BiblioFiles Episode #8: Is Truth Necessary in Literature?

Welcome to Bibliophiles, a podcast for Lit Lovers. In today's episode, the Center for Lit team continues its quest to discover the great ideas in books of every description, ancient classics to fresh best sellers, epic poems to bedtime stories. We're glad you came along. We hope you find this discussion as provocative and inspiring as the books themselves. Want to join the great conversation? Stay tuned. You've come to the right place. Welcome to Bibliophiles, everyone. Adam Andrews here. Glad to be with you once again. Glad also to be joined by, as usual, the Center for Lit crew. Missy Andrews. Hey. Ian Andrews. Well, hi. Emily Andrews. Hello. Hello, everyone. And we have a new member of the Center for Lit team joining us for the first time today. We are glad to welcome her aboard. Say hi, Megan Andrews. Hello, everyone. I'm happy to be here. Yay. Yay for Megan. Good to have you. Megan's joining the Center for Lit team full time as of this month. And we are really excited to see what she's going to contribute. Not only on the curriculum development side of things, but also in Bibliophiles starting right now. So Megan, all eyes are on you. All ears are on you. There's no pressure at all, but be sure to bring it. Be sure to be brilliant, Megan. Oh my gosh. My thumbs are sweating. No one's going to talk at all. This is actually just your lecture. I should have been very some notes, you guys. Well speaking of notes, speaking of lectures, we want to dive right into the topic for today. And as usual, I'm pretty excited to bring it up. Because once again, it's a follow-up to a previous discussion in one of our recent discussions that we were all kind of excited about. We talked about this question of whether art has to be beautiful in order to be good. And we had a discussion which I sometimes want to go back and listen to because I was really kind of enthused by the ideas we came up with. But one of the conclusions from that discussion was that art doesn't have to be beautiful in the sense that we usually mean the word as long as it is true. As long as it is saying something true about the world, there is a reason for it. And it's worthy, regardless of whether it is beautiful. And we talked about that issue in some depth and made some nuanced distinctions that I don't think it's necessary to go back into today. But it did lead us to think about a follow-up question that I want to talk about, which is, if truth is the point of art, and maybe we can narrow the discussion and talk about literature specifically, if truth is the point of literature, and it doesn't necessarily have to be beautiful as long as it's true, does it have to be true in order to be good? I guess we're asking a follow-up question, is truth even a necessary component of literature? And I want to throw that question open to the Center for Lit Team today, because I do think that if you think about that question in the right way, you can come up with a version of it that resonates with all readers, especially readers who are raising kids, teaching them how to read, picking books for them, reading carefully themselves, trying to be intentional and self-conscious about the reading that they do. So another way to evaluate the books we read, do they need to be true? Do they need to say something true? Is truth really a necessary component? What do you guys think? Is that a worthy question, first of all, and secondly, how do we go about coming up with an answer? Well, it seems to me that before we can even approximate arriving at some sort of an answer here, we have to define our terms and talk about what we mean by truth. Okay, sure. We can talk about truth as being something with a capital T that is an eternal truth, right? Something that exists outside of cultural norms or personal preferences or anything like that. You mean a theological truth? Well, some sort of a transcendent truth, and I think most transcendent truths are wrapped up in conversations about God or not God, right? People would agree on capital T truth if they also agreed about the existence and nature of God in broad terms, right? Right. In fact, we would have a hard time if we were having a conversation with an honest, earnest atheist here, I think that the conclusions that an earnest atheist would have to come to is that there's no such thing as a capital T truth because there is nothing transcendent or eternal, right? Okay. Something that stands outside of man, defining good, true beauty, right? Okay. But in a Christian context, we would probably all agree that there is such thing as a capital T truth and that something can be true or false based on how it lines up to what we know about God and His revelation. Right. That truth actually exists outside of individual man's mind or prerogatives and essentially stands in judgment to one degree or another, overall things. Oh, I see what you mean. And we speak the truth and tell the truth to the degree that what we say and think resonates with that thing that stands outside of us and is the transcendent standard. Okay. Right? So we can talk about truth that way, capital T truth. We can also talk about