Didactic Fiction: Propaganda or Art?

Today I came across this quote in a Facebook posting:  “Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn’t fiction at all.”  You can find this quote in context here: Interview with Theodore Sturgeon.

Clearly Sturgeon doesn’t like Ayn Rand’s philosophy and her writing, and we could just take this quote to mean that and nothing more. But is he saying anything about fiction that we should pay attention to? Is it true that the moment fiction becomes didactic it ceases to be fiction?

1. What is Fiction?

Fiction is often paired with “fact” when looking for semantic opposites. In this context, something is fiction if it is “not true.” For instance, it turns out that the well known story about George Washington and the cherry is not true. Hence, it is fiction.

When it comes to historical fiction, it is important that readers distinguish the known facts from the made-up parts of the story. When it comes to writing non-fiction biographies, it is important that historians not rely on fiction as if it were fact.

But that’s not all that people mean when they talk about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. There is also the way that it reads. A factual account is often dry and boring, like most of the things that are printed in the newspaper. When we read fiction, we experience an emotional response to the drama that unfolds before us, as if it were reality. So in that sense, fiction feels more real than non-fiction, because it affects us directly as if it were happening in front of us. Fiction appeals to the emotions. Fiction entertains. Fiction moves us.

The difference between a newspaper story and a short story, an encyclopedia entry and a character sketch, an essay and a chapter from a novel is often the immediacy of our reaction to the material.

2. Didactic Fiction as a Type of Fiction

Not all fiction aims to change our mind. Not all fiction is about ideas. But didactic fiction is a subgenre of general fiction. It is no less fictional for being didactic.

Examples of well known didactic works of fiction include Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Man Without a Country, Les Miserables,  Oliver Twist. Why do I think these are all didactic? Each of them seems to have a moral or an agenda: slavery is bad, blind patriotism is a moral necessity, the poor should not have to pay for bread, and it is not good to apprentice little boys against their will. I may be exaggerating a little about what the exact moral is in each case, but clearly these works of fiction explore social ideas and ideals and support a particular viewpoint.

As long as the reader shares the ideals of the writer, then there is no problem reading didactic fiction and enjoying it as fiction. The problem usually arises when the ideals of the reader and the writer are at odds. It is then that suddenly the charge of “propaganda” comes to the fore, and a perfectly entertaining and moving work of fiction is disdained, because it is “not really fiction”. Or not really art. Or just too obvious in its bias.

3. Common Complaints Against Didactic Fiction

One common complaint against didactic fiction is that events are contrived so as to create a particular bias. Abusive masters and abusive employers can make a good case against slavery and apprenticeship, whereas a different book with a different bias might have shown the master or employer as benevolent. Being saved and pardoned by a friendly priest may purchase a soul for God, but where was that priest or God when all that was needed was enough money to buy a loaf of bread? Of course, you’re going to miss your country while under solitary confinement. We miss our country every time we go abroad. But… that does not mean we might not feel a need to stand up to the current administration when it is unjust.

Every story has more than one side. Every ideological movement has opponents. We should not judge the literary merit of a work by the political bias of its author. Most literary novels do have an ideological bias. Being able to read a work written by someone you disagree with and still value its ability to move the reader is one measure of your merit as a literary critic.

 4. The Novels of Ayn Rand: Not All Equally Didactic

We the Living is about what life was like in the Soviet Union in the teens and twenties. It is a mostly factual account, though, of course, it tells its story through fictional characters who have their own dreams, loves and lusts. Is there a special Objectivist bias to this novel? I doubt it. She wrote it long before she invented Objectivism.

Is this a novel with a romantic outlook on life? Sure. Though it ends badly for the heroine, we yearn with her for the brilliant, significant life that she longs to have. Lacking in compassion? For whom? Is there some reason why we shouldn’t feel compassion for Kira? If you read this book, and you don’t feel that, then it must be because you could not leave your ideological baggage at the door.

The Fountainhead is a much more didactic book than We the Living. But the cause that it champions is the artist’s right to self-expression, even in the face of a market that is closed to  new ideas and products. Hardly sounds like the message of someone only interested in industralism or the rights of the wealthy, does it? Howard Roark refuses gainful employment as an architect in order to maintain his own high standard for exactly how buildings are to be designed.  If the reader cannot feel compassion for the penniless young idealist who would rather work as day laborer in a stone quarry than change one line of his design, then the problem is not with the writing.

Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s most didactic — and possibly least well edited book. Arguably, the long stretches of pure philosophy, such as John Galt’s speech, are in and of themselves “non-fiction”. But they are embedded in a fictional text that is every bit as emotionally moving as any thriller or detective novel or love story. In fact, the book has elements from all three. And again, it’s not that you don’t feel compassion when reading this book. I think for most critics, it’s who you feel compassion for that is at issue.

5. Perspective Shifting as the Responsibility of the Reader

We all have our own biases. It’s okay. It’s nothing to apologize for. Wherever we happen to be standing, that is how we get our perspective on life. But the art of reading critically involves the ability to temporarily shift perspective.

Great authors also come with their own built-in bias. We read Dickens’ description of Fagin and feel, quite correctly, that there is an anti-semitic bias at play here. But a good reader puts that aside and does not condemn the work just because of the author’s bias.

By the same token, we may feel a distaste for the bias against the bourgeoisie in Victor Hugo’s writing. But we don’t have to be against the middle class in order to appreciate the poignancy of the story.

When it comes to Ayn Rand, many people have trouble shedding their bias long enough to sample and enjoy the writing. In so doing, they are also shutting themselves off from an understanding of people who think differently from themselves.

The essence of compassion is being able to feel for another person, even though you have never walked in his shoes. It means feeling what others feel and suffering along with them. Rand is very good at arousing compassion for those who have been wronged by the system — whether that system is the communism of the Soviet Union, the closed-minded boards of directors or businessmen in the United States in the thirties and forties, or the futuristic bureaucracy depicted in Atlas Shrugged. If a reader or critic cannot feel for those individuals because they don’t fall into the right political camp, then the fault is not with Rand’s writing.

Reading a book written from a different perspective from our own is like watching a nature documentary. One week it’s about rabbits, and we root for the rabbits and despise all the predators. But the next week the documentary is about wolves. And we feel just as much for the wolf as he pursues his next meal as we did for the rabbit when he was trying to elude him. That is the true magic of compassion.

If you are incapable of shifting your perspective, then not only do you lack true compassion, you are also unfit to be a literary critic. The whole point of literary criticism is to distinguish what is being said from how it is said. If you can’t do that, you need to work on your perspective shifting.

Didactic fiction is a type of fiction. It is effective if it moves people. The writing of Ayn Rand  has a “huge impact”, because it does just that!

Copyright 2013 Aya Katz

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