Word: moralizations
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This is John Gardner's argument in his essay On Moral Fiction. It sounds simplistic, and--of course--it is. Gardner poses as the Gabriel for a new artistic responsibility, sternly blasting forth on the trumpet, calling on the forces of "Beauty, Truth and Goodness" to regroup...
...amazing thing about On Moral Fiction is that, despite the naivete of its fundamental tenet, it is filled with acute, valuable observations on contemporary art. Gardner's ideas make a lot more sense when he applies them to contemporary culture than when he states them in the abstract...
...then repeating the same thing backwards. More often he resorts to metaphor. His metaphors are quirky, personal, often drawn from the Northeastern countryside of his youth or the Greek and Anglo-Saxon myths of his beloved Homer and Beowulf. They're catchy, too; but usually in On Moral Fiction Gardner presents us with a serious question, flings a captivating metaphor at us, and hurries away to some other problem before we have time to ask for answers...
...uses the word sparingly, he diagones the contemporary sickness of the arts as decadence. Authors strive for texture, not content; they create characters to be tinkered with, not to be understood; their books foster self-hatred. Gardner's criticism of his colleagues is the most valuable part of On Moral Fiction. He deftly shows what authors like Vonnegut and Heller lack, entertaining as they are. We may be unable to swallow in the abstract the statement that the missing quality is "love," or "morality"; but leaving aside these culturally ambiguous, exhausted words floating like smoke-screens between us and Gardner...
...Moral Fiction is packed with observations, with judgements that make sense. Yet we leave it dissatisfied, because Gardner's whole ethical approach raises questions he knows about but shyly avoids. He assumes from the very start that artists must save civilization, and that they can save civilization. The tired old critical dilemma of whether society shapes the artist or vice versa is central to Gardner's argument, and though he may be trying to spare his readers the boredom of another rehashing, Gardner's failure to take a consistent stand on the question dooms his position from the start...