little T truth, little T truth being the small truths men tell without reference to the transcendent eternal, right? About their own experience, about their own likes and dislikes, about reality as they see it, right? Without necessarily any reference to that larger truth that evaluates their little T truths. Okay. Okay. So small T truth would be more along the lines of reporting honestly based on your own experience. Assumptions about the world, what you see. Exactly. Exactly. Kind of like, let's see the best way to talk about this. The truth of premises in relationship to the truth about conclusions or different things. You can, as an author, for example, an author can recognize true things about the world and then arrive at conclusions about those observations that don't necessarily resonate with the transcendent truth that we've identified as being associated with God. Okay. So somebody can draw false conclusions from true premises or from honest observations. Yes. Speaking logically. Okay. What about that distinction? You other people? That distinction between capital T truth and small T truth. Do we go with that? Do we want to weigh in on that? No, I think that's a good distinction. I think the next step in evaluating this larger question about art and literature in particular is to talk about the position of the reader when it comes to evaluating those two things. Capital T truth and lower case T truth. What do you mean? And I would probably start by saying that just like Mom was saying, right, the capital T truth, universal truth that stands outside of the world and critiques lower case T truth is something that it's easy to feel as though from our own perspectives, we have a corner on it. We can believe that it is the role of a reader to stand outside of the artist's small T truth and evaluate it with our capital T truth. So the reader is the voice of capital T truth? Right. And that's a dangerous perspective to take as a reader because it has the effect of closing your mind to understanding someone else's worldview. And that's one of the reasons I think it's important to take up this question. There's a question whose reading literature that may or may not be written by Christians. How are we to, in possession of the capital T truth, open our minds and hearts to lower case T truth? Okay. So the position of the reader is obviously critical. So understanding, I think the difference, the two types of truth that we just talked about, I think really does invite reading broadly and fearlessly, it allows for that kind of broad reading that you're talking about. Whereas talking about only truth as capital T truth really does slam the door on some of those non-Christians works. Yeah. Well, and it does go, I mean, like we said, this is sort of a, this topic of conversation, tag teams from the previous episode of our podcast, when we talk about what is art for, right? Understanding the difference between capital T truth and lower case T truth also helps us to understand what it is that we look for out of a piece of art. What is art actually for and what do we expect of it? I don't think it's fair to approach a work of literature and expect it to be holy scripture. We have to look for something smaller and look for something more, what's the way we're looking for Emily? Look for something more modest from a work of art than we expect from a work of transcendent theological truth. Right. I'm wondering what, how is that truth packaged also? What makes it art? Because I'm thinking about like pilgrims progress. It says true things, but it's not my favorite piece of art. It's not my favorite piece of art. a book like Pilgrim's Progress, which is long on capital T truth is more like a sermon than a work of art in your view? Well, I guess I was just trying to bring up a discussion of, does it matter how that truth is delivered? Because it's speaking truth in a way that makes me respond negatively and I wonder why that is. Maybe you just don't like allegory. Well, that's not true because I like, I like, um, see us Lewis and I know that's not perfect allegory but I don't know. Yeah, that that word sermon, why is this sermon not necessarily a piece of artistic literature? Or a work of literature. Yeah. And maybe it has something to do with, um, this difference, this distinction between the two kinds of truth that we're talking about. I think it was Plato that talked about this kind of truth that you're kind of hedging on Emily, um, that he would call like very similar to it, I think is the word of plausibilities, plausible truth. He talked about, um, one of the purposes of art in literature being to, um, to delight, right? And he said that it only delights if there is some sort of element of recognition that resonates, um, that resonates in another human mind or heart, right? As they read it. So, you know, in the particulars, that would be, you know, describing the tree in such a way that it actually calls up the things that all men experience in trees when they look at them, very simply speaking. But I think we can take that and press that same concept into true, um, representations of men and their actions, of actions and consequences and so on