So, I'm an English major about to earn my degree. I have writing skills and I love to read. However, I've been extremely conflicted inside (not an uncommon thing for me) about what a man in Christ can and can't read.
Let’s not look at fictional literature as a danger to be avoided; instead let’s appreciate it, as C.S. Lewis did, as a way of “seeing with a thousand eyes.” In one of his books on literary criticism, Lewis remarked, and I’m paraphrasing, “we all know people who don’t read fiction, and many of them we like; we just don’t enjoy their conversation once we’ve exhausted sport, current affairs, and the weather.”
Literature turns our narrow minds into boundless spaces of imaginative riches. Think how destitute we’d be without all the wonderful stories we’ve read. It’s actually a horrifying thought to entertain. Remember that God gave us imagination as a gift, not a curse. Literature allows us to benefit from other people’s gifts, not just our own. Literature is a double gift: It’s a manifestation of the gift given to the author by God as well as a gift of the author to us. We limit our grasp of God’s creative power when the only pieces of God creation we’re conscious of are those tiny fragments formed by the experiences we’ve had and the limited imaginative resources we were born with.
But what about
bad literature? Should we read it? It depends on what we mean by “bad.” Stories poorly told are bad and should generally be avoided because they fail to take root in our minds, their means of transmission (the authors’ skills) not being up to the task. As such they’re a waste of time. And they may even have the effect of darkening our mood, as their failure to capture our imagination will inevitably annoy. (They can also impede our growth as writers, the way we write being highly imitative.) The trashy novels on sale at airports usually fall into this category.
Stories that are told well but that fail to interest us (even though they may interest others) likewise should probably be avoided, and again, because they waste our time. I’m not a fan of crime mystery, so I don’t read it, even though the best crime mysteries certainly demonstrate an enviable degree of skill. Crime mysteries simply don’t take up residence in my mind. (And I’m poorer for it, by the way; my aversion to crime mystery isn’t a virtue.)
But what about depravity? Does a book with depraved characters doing depraved things make a book bad? Sure – if we’re willing to condemn as bad nearly every book ever written that’s widely regarded as an example of great literature. We’d have to start by throwing out the whole corpus of Greek mythology. (Never did a character in fiction delight in adultery more than Zeus.) Many of the medieval romances would have to go, as would much of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Great novelists, like – well, like almost all of them – would end up in the trash heap, too.
Anna Karenina would have been “better,” according to this way of judging literature, if the title character had stayed faithful to her husband. (Dear Mr. Tolstoy: A quick suggestion on how to make your book a good one versus a bad one. We love your precious Anna, and we think she's got ridiculous potential, but let’s strive to make her more Christ-like. Absolutely no adultery. Looking forward to reading about a splendidly virtuous wife and not a filthy harlot. Incidentally please spare us the suicide at the end. Awful. –Thanks, your admiring editors)
People
aren’t Christ-like. And so we can’t write purportedly realistic fiction that isn’t
false if we don’t accept depraved behavior as the default condition of mankind. It is, ironically, the very books that simply portray us as we are that succeed in making depravity less appealing. Both
Madame Bovary (Flaubert) and
Anna Karenina are more effective at revealing the hopelessness and despair of adultery than a thousand sermons. But both books would have lost that effectiveness if they’d taken a
moralistic tone, or even worse if the heroines had found the strength to overcome temptation. A good novelist shows us our monstrous condition (even if this wasn't his chief aim) and then lets us draw the ugly conclusions for ourselves.
But what about smut? Should we read it? I’m not a fan of smut (leaving the obvious moral issues aside for the moment); smut simply isn’t any good. Show me a single example of good smut. I really don’t think it exists. The Marquis de Sade (for example) is barely readable. His breathtaking brazenness succeeds only in thrilling us for a moment and then before we know it we’re bored. It’s hard to remember a single scene from
120 Days of Sodom. But I can remember almost every scene from
Blood Meridian, the savagely dystopian Cormac McCarthy masterpiece about the opening of the Wild West following the end of the US-Mexican War. And
Blood Meridian’s most infamous character, the Judge, is as much of a devil as the most dissolute libertine ever dreamed up by the Marquis de Sade or John Cleland.
So I don’t think we’re really facing much of a dilemma. As literature, smut truly is terrible, and moreover the threat it poses to our morals (the job of smut is to enflame our passions, and this at least is something it sometimes does well) isn’t a danger any of us would seriously consider dismissing.
If it’s good, and you like it, read it, even if it’s got some objectionable words in it. (Unless of course it offends your conscience.) If it’s bad, don’t. Some on this forum may disagree with me, but I'm convinced that good literature, even with objectionable language, needs no justification.
