The Excruciating Pain of Reading Old Novels

I suppose we should be happy that our society has moved away from racism and sexism, however incompletely, and however vigorously conservatives have resisted it. Also, we should be happy that fiction has moved away from pretentious and shallow writing (or not). What is there to not like about this? Right after this essay, I will get back to my series about how I became a Christian agnostic.

One thing is that there are hardly any old novels that we can read that do not make us cringe. I will use just one example: Sinclair Lewis, the first American writer to have received the Nobel Prize for literature. One of his major novels is Main Street. I thought that I should read this novel (which was in my giveaway pile). Even though I enjoyed his Arrowsmith when I read it decades ago. Arrowsmith was about a microbiologist in public health—what’s there not to like about that?

But Lewis’s writing would have gotten it immediately (and perhaps correctly) rejected by any modern agent or editor. To start with, the narration was self-consciously clever. Just to use one example, he wrote of the female character, “Ever she effervesced anew…” The main character was also not credible. She was a flighty college girl who had ever such a difficult time deciding what to do with her life, until she decided that she would leave the city and go out to a “prairie town” and tell them how to transform their stolidity into elegance. Even if such a character could exist, she is not someone I would want to spend lots of reading-time with. Agents always say, in their automatic rejection software, that “I didn’t connect with the character,” which implies that they actually looked at your submission. But in this case, it is true: it is difficult, if not impossible, to care about this person. Actually, she sounds like a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald characters.

Even worse, Lewis begins with a snub of “squaws and portages,” by which he dismisses the Native Americans (in this case of Minnesota) as gruesomely boring. Only white people are interesting or have stories worth telling, in the Lewisian mindset.

A few novels from the early twentieth century told interesting stories from non-white cultures. One immediately thinks of The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. While the entire novel is written in a condescending, paternalistic mode, The Good Earth was, within its context, an attempt to see an Asian culture with real people, good and bad, completely apart from white culture.

We now squirm with discomfort at the entertainment of nearly all previous ages, for example Spike Jones and His City Slickers performing Hawaiian War Chant. While we may lose much of value by turning our noses up at the past, it is the inevitable side-effect of ethical progress. In a similar way, while we may lose much insight by turning away from the religion, and religious writings, of the past—such as the Bible—it is necessary that we do so.