and so forth, right? But there's something appealing and, um, delightful, um, about recognizing things that you've experienced in your own life that have basically wronged true for you in the things that are written. So the depiction of the human experience is sort of a little T true. That's a little T truth, like you were describing before. Yeah. It's the literature plausible for the reader. And maybe not just literature, but in life because I think that you need to co-exist together. I respond poorly when someone just gives me capital T truth and I know that I am not, uh, capable of meeting that, you know, I can't, um, I don't always, um, believe in my heart. I don't know how to put that. I do, but it's not, I'm not always thinking about how good God is or. Well, and I think, yeah, yeah, the difference that you're pointing to right there is, um, so and mom, you mentioned this just briefly a second ago, um, reality being a necessary component of, um, lowercase T truth, right, um, in literature and maybe a very component of art, right? Um, drawing something that is pleasing because we recognize it. There's a part of our soul that, um, is comfortable and is comforted by someone articulating our experience and fallenness just is a part of our experience. Right. And if someone is telling me truth that lacks, or you know, I have truth that lacks that and is only giving me, uh, that which is good, that which is beautiful, um, the, the light and without giving me the dark, I don't believe them. Right. Because I know myself. Yeah, they're basically winking at a portion of reality that is a part of the human experience, the genuine experience of a man. And to be fair to John Bunyan, probably the reason that people are still, people are still reading Pilgrim's progress is because of the way that he manages to depict the solution. Yes. Exactly. To pick this little of this bond. Maybe it's just a, yeah, maybe it's just a technical, right? But there's a difference between just calling it that and taking time to connect that to every red, have you read Pilgrim's progress? No, I have, but I don't know. There's something lacking, you know, just calling it the, the slew of the bond. I don't know. It's, it's not, yes, I'm a part of that and just physically climbing out of it isn't really something that I can relate to. Maybe, maybe, um, that, that's probably a decent point as, as we go on to talking about what does it mean to tell the truth? And maybe Emily, what you're saying is that Bunyan doesn't do it as well as maybe some other authors that you've read because of this, we're talking about this very similar to this plausibility that that mom just mentioned, being a part of art that really draws us in. Yeah, I, I mean, I think about, um, I'm reading Dostoevsky's brothers K right now and I just read the chapters running up to the Grand Inquisitor chapter, which is probably one of the most famous chapters in Western literature, right? It's one of them. And there's this section, it's two brothers talking to one another, one of them is a professed atheist in philosopher and the other one is a church man. And, um, basically the little brother, the church man is really concerned for his brother's soul, right? And his older brother knows this and loves the little brother and so he wants to have a conversation about this. And basically the conversation is all about the problem of pain. Why must innocent children suffer? And he paints the suffering of little children in explicit ways, excruciating detail, excruciating detail, um, basically summarizing or coming to, um, a final incident in which a, it's, he tells a story of a Russian feudal lord who avenges an accidental injury to his favorite dog, uh, on the child who caused the injury by stripping the boy naked and setting his hunting dogs on the child, uh, the hunting dogs pursue the child and the child runs in terror and is caught by the dogs and is torn limb for limb. And he says at the end of this that, um, he cannot accept this element of the world and simultaneously accept Christianity. He says this, do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I'm told man could not have existed on earth where he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear kind God. And he goes on and talks more, um, you know, there, there are all kinds of instances suffering horrible instance of, um, parents, um, beating children in a negative way, not disciplining them, but abusing them mercilessly. And finally, you know, with this story of the little boy torn limb for limb, he turns to his brother and he says, what does this guy deserve to be shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings? Speak, Aliocia. I understand that according to Christianity that, um, this debt has already been paid for. Now you tell me, according to your lights, what should happen to this man? And Aliocia says he should be shot. And his brother says, bravo, if even you say so, you're a pretty monk. So there's a little devil sitting in your heart, Aliocia Caramazov. There's a little part of you that doesn't agree with the satisfaction of the cross, with substitutionary atonement, right? And he says, well, what I said was