"BAD BOOKS ALWAYS LIE"

Good Books, Bad Books: Windows into the Human Heart (Steven Garber, June 10, 2003, BreakPoint WorldView)

"Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition." Walker Percy's bold assertion offended a student I had just met, and she wanted to talk.

And so on a cold winter evening in the Poconos, I sat down with this Princeton University Ph.D. candidate who had joined several dozen graduate students for a weekend of reflection. Drawing from Cornell, Columbia, Rutgers, and Princeton, they were described to me in this way: "These are bright students, and they love God-but they typically don't know how to connect what they believe with their studies. Can you help?"

As I pondered how to approach the weekend, Walker Percy's insight about literature and life-that "bad books always lie"-came to mind, and I thought that I would start with a discussion of his argument. The thesis is true beyond the world of novels, echoing into every area of human existence. All across the curriculum, the view of the human condition sets the terms of the debate. What we believe about who we are-our origin, nature, and destiny-affects everything else.

She and I sat down for what turned out to be a three-hour conversation. Several years into her work, the focus of her study was early modern Japanese literature, Buddhist literature, she explained. And she was offended at Percy's argument, where he moves from "bad books always lie" to asking, tongue-in-cheek and yet with the deepest seriousness, "Have you read any good Marxist novels lately? Any good behaviorist novels lately? Any good Freudian novels lately? Any good Buddhist novels lately?" He points out why each worldview fails to provide the necessary grist for a good story. Audaciously, given the pluralizing and secularizing character of contemporary life, he then says that novels are dependent upon the Jewish and Christian view of human nature and history.

Percy saw the issues as a line in the sand: Either one worked out of the Jewish and Christian tradition, with its narrative-shaped understanding of the human condition, or one did not have what was required for a good story. In his own words, "Judeo-Christianity is about pilgrims who have something wrong with them and embark on a search to find a way out. This is also what novels are about."

That great literature must be based on universal truths is one of the core notions behind the original Brothers Judd website and excites much hostile reaction, as for instance the comments following our review of Ulysses. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 19, 2003 8:38 PM