Morality in Literature

[Belacqua]

Censorship is always wrong. Any time a government says to people, ‘This you may not see, this you may not read, this you are forbidden to know’, the end result is always tyranny and oppression.

Anything that prevents an artist from presenting art in the way s/he feels is best is ALWAYS more immoral than the art itself.

Boru

I wish I knew the original French passage that Steiner is referring to. It would be interesting to see what word Flaubert used, and if in the context he seems to be calling seriously for real censorship. As a stylist, he would often exaggerate or use irony, particularly in private letters where he could express himself freely.

To us, of course, the word calls up images of government ideologues or moralists. And I agree that this is not desirable. 

In regard to trashy books, though, I don't think we have to worry about Republican evangelicals demanding higher literary standards. They are likely to prefer the trash.

In the old days I think trashy literature was likely to be prevented from publication, when it was, not by censorship but by what has come to be known as "gatekeeping." This term, too, has a bad nuance, because these days it's used to refer to the old boys club which formerly limited publishing to white men. But at its best, in fortunate times, it did keep the quality high. Trash wasn't officially censored but no one was interested in publishing it. I'm sure that since the printing press was invented there have been companies providing one-handed novels for lonely men. But this was under the counter stuff, not in the main stream, and not something a company would market proudly. 

In particularly fortunate times, high quality is also high profit. But these are probably rare. Not even Aldus Manutius got really rich.

In our own time nearly all publishers have given up on standards of quality in favor of profitability. There is a lot of trash, both fiction and non. This leaves us in a situation which Flaubert didn't advocate: immoral scenes are freely depicted, but there is no check on the trashiness of the depiction.

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So-called reality TV should definitely be censored. That shit is insulting to watch.

*said halfjokingly*

I'm not proud of this, but....

I often do certain kinds of hand work, like preparing a canvas or making a picture frame from scratch. This requires mental focus but you're not really thinking about anything. You just have to pay attention and not mess up. But since it doesn't occupy the mind conceptually, I tend to daydream and distract myself. But if I listen to something interesting, like a history podcast, I can't focus on the work.

So while I'm doing work like that, it really helps me to have on an episode of "Hoarders" or "My 600 lb Life" or some similar horror. Each episode is 99% the same, so you don't even have to look at the screen.

Granted, I sort of feel dirty afterwards.