absurd, but and his older philosophical brother cuts him off. And he says, that is just the point that, but let me tell you, novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without them. We know what we know. And he goes on to say, I understand nothing. I don't want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made it my mind long ago, not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact and I have determined to stick to the fact. But I think this is really kind of getting at or speaking to that thing that you're talking about Emily, that problem that you have, for example, with the allegory of Pilgrims progress, with the lack of delight that it gives to your soul. Because in a sense, it's not that Bunyan is winking at any of these darker things in the world, but that the truth that he turns to to satisfy and resolve them is too neat. It's too neat. It's tidy, right? There's not enough blood on the ground to quote Bruney Brown. Not enough blood on the ground on the floor. And this is the thing, it looks like here that Dostoyevsky's character Ivan really wants to deal with this problem of pain so much so he's so troubled by this problem of innocent suffering that in the end, he says, I get it that I've been given a ticket. We've all been given a ticket. There's been satisfaction made. It all fits very neatly together. But I respectfully return my ticket. No thanks. I'm not interested in the world like that. I get off. And I think that present in the literature is the truth that all human beings have to reckon with. We have to deal with the dirty, ugly, underbelly of humanity that presents itself to us, for example, in the evening news. Well, Emily, I don't want to cut you off because mom's kind of talking to your point. Let me just jump in here to say that absurdity that Dostoyevsky is talking about, that Ivan Karamotsov is talking about, from a Christian perspective where there is a sovereign God and heaven who orders all things by the counsel of his will, there is no such thing as absurdity. The capital T truth world doesn't admit of absurdity because of God. And yet, in the world of small T truth, Ivan Kermatsov has a point. He says, "I don't want to understand." Right. There is absurdity in the world. There is no way to explain some of the things we see. Go ahead, Emily. Well, that's because we are blind. We are not God. Right. Right. So, we can't comprehend the grand design. And so, to some degree, in our perspective, it is absurd. Right. There is nothing that we can do about it. And it's not trust. It's not that it doesn't understand it. It's not an educational problem, right? An intellectual-ascent issue. It's a matter of the feeling in his heart that demands justice. In fact, they even talk about that. He says, "I must have justice or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote, infinite time and space, but here on earth. And then I can see myself." This is why I have such a problem with the scholastic philosophers who tried to reconcile everything. They tried to come up with neat, tidy, little, mathematic answers to all the problems in the world. You can't do that. Right. It rings hollow. Well, in a sense, it denies humanity. And God made us human. And so, in a sense, to deny our human need for justice, to deny our humanity, the character Aliosha says, "Well, basically, he says to his brother, "That's rebellion. You're in rebellion." And, fair enough, he's absolutely correct about that. But on the other hand, in a sense, to deny that intrinsic inherent gut-wrenching need for justice is to deny our humanity. It's to wink at what man's true experiences is. His experience of being caught between what he knows to be capital-t-truth and what he sees all around him and can't reconcile. Well, it's to dismiss the gravity of the situation. And I'm not sure that that's good, true, or beautiful. You know what I mean? It may feel better to wink at those things, but I don't know that it is better to wink at those things. And that kind of leads me to the Moby Dick question. Not yet. Not yet. I want to jump back. Well, let me just get this off my chest. And then you can jump back totally. I promise. I will totally relinquish it. This is the part where Mom says, "Besides, you can cut this out later if you want." But I'm totally going to lose my trying to thought, and let's say this right now. This just reminds me of Moby Dick's A-hab, who, in a sense, is wrestling with the same issue that Ivan's wrestling with. Moby Dick's A-hab is the captain who's had his leg bitten off by this monstrous whale. And he doesn't see in this whale the natural creature. He sees instead the sovereign mover of the creature, the maker of the creature. He sees God, he says, behind a paste-bored mask. And he says this really beautifully. He says, "Hark you yet again, the little lower layer." All visible objects, man, are but as paste-bored masks. But in each event, in the living act, the undoubted deed, there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask. How can the prisoner reach outside, except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's not beyond, but to the enough. He tasks me. He heaps me. I see in him