Joshua Landy

Max Weber was half right: modernity is indeed characterized most centrally by the “disenchantment of the world.” At the same time, however, modernity is also characterized by the re-enchantment of the world, an enchantment, this time, on strictly secular terms. In their different ways, stage magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé both sought new, secular sources of wonder, order, and value; both came to see self-deception as indispensable to that end; and both, finally, understood that in order to maintain our necessary illusions—in order to preserve them, though we recognize them for what they are—we have to become skilled at adopting a rather peculiar state of mind. It is precisely this state of mind, a state of quasi-simultaneous conviction and distrust, that Robert-Houdin’s tricks and Mallarmé’s poems, with their paradigmatically proto-modernist reflexivity, require for their appreciation. Aesthetic modernism is not just a game, a marketing ploy, a “statement,” or a symptom; it is, instead, a literary training-ground. To become skilled at handling modernist fictions is, in the end, to strengthen our capacity to re-enchant the world.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? Was it, as is often said, in order to be more readily understood? In the book of Mark at least, nothing could be further from the truth. Here, Jesus speaks in parables precisely to prevent easy access to insight, even—shockingly—where such access might be the very key to salvation. At the same time as keeping the outsider out, however, the parables are designed to bring the insider even further in. Engagement with parables, that is, offers the elect an increase in their talent, a higher level of “faith,” where faith is closely related to abstract thought. For parabolic discourse presents the world around us as nothing more than a storehouse of metaphors: nothing we see is inherently significant, it implies, since the entire visible realm is merely a symbol for a higher plane of experience. At the end of the day, the parables’ aim is not the straightforwardly didactic ambition of communicating a complex message in simple language; it is instead the formative desire to bring a restricted audience to a new way of hearing and speaking, and thus a new way of looking at the world.

How can we quiet the mind? How can we prevent it from endlessly worrying away at philosophical questions that serve only to keep us awake at night, with no hope of ever being resolved? Simply ignoring them is not an option, since they lurk around the corner of every decision; nor will argument suffice, argument being merely a continuation of philosophy. What we need, again, is not a theory but a method, one in which each claim is systematically juxtaposed against its opposite, together with evidence just compelling enough to allow the two of them to cancel each other out. It is this method that Beckett’s Trilogy—Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable—crucially offers its readers. A latter-day work of ancient skepticism, it begins from the same premise, aims at the same telos, and employs the same devices along the way. What it provides, in the end, is not insight and not inspiration but the opportunity to detach ourselves from our desire for certainty and to achieve, for the first time, an enduring peace of mind.

It is often asserted that fictions improve their readers morally, whether by imparting instruction, by eliciting empathy, or by forcibly fine-tuning capacities for navigation through the labyrinth of moral life. In reality, however, readers tend—as Chaucer knew—only to “learn” what they already believed going in; empathy is hopelessly unreliable as a guide to virtuous behavior; and fine-tuning, the most promising avenue, is by no means automatic. Moral improvement through fiction thus takes place far less often than is widely imagined. What is more, we should not want wholesale transformation through fiction, since it risks turning humanity at large into a mass of moral wantons. While fine-tuning remains an option under special circumstances, most of us should settle for self-clarification, a morally neutral process that may, after its own manner, prove every bit as salutary.

How to Do Things with Fictions considers how fictional works, ranging from Chaucer to Beckett, subject readers to a series of exercises meant to fortify their mental capacities. While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training-grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them we stand not to become more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquillity of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield know-how; rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice.

This essay argues that literature is neither an intrinsic good (like oxygen) nor a constructed good (like a teddy-bear) but instead a conditional good, like a blueprint. It has immense potential value, but that potential can be actualized only if readers do a certain kind of work; and readers are likely to do that work only if, as a culture, we retain an understanding of what novels and poems both need from us and can give us. This means we need to be wary of theories that are excessively deflationary (all literature is mere entertainment), cynical (all literature is a vehicle for state ideology), or over-optimistic (all literature makes us more altruistic) and instead embrace a pluralism of effect. Some fictions, like The Wire, invite us to reflect on our own beliefs; some, like Plato’s dialogues, help us fine-tune our mental capacities; some, like Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, offer us a choice of genres; some help us feel our feelings; some offer formal models for the shape of a life. Literature can continue to matter in all of these ways—but only as long as we allow it to.

“A Nation of Madame Bovarys” rebuts the notion that literature is improves its readers morally, whether (1) by imparting instruction, (2) by eliciting empathy for non-parochial groups, or (3) by forcibly fine-tuning our capacity to navigate difficult ethical waters. Taking Geoffrey Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale as its test case, it argues that the positions taken by Nussbaum, Booth, Rorty, et al.—also including the “imaginative resistance” position—are vastly overblown; that empathy is unreliable as a guide to moral behavior; that readers tend only to “learn” what they already believed going in; and that it is dangerous to expect otherwise, there being a risk, if the contemporary consensus were to hold, of the populace degenerating into a nation of Madame Bovarys. Accordingly, a view of literary engagement as primarily an opportunity for clarification may be not only more accurate but also, in the end, more salutary.