Should Writers "Stick Together"?

How much should a writer publicly (and negatively) comment on the work of other writers?

If you pay much attention to popular fiction, you've probably heard about Stephen King's criticism of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. The blogosphere boiled: some defended King's right, even duty, to criticize other authors; others declared that King was motivated by jealousy and greed. On one commenter called King's criticism of a fellow writer "just tacky." That struck a chord because I remember saying that after author/lecturer roundly mocked another Christian writer's work as "trash." In fact, as I bring the situation up in my mind, it still seems tacky. And yet I criticize other authors on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

On the one hand (excuse me while I play Tevye), I don't fret over what I say about Marlowe, Edith Wharton, Joseph Conrad, or Dickens. Their places in the literary canon are not going to be disturbed by a few snide comments from an (as of yet) unknown writer.

Also, they're dead. I don't have to worry about running into Edith Wharton at some writing conference and having her snub me because I didn't love Ethan Frome. (This would be sad on so many levels, but largely because I'm sure Wharton would be an interesting person to know.)

But contemporary authors... Well, you could suggest that I'm worrying too far ahead of myself (a special talent of mine), but the publishing world is fairly intimate, so ticking too many writers off = bad career move. And I find that most writers, even those whose work I don't care for, are people worth knowing.

But this question goes beyond career or social moves. Humility, compassion, and truthfulness are all supposed to be part of the Christian life, but how these virtues relate to criticism (whether formal or informal) is still a bit of a mystery to me.

And as a writer, I know better than anyone else how much work and self-doubt goes into what may ultimately be a merely mediocre book. I know that what hits the page is never as vibrant or brilliant as what was in your mind. I know how brave it is to write. I also know that there are very few things I've read that are so bad that they couldn't, at some point, have been mine. There are a lot of unpaid critics out there. Does the world really need another one?

In this sense, I understand the bloggers who only blog about books they liked. They remind me a little of a relative of mine who was famous for her strict adherence to a "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all" policy. The worst thing she was known to have said about someone was "Well... I'm sure he breathes well." I sort of admire this attitude. But sometimes I imagine that if taken too far, you'd find yourself having uncomfortable luncheons with a bunch of murderous dictators and remarking on how well everyone's breathing. (Of course, saying nice things about people doesn't mean you have to eat lunch with them, and anyway, writers are rarely allowed to rule countries.)

I don't generally feel the need to rant against other writers. I enjoy most of the books I read.

On the other hand (you were waiting for that other hand, weren't you?), getting read is not a privilege. My money and time only go so far--I rely on friends, blogs, professional reviews, etc. to help me decide what I might enjoy.

I'm certainly not trying to pass myself off as a professional reviewer (which should be obvious from my blog posts). I do, however, have a history of experience with books as a long-time reader, as an English major, as an editor... and as a writer. I notice what sort of work hasn't been done by an author. I'm frustrated when slip-shod workmanship and poorly thought out ideas are passed off as brilliance, and real, honest-to-goodness brilliance ends up in some dark hole of a back-list. And there are some books that are so dishonest that I feel like warning all potential readers against them (someday I'm going to talk about the Elsie Dinsmore series here). I recognize bad writing--I've created enough of it myself. But is pointing it out to the world mean, helpful, selfish, or morally neutral? Or is it "tacky?"

Maybe it depends on the presentation of the criticism. I'm not sure there's much good done by saying a book is "trash" or that someone "can't write worth a darn." But then I remember of Jesus bluntly saying "you white-washed tombs" to the Pharisees.

What do you think? Is there a line that shouldn't be crossed in writer-on-writer criticism?

Redeeming Fagin "the Jew"?

Oliver Twist is not my favorite Dickens' novel, but "Boz" and I go way back, so I watched Masterpiece Classic's first installment of The Tales of Charles Dickens series.

This movie-length version zips along at a much faster pace than the novel, and in about thirty minutes Oliver is out of the workhouse, past the undertaker's workshop, in London, and being introduced to Fagin (played by Timothy Spall). And I'm all excited and thinking about the use of color, the musical score, the beefing up of Oliver's personality when--Oh my word! They didn't...

They did. They made Fagin a Jew, again.

In case you don't know, there is a long, perturbed history behind this. Fagin is considered the 19th century literary equivalent to Shakespeare's Shylock.

Historical Side Note: After Dickens became friends with James and Eliza Davis, a Jewish couple, Eliza expressed disappointment over his portrayal of Fagin. Dickens (after some initial defensiveness) stopped the printing of Oliver Twist and removed most mentions of Fagin's Jewishness from the last, unset chapters of the novel. (He also, presumably, created Mr. Riah in Our Mutual Friend as attempt to atone for Fagin.) But the miserly, demon-like image of Fagin "the Jew" had already been born.

The other versions of Oliver Twist that I've seen have blended together in my mind, but my impression was that contemporary directors tended to downplay or ignore Fagin's Judaism. (Some quick internet research shows that this isn't true, but I haven't seen/remembered all those interpretations.) I do remember frightening portrayals of Fagin, but he was also clever, almost to point of being a lovable, unrepentant rogue. This has been what I remember instead of a continuation Dickens' stereotype.

In a PBS interview, Timothy Spall said that his goal was to make Fagin more sympathetic, which seems like plausible idea to me (after all Fagin is the first remotely kind face Oliver meets in the novel). Spall is a good actor (I thought the scene where Dodger finds him praying was well-done), but his talent seems to have been poured into creating another Jewish caricature. Spall's Fagin is ingratiating, awkward, anxious... morally and physically weak. Spall even says, "Fagin seems to be used to getting hit a lot." Sympathetic apparently equals downtrodden and helpless.