outrageous strength with an inscrutable, malice, sinuing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate. And be the white whale agent or be the white whale principal. I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man. I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that? Then could I do the other? Since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth has no confines. Not just smacks of the same kind of sentiment that we just heard, I even speak in Dostoevsky's work, right? The same kind of quest for truth, deep abiding hunger for truth, and some sort of justice, some sort of rationale behind it all that resonates in our soul, not just in our intellect. And as you read, maybe Dick, and works like it, the idea of whether or not Ahab was crazy or whether he was actually worshipful in his pursuit of this truth, that's a live question. But the humanity of the search is, I think, irrefutable. Is this the kind of, and Emily, let me ask you this question, is the dissatisfaction with the world that mom has just described on Ahab from Melville's work, and Ivan Karamatsov from Dostoevsky's, is that dissatisfaction and unrest, the kind of small, true truth that you are looking for in literature and art? Absolutely. And maybe that just means that I'm more troubled and darker than everyone. But it resonates more with my own experience. It helps me think my way toward capital teachers better. But really, my guess is that you would want to say it stronger, more strongly than that. You would want to say that you speak for more than just yourself when you go to literature and are looking for some sort of validation of your own experience. It's not just that you have a darker view of the world than most people, right? Although that certainly true. Well, not darker than Dostoevsky or darker than Melville. We could let Ian weigh in on that subject. I will refrain. I think in this situation, discretion is the better part of that. Thank you. But what of it? Do you think that that is a common condition and not just to confine to people of a particular personality or mental makeup? I do. And there's a lot of literature. There's a lot of worthwhile literature that doesn't do that to the same extent as Dostoevsky and Melville. And they have their place. But it's richer. I think it's richer and more meaningful when it is explored. And I hear a lot of times in the homeschool circles that I run in. There's such a real earnest concern for the kinds of questions, the kinds of literature and subject matter that we should be placing before our children's eyes. And certainly there's an age-appropriate inspector that needs to enter in, right? Your fourth grader does not need Dolby Dick. No, your fourth grader does not need Melville or Dostoevsky at this juncture of his education. But at some point, right? At some point, shouldn't we be allowing them to see that they're not the only ones that notice these things in the world? Well, and it's important, I think, to note that from my own personal perspective on capital T truth, both Ivan Karamotsov and Ahab from Melville Dick don't know the truth. No, I don't think they do. They're saying something about God's world that isn't true. And yet, they're telling small T truth that is critical, maybe even as Emily said, to our progress towards capital T truth. I think so, because without the questions that they're asking, then the answer means nothing. Well, and if you deny the things that they're saying that our lower case T truth, and you encounter those things, then you're going to become like them in loose faith. Yeah, I think that's really true. Let me put a question to you. I want to ask this of Emily Minnet to go, I want to press it a little further. Do you think everyone, to a degree or another, is in Ivan Karamotsov situation, is in Ahab's situation with respect to the intelligence behind the pasteboard mask to use Melville's phrase? Yeah, I do. I would say that pretty strongly, actually. And it's wrapped up in my own understanding of capital T truth, oddly enough. I mean, there's two ways to talk about it. The first way is to say that the small T truth of the world is that all human beings are faced with the same set of circumstances in a broad sense. Here we all are living, dealing with basic questions like, is there a divine being? And if so, does he like me? And he's going to do things the way I think he ought to do them? Generally, the answer is no. He's not. Right. And so we're constantly wrestling as humanity. And you can see this as you look back across the history of literature and philosophy. We're struggling as a species with the idea of God, the idea of the divine. But from a capital T truth perspective, as a Christian, the way that I see it is that there's a verse that talks about the rocks and the trees singing praises. And it's not because rocks and trees have voices. It's because they are. And as created order, we are worship in our very being. Because we are the work of God's hands. And by walking around down here on the earth, we are worshiping him. So when I look at Captain A. Right. Exactly. So when I look at Captain Ahab and I look at Ivankar Motsov, both of them are doing