The Black Box of Fiction

from "Mr. Vonnegut in Sumatra"
in The Braindead Megaphone
George Saunders

I'd understood the function of art to be primarily descriptive: a book was a kind of scale model of life intended to make the reader feel and hear and taste and think just what the writer had. Now I began to understand art as a kind of black box the reader enters. He eneters in one state of mind and exits in another. The writer gets no points just because what's inside the box bears some linear resemblance to "real life"--he can put whatever he wants in there. What's important is that something undeniable and nontrivial happens to the reader between entry and exit.

And that undeniable and nontrivial occurrence has moral content.  I was reading an essay the other day on reading Lolita, and it was suggested that despite Nabokov's mastery of language and story, the content of Lolita was pernicious: Humbert Humbert, a monster, is made, despite the author's intent synmpathetic; not necessarily through his own pleadings but through context.  I must admit that this is my experience every time I try to pick the book up.  I'm overwhelmed by a nausea that trumps any attempt to read the book.  I can't find the triumph of the language for the dubious morality that is inadvertantly inculcated.  I think it is probably true that Nabakov had no sympathy for Humbert's pathology--but like any writer worth his salt, he had deep sympathy for his characters and can't help but to convey that to the reader.  The net result is an art that distorts our perceptions ever so slightly--just a little twist in the mirror, that over time results in a complete distortion of thinking about this moral matter.  A great amoral writer can be an enormous force for malice in the world--not necessarily purposefully, but with, unfortunately, potential for enormous effect.