not mean that literary judgment is not concerned with the moral sphere. It is not concerned with the question of which stories it is moral to read, but it is very much concerned with the moral structure created in stories themselves.

Libes writes.

[G]reat literature requires more than psychological accuracy—it must reflect human nature through a certain moral orientation. Not all emotionally raw stories are art, after all—or we would all be taking random Reddit posts about relationship abuse and calling them art. No—literature is not a license to detail trauma in high resolution and call it “art.” Literature must contain beauty and meaning.

Libes is absolutely right that not all emotionally raw stories are art. And I agree with her that in literature, in stories in particular, a certain moral orientation is required. Indeed, to talk about being wise and being brave without some reference to morality would be vain. We need wisdom to know what is right, and bravery to do the right thing no matter the cost. That small boy with his nose in his book is reading that story, and that is why he is reading it.

But let’s be clear here, the purpose of a story is not to pull out a moral lesson. It’s quite the opposite. To tell a story at all, you must build a moral structure into the story from the beginning because stories are moral by their nature. That is, stories fundamentally concern a choice between values (in literary terms, the stakes). To resolve a choice between values, there has to be a scale of values. A story creates a moral framework that establishes its scale of values. And while you can make this a purely personal and selfish scale, the real drama comes when the choice is between external and internal values. Without this choice of values, the story is purely technical in nature, and while there can be an attraction in that kind of story, particularly in the mystery genre, no one should seriously suggest that a story whose resolution is purely technical should be considered great literature.

And so every good story establishes a set of values in a morally ordered universe and proceeds to explore the struggle with those values of a particular protagonist in a particular situation. The small boy with his nose in a book does not need to be taught the principles of honor and sacrifice. What he needs is to learn the wisdom and courage to be honorable when honor is demanded of him and to make a sacrifice when sacrifice is demanded of him. But those demands, if they come, will come in some particular way at a particular time and place. We must see straight, so that we can assess that particular situation correctly, and we must stand tall so that we can do what must be done with courage and resolve. This is why the moral structure is fundamental to stories, because the brain is seeking to prepare itself to stand clear-eyed and resolute when the moment of crisis comes.

But when the moment of crisis does come, it will not be a theoretical exercise to be solved by debating universal principles. It will be a hard fight in a particular place and time with a particular foe, with particular cuts and bruises, particular losses, and particular pain, grief, and triumph. It is the particularity of the thing we need to be ready for, and for that we turn to stories in all their glorious particularity. A story does not proceed from the particular to the universal, but the other way round, from the universal to the particular, not from action to a moral, but from a moral structure to particular action.

Many people want to use stories to achieve secondary ends. Some want to use stories to encourage virtue. Some want to use stories to explore psychology. Some want to use stories to argue philosophy. My riposte to all of them is that you can’t do any of these things well unless you and your reader are wise and brave. To attempt to teach virtue without first inculcating wisdom and bravery will only result in sanctimony and intolerance. To attempt to explore psychology without wisdom and bravery will only result in a cramped ideological view of the human animal. Arguing philosophy with someone who is not wise or brave will only create a crackpot. If you want to do any of these things, therefore, you must first use stories — true stories, not junk stories — to make people wise and brave. If you try to shortcut the process by jumping straight to virtue, psychology, or philosophy, you will only create junk stories that won’t accomplish any of your goals.

The fact that the purpose of stories is to make us wise and brave (this being a biological fact, not an aesthetic opinion) does not mean that the best stories are about people being wise and brave. These may do no more than flatter the reader that they are already wise and brave when they are not. There is more wisdom to be learned by reading about folly than about wisdom. There is more courage to be learned from reading about cowardice than about bravery. There is more virtue to be learned from reading about sin than about saintliness. Not that there is not also something to be learned from reading about wisdom, bravery, and virtue, but they will only be recognized in contrast to their opposites. Indeed, wisdom lies largely in the ability to make true discernment between wisdom and folly, courage and cowardice, virtue and vice. To discern that line, one must clearly encounter that which lies on each side of it.

Someone might ask then, if literature is about creating experiences that make us wiser and braver, what distinguishes good literature from bad, and what distinguishes great literature in particular? Don’t we need some higher philosophical purpose to separate the great from the merely good? No we don’t. Great literature is not great because it expresses great ideas. (What were Shakespeare’s great ideas?) Great literature is great because of the pellucid character of the experiences it creates. It is more vivid, more real, more moving than the rank and file of stories. It is the prime cut, but not a different animal.

As long as our pursuit of art is tied to the universal, to the philosophical, to the expression of ideas, it will die on the vine. Art is the pursuit of the particular, of the nitty-gritty of human experiences. You can draw ideas from experiences. Where else would you draw them from? But the purpose of art is to give you the experience, not to feed you the idea, nor yet to coax the idea out of you. If you value ideas, these are the last things you should ask art to do, because ideas come from experience, and therefore you should desire experience, rich and varied experience, as the thing that both gives birth to and disciplines ideas.

There is, I suppose, the temptation to think that the universal is more important, that we should be striving always to discover and approach it. But do we do that in other areas of our lives? Do we love our children in particular, for their uniqueness and particularity, or do we regard them simply as an instance to study in our quest for the Platonic ideal of the child? Why then in a novel would we see the particular merely as a sign pointing to the universal? No, it is our particular children we love in all their particularity. We do not inhabit abstraction. We inhabit the particular, and what we seek from art is the focused and refined particular, not a pathway to abstraction.

Greatness in art does not lie in its universality, but in its extreme and penetrating particularity. What keeps so much art from greatness today is that it is muddied by dabbling in ideas rather than devoting itself entirely to the richness and truthfulness of experience. If you want to be a great artist, reveal the particular, then stop.

1. I’m not myself claiming that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which I do not believe to be true. I’m just saying that it is an obvious riposte that most people today will agree with.

2. For the moment, at least, I am going to confine the discussion to stories. There are things that some call literature that are not stories. Debating that issue will have to wait for another day.

3. I’ll deal with the subject of beauty in literature in another essay.

4. True as in compass, not true as in factual.