worship and acknowledging this smallity truth in their despair and in their confusion. And then the way that they articulate it, they are functioning as individual capable minds, which are creations of God. Wow. And then worshiping. Well, actually, you're not making that up. Melville himself spells that out and that one's incredibly dramatic thing in the storm when he says something defective and defying the worship. And we worship thee, right? Yeah, exactly. I'm going to look at that at the top. So then you just to follow up with you as readers of literature, then, do we all need to take a lesson from Dostoyevsky and Melville and know ourselves better? Yeah, there be haste. Actually, that's not put nearly strong enough. I guess what I would say is-- You never do anything. It's the only reason to read. The only reason to read is to wrap your head around what Captain Ahab is defyingly screaming up into the wind and what Ivan Karamotsov does when he tears up his ticket and hands it back to God. Listen to this. Listen to this. I have to read this. This is so beautiful. This is Ahab speaking. I own, and he's speaking to the God that he does not know. I own my speechless, placeless power. Said, I not so. Nor was it wrong from me. Nor do I now drop these links. Thou can't blind, but I can then grope. Thou can't consume, but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes and shudder hands. I would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull. My eyeballs ache and ache. My whole beaten brain seems as beheaded and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, yet blindfolded, yet will I talk to thee. Light, though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness. But I am darkness leaping out of light. Leaping out of thee. And then a little later, he says, here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap, leap up and lick the sky. I leap with thee. I burn with thee. Would fame be welded with thee. Defyingly, I worship thee. Yep, that's what I meant. So obviously Melville is basically articulating the very same thing that you are. That crazy Ahab, even in his rebellion, as he asks these questions and pursues this God behind the pasteboard mask, is worshipping innocence. Well, and it requires vulnerability to read this and say, I felt this way too. That's what I'm getting at. But the truth is, and to piggyback on that, that's just the sort of vulnerability that honest reading can give you. I mean, few of us are going to have the level of life experience that Captain Ahab, the fictional character, did. I haven't had my leg bitten off by a whale, for example. And thank God for that. Even that I'm a bit of a landlubber, this unlikely that I really get my leg bitten off by a whale. However, in reading, in encountering works of literature openly, and in laying my own presuppositions down at the door, in walking into this artist's mind, and allowing him to speak to me, what I do is take on more life experience than I have and come out the wiser for it. And just to get back to the original question, I think that this kind of work that actually engages the reader with those questions is more plausible than the kind of work that wings at them and spouts some eternal truth, even if it is an eternal truth, but without asking any questions. It's only more plausible if we are all actually in Ahab's position. That's why I asked a minute ago. Is everybody where Ahab is? Is everybody where Ivan Karamatsov is? If they are, then you're exactly right. The only plausible art is the art that tells the small tea truth about human experience. My question is, is it more true that Ahab and Ivan Karamatsov are just faithless dogs who don't really have that want to take to see the world correctly? Here's why, because, and this is one of the reasons that reading that even though you're fourth graded doesn't need Dostoevsky, you do. So go read them. (laughing) One of the reasons of Dostoevsky is so brilliant is that his project is to confound the religious. - Right. - His project is to build a character like Alliostia, who is perfect in every way, whose heart is beautiful. He is one of the most beautiful hearts in all of literature. He's compassionate, he's loving, he is unfailingly optimistic, and his faith is almost unshakable. And so, Dostoevsky's project is to say, even you, Alliostia, will doubt. - Yeah. - By the end of the story, you will have no idea what God you worship. And that is the human condition, right? Faith is there to be shaken. And I don't, I just think yes, yes, we're Captain Ahab. And the extent to which literature is doing its job is the extent to which those of us who understand capital T truth and wield it like a sword are brought to our knees. - Yeah, absolutely. - This reminds me of the biblical reminder that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things who can know it. - And that literature helps you know it. - Yes, I was just gonna say that. That literature is one of the ways that we come to know ourselves in our fallenness and lostness and darkness and depravity. By books that tell the small T truth. