RE: Book banning
December 16, 2020 at 10:49 pm
(This post was last modified: December 16, 2020 at 10:51 pm by Belacqua.)
I think there's another factor common in our society which works strongly against reading great literature.
This is the way we read sentences, and what we expect from them -- how we judge whether a sentence is a good sentence or not.
For the most part, it seems that modern people expect any and every sentence to be a simple unambiguous statement of truth. We want the sentence to give up its meaning to the reader with the minimum of effort on the reader's part. A sentence which admits of multiple readings, or requires effort for interpretation, will be judged a failure.
Naturally, this is true in certain contexts. We want journalism and science texts to be "transparent" in this way, so that the prose reveals clearly the truth to which it points. Nonetheless it is a misapplication of values -- and possibly scientism -- to expect other fields to work by the same standards.
Our ways of thinking about this have dumbed down. These days people have the tendency to divide sentences into either "literal" or "metaphorical" statements. As if these are the two options. In the bad old days, when people were smarter about these things, they could think more carefully. Students of the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), for example, knew that metaphor is only one of many tropes that can be used to get across a message. A metaphor is only a sentence of the structure "A is B." "La Nature est un temple" is one of the most famous of these. A lot of the non-literal statements in literature, including in the Bible, are not metaphor. In fact, when we refer to all non-literal statements as metaphor, we are using a different trope, called synecdoche.
But not all concepts are scientific concepts, and not all important truths can be expressed directly.
Take the wonderful sentence "La beauté n'est que la promesse du bonheur." The ambiguity that is built into this sentence is an important part of its message. It might mean that beauty is simply the promise of happiness. Or it might mean that beauty is only the promise of happiness -- but it's a promise that will never be fulfilled.
And I think that neither sentence is TRUE, in the way that a scientific sentence is true. Although the grammar is the same as "Zebras are mammals from Africa," it just isn't the same type of sentence. I think we've all come across people who are eager to fight about such sentences. If it isn't true on its face, they will declare it to be false, and its writer to be a bad writer. What they don't see is that as a concept it is something like an image -- something which we hold ambiguously in the mind -- which suggests itself at certain moments in life and enriches our understanding. It helps us to think about what is happening to us when we experience something very beautiful. It is neither provable nor unprovable, neither metaphorical nor literal. But it is a wonderful sentence which many people are grateful to have read.
So the misapplication of simple, direct reading modes to texts where they aren't applicable makes most literature inaccessible to us. And the more we read using only one technique, without the patience and humility to hold on to the ambiguity, the more classic novels are removed from our lives. Nasty school board members don't have to take action, because it's happening to us anyway.
This is the way we read sentences, and what we expect from them -- how we judge whether a sentence is a good sentence or not.
For the most part, it seems that modern people expect any and every sentence to be a simple unambiguous statement of truth. We want the sentence to give up its meaning to the reader with the minimum of effort on the reader's part. A sentence which admits of multiple readings, or requires effort for interpretation, will be judged a failure.
Naturally, this is true in certain contexts. We want journalism and science texts to be "transparent" in this way, so that the prose reveals clearly the truth to which it points. Nonetheless it is a misapplication of values -- and possibly scientism -- to expect other fields to work by the same standards.
Our ways of thinking about this have dumbed down. These days people have the tendency to divide sentences into either "literal" or "metaphorical" statements. As if these are the two options. In the bad old days, when people were smarter about these things, they could think more carefully. Students of the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), for example, knew that metaphor is only one of many tropes that can be used to get across a message. A metaphor is only a sentence of the structure "A is B." "La Nature est un temple" is one of the most famous of these. A lot of the non-literal statements in literature, including in the Bible, are not metaphor. In fact, when we refer to all non-literal statements as metaphor, we are using a different trope, called synecdoche.
But not all concepts are scientific concepts, and not all important truths can be expressed directly.
Take the wonderful sentence "La beauté n'est que la promesse du bonheur." The ambiguity that is built into this sentence is an important part of its message. It might mean that beauty is simply the promise of happiness. Or it might mean that beauty is only the promise of happiness -- but it's a promise that will never be fulfilled.
And I think that neither sentence is TRUE, in the way that a scientific sentence is true. Although the grammar is the same as "Zebras are mammals from Africa," it just isn't the same type of sentence. I think we've all come across people who are eager to fight about such sentences. If it isn't true on its face, they will declare it to be false, and its writer to be a bad writer. What they don't see is that as a concept it is something like an image -- something which we hold ambiguously in the mind -- which suggests itself at certain moments in life and enriches our understanding. It helps us to think about what is happening to us when we experience something very beautiful. It is neither provable nor unprovable, neither metaphorical nor literal. But it is a wonderful sentence which many people are grateful to have read.
So the misapplication of simple, direct reading modes to texts where they aren't applicable makes most literature inaccessible to us. And the more we read using only one technique, without the patience and humility to hold on to the ambiguity, the more classic novels are removed from our lives. Nasty school board members don't have to take action, because it's happening to us anyway.
