dangerousmeta!, the original new mexican miscellany, offering eclectic linkage since 1999.

Salon: Stories don’t need morals or messages.

“The weakness of this approach to fiction should be obvious: If what you really want is a set of fortifying maxims, why bother with stories about feckless romances or foolish kings? Why not just go straight to the self-help section — the secular equivalent of the sermon — as so many American readers already do?” As a character in John Fowles The Magus expresses (and I paraphrase), why sit through a couple of hundred pages of dreck for one threadbare moral? Why not read autobiographies instead and find out how real people accomplished great things?

It’s a question I ask myself over and over and over again.

02/01/12 • 06:21 PM • Arts • Books • Psychology • No Comments

Comments:

There are no comments at this time for this entry.

 

Leave a comment:

name:

email:

url //:

Your email is not published.
Basic HTML is allowed. Smileys are available, if you're so inclined.

Save personal info (so you don't have to keep entering it)?

Send an email if someone else comments on this thread?

Submit the word you see below:


<< Previous entry: Design You Trust: Winter Weather around the Northern Hemisphere.

Next entry: Shorpy: The Big Pennsylvania Hole - 1908. >>