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of people answering your question are do we all experience the world that Ahab experiences? Well, no, we don't all experience the world that Ahab experiences. But to the extent that we don't actually see what he means, we don't really know ourselves yet. - That's what I'm getting at. - Because Ahab has come up against the fact that he's a created being instead of a God and it's smart. - It's smart. - He doesn't like it. He demands an explanation for it. - Yeah. - Right? And this is his rebellion and his worship. - Right. - A lot of us in reading it, it becomes pretty transparent. But in our own lives, I think we do likewise. - Yeah. - You know, we walk around, since we're created in the image of God, doing a lot of the things that he does in terms of being creative and being rational thinkers and trying to wrap the truth up in neat little packages, right, that we can get our minds around making all things finite, right, so that we're never confronted with our own finitude, right? And these kinds of books actually disrupt that perspective. - Yeah, yeah, Emily go. - Well, I was just thinking that the Bible tells us that not only is our salvation not performed by us, but our faith isn't even our own. - Yes. - It's miraculous that we are even able to believe in the capital T truth. - Mm-hmm. - And that's what it forces us to confront that we can't even wrap it up in a tiny, neat little package because it's not ours. - Mm. So, wow. So to return to the original question, does literature have to be true to be good? How would we answer that? I mean, it sounds like what we're leaning toward is better that it be small T true for our purposes as human beings. I don't know if I would say that because that doesn't, I think that we're saying it's necessary that it be small T true in order for it to partake of the big T truth. And if all it does is postulate about the big T truth so it's not very useful or engaging because there's no very similitude, right? There's nothing delightful. It doesn't resonate in our souls. It doesn't expose us as creatures and help us to understand what manner of creatures we are and engage us in the experience of creaturehood in that regard. It meddles the angels. - Here's one of the things though, that I think is crucial to understand again from the position of here we are as readers, are we wielding truth or are we coming indebted to the author already? The most effective works that I have read that have led me towards capital T truth don't assert it. They ask the right questions. They suggest a couple of answers, usually in the form of more small T truths. - Mm-hmm. - And I think the reason they do that, and this, I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm fond of going out to the end of limbs and sawing them off after me. (laughing) I think the reason that they don't go out and go ahead and assert that capital T truth is that they, as authors, have a fundamental understanding of the human condition. We are looking for truth. We're conditioned to draw conclusions. We're conditioned to try and explain. We're conditioned to ask like Ahab, who in heck do you think you are, God? And if an artist can, bring us to our knees, face us with our humanity, and leave some sort of an answer on the table, we're gonna pick it up and turn it around and see how far it goes. And that's part of the human condition too, is that inquisitiveness. So I almost think that what Emily was saying earlier about Pilgrim's progress is that he goes too far. If he had stopped at the slew of despond, and if he had put to human condition in that way, and even if he had described the Christian walk as a journey, and then left us to our own devices to decide what the final answer was, the read would be a lot more compelling. And instead, what he did is turn it into a sermon. There's a place for a sermon, but I'm not sure that we call that art. - Wow, that's interesting. That is really interesting. I was just thinking about my recent reading of crime and punishment, where the, redemption of the main character takes place two paragraphs from the end of the story and is not super deeply explained. I mean, Dostoevsky stays as far away from sermonizing as possible, even while he paints a pretty compelling picture of grace. But it's almost just like you said, the character is for all intents and purposes left in the slew of despond until the very, very end. That's not what the work of art is about. Well, right. I think that there's a place for suggesting potential answers, but a good author is probably not going to tie up all the pieces for you. Because he wants you to think. I was just thinking, just taught a piece like a river and soon we're going to do that with our adults in the Pelletide. The leaf-ingre book from the early 2000s. Right. And the main character who narrates the story is he postulates that he's a kind of witness to truth, right? But he never articulates that truth for the reader. In fact, his last words, his parting words are make of it what you will. Speaking to that thing, Ian just said, human beings are inquisitive. They're going to make of something what they will. Exactly. Make of it what you will. And isn't that the the the beauty of fiction? Yes. Fiction