I can't help feeling that the Jew as powerless victim isn't an improvement on Dickens' stereotype. Nancy and the Artful Dodger were each given moments where, futile or not, the viewer saw them set their teeth and go against the flow of circumstances--making them tragically heroic. Fagin kept folding like a card-table; somewhere along the way he'd lost the one admirable trait Dickens gave him: his resourceful mind. Without spoiling the ending, I can say that there was a moment where Fagin almost regained his dignity, but it wasn't enough for me. The focus of the scene was not on Fagin but on the prejudice that surrounded him, and he seemed like a flustered rabbit swallowed by hounds rather than a man overcome by tragedy.

I think I still feel a little stunned, both by what was attempted and what I actually saw. Has anyone else seen this? Thoughts?

(Image from BBC America Shop.)

On (Not) Using Characters as Moral Centers, Part 2

So just a couple days after I blogged about using characters as moral centers in fiction, I was brushing my teeth (Have you noticed that all epiphanies come during personal hygiene moments?), and I thought, What on earth were you talking about? Not that I suddenly dislike using characters as moral centers, but I realized that the character I'd been thinking about using as a moral center wasn't going to work at all. In the back of my brain, I guess I've kind of known she wasn't supposed to be that sort of character for a while now.

There are several reasons the character I had in mind can't be my moral center--most too difficult to explain here. But I think it can't be a coincidence that most of the characters who fulfil the role of moral center in literature are generally secondary characters (a notable exception would be Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, but we see him through the memories of his daughter, Scout, so there's still a bit of distance between him and the reader). Moral centers may have amazing personal histories, but generally, they just pop in and pop out of the story as needed: like an occasional angelic visitation. Somehow, the more you know about a person's past, the harder it is to accept his or her moral authority. (Jesus' problem when he went back to his hometown of Nazareth. "Look who's the big shot now. Ha! I used to change his diapers!")

It's the skillful writer who can create believable moral authority in a well-detailed character. An example of this might be Bishop Myriel in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The Bishop may still technically be a secondary character (Hugo's "brief" character sketches are chapters long), but before his scene with the protagonist, Jean Valjean, the reader already knows how many chairs the Bishop has in his house, that he is generous to a fault, the sort of notes he makes in the margins of his books, his thoughts on politics, and that he has given up his house for use as a hospital. This not only makes the later scene with the candlesticks believable, but somehow the sincerity of the Bishop's portrayal allows the reader to accept the sincerity of the change he triggers in Valjean.

Even the best writers seem to struggle with using a moral center as a primary character. A few months ago, I tackled The Brothers Karamazov. The young novice Alyosha is obviously Dostoevsky's moral center, and the reader gets to spend a good deal of time with him. Dostoevsky wrote some marvelous scenes with Alyosha, but after a while, Alyosha's goodness becomes annoyingly dull. I tired of following him because there was little question about how Alyosha would respond to situations.

I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do in my novel. Since I'm playing with multiple narrations, I actually have a choice to make with each storyline, which is both exciting and scary. I realized that in at least one of my storylines I already have an obvious moral center character who I've been ignoring. I may do something completely different with my other storylines. Of course, the acceptance of a character (moral center or not) as "believable" depends on the specific reader, but right now I'd be happy if I could just please the writer.

Side Note: The image above is Olin Levi Warner's Truth with a mirror and serpent from the Library of Congress because... well, just because I got tired of searching for images in the public domain.

Characters as Moral Centers in Writing

So far I've blogged about reading and writing, but I haven't really touched on how those might relate to "Christian Spirituality." I suppose it's a given that most Christian writers (whoever their audience) feel that stories, if they're good stories, turn on questions of morality and human nature (even if the characters aren't human). But straight-up morality tales tend to seem simple, if not dull.

Many authors (Christian or not) manage to get around the problem of how-to-promote-an-idea-without-seeming-didactic, by having a character who is the moral center of the work and speaks for the author. (Though there are other ways of promoting an idea.) Often the moral center is not the protagonist of the work, but a companion the protagonist should not ignore. Examples of moral centers in literature would be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Lee in East of Eden by John Steinbeck. (By the way, every time I watch Eli Stone, Dr. Chen makes me think of Lee: his role as moral center, his knowledge of spiritual texts, his fake Chinese accent that he puts on or discards at will--someone working on Eli Stone knows some Steinbeck).

I'm playing around with a moral center in my own work right now, but I'm stumbling across what I'm sure must be a common problem. In real life, one person really shouldn't be the absolute guide for another. And I like (to try) to write about my characters as people and not simply as symbols for certain philosophies. This generally means that they have to have blind spots--areas of human silliness that are (or become) apparent to the reader while remaining obscured to the characters. The more attached I become to a character the more I want to make sure I do his/her "human-ness" justice. So my moral center character seems a bit uncentered lately.

There must be some good ways to play with this combination of moral center and fallible human being. Forgive me while I think out loud for a moment... Perhaps one could write a character who is reliable on general issues of morality, but completely unreliable on issues of, say, world politics and how elevators work?

Or perhaps better still, have the moral center's blind spot be the opposite of the protagonist's? I suppose you could say this was the case in The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. Throughout the novel (the painter) Basil's advice is consistently better than anyone else's. But both Basil and Dorian have sins that they wish to hide. Without giving too much away, about three thirds of the way through the tale, these sins come to light. Basil, however, solidifies his role as the moral center by putting his finger on the places their crimes sprang from: "I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished" (ch. 13, some very Christian language in this chapter). Basil's main flaw is the reverse of Dorian's, and his role as moral center is reinforced by the fact that he can see his blind spot long before Dorian sees his own.

I kind of like Wilde's format here. Thoughts?