A few weeks ago, an acquaintance asked that I recommend her
a short story to read. I suggested Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to
Find,” a famously grotesque little story about a Southern family who, while on
a road-trip to Florida, is kidnapped by highway bandits. My friend read the
story, and returned to me as follows:
Sarah: Why did you recommend that story to me??
Me: Hi, Sarah! Did you read it?
Sarah: Yes and it was terrible! That poor family! Oh and the grandmother was so awful! How could you like a story like that??
Me: I like the character of the grandmother; I think she’s a good example of the obliviousness that plagues the grey generation.
Sarah: Well I thought she was weird. Why would you want to read about someone so terrible? I want something to read that’s fun!
This conversation with my friend illustrates an all-too-common
refusal to deal with literature that we don’t understand. She didn’t like the
story because she didn’t like the grandmother—but should literature really be
restricted to depicting pleasant people? And this is the mentality that leads
to escapism in literature, the repressive flight from what we dislike: anytime
that art shows me something I don’t want to see, it must therefore be “bad”
art.
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| The author (center) in an attempt to try and take a normal family photo. |
I find the commandment to read scripture, and the subsequent
Mormon culture of knowledge-pursuit, completely contrary to the practice of
escapist reading. We are instructed to read God’s word precisely because it is unfamiliar. The scriptures
show a lot of people, good and bad, whose examples are given not to pat us on
the back and make us feel good about ourselves, but to instruct us as to how we
can progressively become better people.
Literature, ultimately, is impotent in terms of morality. It
is free to depict the good and evil in the world, but it is powerless to affect
its reader to choose that good or evil, unless the reader grants it that
influence. So reading well, for me, requires two things: confidence, in your own ability to discern and resist the evil in
what you read, and humility, enough
to receive its good and implement it in your life.
