A formless blur
The death of criticism
October 5, 2009 11 comments
In the Observer, Nick Cohen is excited to share with us his discovery that “moral clarity” (qv) is a criterion of good literature as well as right political “thinking”:
As a left-wing reporter who had investigated neo-Nazi gangs, and lived in fear of murderous reprisals, Larsson had learned to mistrust non-judgmental pieties about there being “good and bad in all of us”. Hard-won experience taught him to avoid the shades of grey, which reduce so much contemporary fiction — and political thought — to a formless blur.
If only there had been literary critics of Cohen’s calibre in Dostoyevsky’s time, we might have been spared the “formless blur” of The Brothers Karamazov, and who knows what else?
Previously in Nick Cohen: Irrational movements; Overthrow; Islamic terrorism.
I’m surprised that Mr Cohen hasn’t learned to properly appreciate and absorb the moral clarity and lack of squishy greyness of Mein Kampf. But perhaps that just comes with time.
I’ve always loved ‘1066 And All That’, since the authors neatly divide history into Good Things and Bad Things, once and for all.
Novelists should adopt this in their prose in order to explain things to their readers better, and avoid the sort of relatavism that leads, inevitably, to Nazism.
Indeed. But of course the habit of denouncing literature for lack of “moral clarity” leads inevitably to Nazism also? In which case Nazism is, tragically, inevitable whatever we say about books.
“at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”
John Keats (Poet and Objective Pro-Fascist)
Dostoyevsky may be morally unpleasant, but it is pretty clear wher he stands, isn’t it? I mean, can you get to the end of Karamazov and think that D’s position is a muddy sort of ‘well, there may be a god or maybe there isn’t and it is hard to tell which point of view is better, perhaps there is a bit of truth in both’?
Great writers typically present moral issues as complex but seem to have a very clear idea about what constitutes the good, don’t they? Lear was wrong, wasn’t he? And so was Macbeth and Iago and Coriolanus. Hamlet seems to be the exception, but isn’t that part of the reason that Eliot though it failed (although he wouldn’t have put it that way).
The issue raised by Cohen, as I understand it, is not whether a there is a perceptible authorial moral stance, but whether the characters themselves are either a) wholly good or wholly bad (moral clarity!); or b) mixtures of good and bad (formless blur!). About the only kind of literature I can think of that obeys Cohen’s rules for good fiction is stuff like Star Wars novelizations. (I here offer my pre-emptive apologies to fans of Star Wars novelizations, which are almost certainly more subtle than I have here given them credit for.)
Great writers typically present moral issues as complex but seem to have a very clear idea about what constitutes the good, don’t they?
Not necessarily, no. Literature is not moral philosophy or theology. Why would anybody think otherwise? And as Steven says you are running together the question of what is good with whether this or that character is a good person. Of the heroes of the four tragedies you mention I think only Macbeth could be judged unequivocally evil. And even then the play enables us to get inside his mind–which of course commits the indecent left’s sin of attempting ‘understand’ and ‘explain’ evil.
The genres that spring to mind as best fitting Cohen’s literary imperative of ‘moral clarity’ are cowboy novels and war comics. America’s moral clarity – or is it moral certainty? – owes much to the Western and culminated in the Glorious Iraq War. But I so much prefer the War Picture Library comic books with titles like, Unleash Hell, The Iron Fist, and The Black Ace. There is absolutely no question as to who is good and who is evil. Brit: Good; Jerry: Evil. There is no moral argument. All you have to do is follow the story to learn how plucky Lance-Corporal, Nobby, outsmarts the lumbering, slow-witted Kraut to get his Platoon out of a jolly scrape and win the war.
But it somehow lacks depth.
“The issue raised by Cohen, as I understand it, is not whether a there is a perceptible authorial moral stance, but whether the characters themselves are either a) wholly good or wholly bad (moral clarity!); or b) mixtures of good and bad (formless blur!). “
No, that can’t be it because Larrson’s characters are morally ambivalent at times. It is just the evil they confront is presented as wholly evil. I think it is pretty cleqar that Cohen’s beef is with the ‘well he raped her, but who is to say that he worse for doing that than I am for stopping him with a big stick ‘sort of stew.
This reminds me that I wish I’d managed to hang on to the Action Man novels I had in the late 70s. All I remember is that most of them seemed to end with AM & chums blowing up an ammo dump or something and killing hundreds of Germans. They’d probably be worth a ton on ebay now, if too painful to actually read.
Written by one Fred Baker as “Mike Brogan”, apparently.
What Cohen wants is impossible, of course. Philosophy students study ‘The Trolley Problem‘ in Term 1 of First Year along with its variations, The Fat Man, The Villain and The Transplant, for example.
Nick Cohen would probably, with his extraordinary (utilitarian?) moral clarity divert the trolley from the first line thus saving the five people tied to it but kill the single person tied to the second line. But would he do the same if it was his wife and baby tied to the second line? He might have a moment’s indecision, at least – assuming he is a hetero stud. Which would leave him experiencing moral relativism and all the uncomfortable uncertainty that goes with it. Is he a clearly good person or a bad person? Did he do a clearly good thing or a bad thing?
Literature discusses these things. Isn’t that what it is for?