basically presents a world and presents and I don't just mean a setting. I mean, this is the way the world is according to this author, right? In examining whatever the major subject is of the story, whatever the thematic ideas of the story. And in the end, they essentially say, make of it what you will. You know, you go think about it. Right. And so then the next so the next logical step we've got to take is this one. And I know I started the podcast this way. What's what is our attitude as readers to be? And I would argue that our attitude as readers needs to be to ask the questions the authors are asking. Yeah. Rather than approaching a book and saying, for example, you know, what should our main character do? What decisions should they be making right now? We need to ask the what if question? Yeah. Just like the authors are asking, the authors say, here's a world. What if it were this way? Right. Who would God be in this world? Who would you be in this world? What does sin look like? What does joy look like? What does redemption look like in this world? Rather than saying, well, redemption sin and joy should look like this capital T truth idea that I have. We need to inhabit that author's world and ask those questions along with him. Yeah. It's the what question for sure that we need to be teaching our kids to ask what is the author saying and to what end is he saying it? And I like the way you just put it, what if the world is as he describes what then? What then? That may do what Emily was saying a minute ago, drive us to capital T truth as effectively as any sermon or at least in a way that's appropriate to literature and appropriate to art. I think that this thing that we're talking about is the reason why I would choose Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia over, for example, Elsie Dinsmore. The Elsie Dinsmore stories with the little main character, the heroine who's practically perfect in every way like Mary Popman. Okay. You know, and the reason being that that little character is cardboard. She's not real. In the same way Heidi, I think she's kind of cardboard in that way too. Whereas in The Chronicles of Narnia, we get Edmund. Edmund Pevenzie. Edmund Pevenzie who sells his brothers and sisters down the river. Literally, you know, and we go, oh yes, I saw so and all for some Turkish delight. I get it. You know, that's real. That resonates in the human experience, in the human soul and psyche. There's a part of us that are all Edmund. I don't know. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. But not only are we all Edmund, we're also all Emma, right? Janos and Emma, because what we would love to do and what we constantly have to fight our impulse to do is create little worlds that are perfect for ourselves. So there's never any sorrow and there's never any pain. And that's why good art, like that novel points out to us the impossibility of those little worlds, right? Sin inhabits our world. And you know, as much as we hate to admit it sometimes, it's the reason we feel. It's the reason that we grow. It's the reason that we understand grace and joy and redemption. And I think it's the role of good art. And maybe this is the easiest way to decide between good art and bad art. It's the role of good and bad art to draw us back to that well of joy that is sin. There's a controversial idea for you. That is a wonderfully controversial idea that I think I would like to take up in our next discussion, springing off of something that mom said a few minutes ago about plausibility and the role of literature to delight. And maybe we could talk about that along with this idea of the well of joy being locked up in the small tea truth about the world that we see only dimly because of our finitude. Let's keep talking about that next time. We've reached the end of our time for today, however. Thank you guys for joining us. Thank you to the Center for Lit team for being online today. For those of you listening, I appreciate you being here and tuning in. We will be back as soon as possible with another episode of Bibliophiles. Meanwhile, come by the website centerforlit.com and find all of our other resources designed to help you join into the great conversation along with us and along with great thinkers and authors down through the centuries. Also check out the Pelican Society, our membership program for people who love the Center for Lit way of doing things. Inside you'll find discounts on all of our products and exclusive access to a bunch of other resources as well. So come on in, come on join us and we are glad to have you along today. Until we meet again, my friends. Happy reading. Happy reading. See Emily, you just make me sound like the moron. Bibliophiles is a production of the Center for Lit podcast network. Find new episodes each month on the web at centerforlit.com where you'll discover dozens of resources to equip and inspire you to participate in the great conversation, including the Pelican Society, a membership program for folks who love the Center for Lit approach to all things literary. Thanks for joining us. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Until next time, happy reading everyone.