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the
Archdiocese of Atlanta
GEORGIA BULLETIN
SERVING GEORGIA S 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES
GEORGIA BULLETIN
BOOK SUPPLEMENT
THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 1963
Fiction Is Subject With A History
It Should Be Taught That Way
BY FLANNERY O'CONNOR
In two recent instances in
Georgia, parents have objected
to their eighth and ninth grade
children's reading assignments
in modern fiction. This seems
to happen with some regularity
in cases throughout the country.
The unwitting parent picks up
his child’s book, glances
through it, comes upon pass
ages of erotic detail or pro
fanity and takes off at once to
complain to the school board.
Sometimes, as in one of the
Georgia cases, the teacher is
dismissed and hackles rise in
liberal circles everywhere.
The two cases in Georgia,
which involved Steinbeck’s,
EAST OF EDEN, and JohnHer-
sey’s, A BELL FOR ADONO,
provoked considerable news
paper comment. One columnist,
in commending the enterprise
of the teachers, announced that
students do not like to read
the fusty works of the 19th
century, that their attention can
best be held by novels dealing
with the realities of our own
time, and that the Bible too is
full of racy stories.
MR. HERSEY himself ad
dressed a letter to the State
School Superintendent in behalf
of the teacher who had been
dismissed. He pointed out that
his book is not scandalous, that
it attempts to convey an earnest
message about the nature of
democrary, and that if falls
well within the limits of the
principle of “total effect,” that
principle followed in legal cases
by which a book is judged not
for isolated parts but by the final
effect of the whole book upon
the general reader.
I do not want to comment
on the merits of these parti
cular cases. What concerns me
is what novels ought to be
assigned in the eighth and ninth
grades as a matter of course,
for if these cases indicate any
thing, they indicate the hapha
zard way in which fiction is
approached in our high schools.
Presumably there is a state
reading list which contains
“safe” books for teachers to
assign; after that it is up to the
teacher.
ENGLISH teachers come in
Good, Bad and Indifferent, but
too frequently in high schools
anyone who can speak English
is allowed to teach it. Since
several novels can’t easily be
gathered into one text took,
the fiction that students are
assigned depends upon their
teacher's knowledge, ability
and taste, variable factors at
best. More often than not, the
teacher assigns what he thinks
will hold the attention and in
terest of the students. Modern
fiction will certainly hold it.
Ours is the first age in history
which has asked the child what
he would tolerate learning, but
that is a part of the problem
with which I am not equipped to
deal. The devil of Educationism
that possesses us is the kind
that can be cast out only by
prayer and fasting. No one has
yet come along strong enough
to do it. In other ages the
attention of children was held
by Homer and Virgil, among
others, but by the reverse evol
utionary process, that is no
longer possible; our children
are too stupid now to enter the
past imaginatively. No one asks
the student if algebra pleases
him or if he finds it satisfactory
that some French verbs are
irregular, but if he prefers
Hersey to Hawthorne, his taste
must prevail.
I WOULD like to put forward
the proposition, repugnant to
most English teachers, that
fiction, if it is going to be
taught in the high schools,should
be taught as a subject and as
a subject with a history. The
total effect of a novel depends
not only on its innate impact,
but upon the experience, lite
rary and otherwise, with which
it is approached. No child needs
to be assigned Hersey or Stein
beck until he is familiar with a
certain amount of the best work
of Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville,
the early James and Crane, and
he does not need to be assigned
these until he has been intro
duced to some of the better
English novelists of the 18th
and 19th centuries.
The fact that these works do
not present him with the reali
ties of his own time is all to the
good. He is surrounded by the
realities of his own time and
he has no perspective what
ever from which to view them.
Like the college student who
wrote in her paper on Lincoln
that he went to the movies and
got shot, many students go to
college unaware that the world
was not made yesterday; their
studies began with the present
and dipped backward occasion
ally when that seemed neces
sary or unavoidable.
THERE IS much to be en
joyed in the great British nov
els of the 19th century, much
that a good teacher can open
up in them for the young stu
dent. There is no reason why
these novels should be either
too simple or too difficult for
the eighth grade. For the simple
they offer simple pleasures, for
the more precocious they can
be made to yield subtler ones
if the teacher is up to it. Let
the student discover, after
reading the 19th century British
novel, that the 19th century
American novel is quite dif
ferent as to its literary char
acteristics, and he will there
by learn something not only
about these individual works
but about the sea-change which
a new historical situation can
effect in a literary form. Let
him come to modern fiction
with this experience behind him
and he will be better able to see
and to deal with the more com
plicated demands of the best
20th century fiction.
MODERN FICTION often
looks simpler than the fiction
which proceeded it, but in real
ity it is more complex. A nat
ural evolution has taken place.
The author has for the most
part absented himself from di
rect participation in the work
and has left the reader to make
his own way amid experience
dramatically rendered and
symbolically ordered. The
modern novelist merges the
reader in the experience; he
tends to raise the passions he
touches upon. If he is a good
novelist, he raises them to
effect by their order and clarity
a new experience—the total ef
fect—which is not in itself sen
suous or simply of the moment.
Unless the child has had some
literary experience before, he
is not going to be able to re
solve the immediate passions
the book arouses into any true
total picture.
It is here the moral problem
will arise. It is one thing for
a child to read about adultery
in the Bible or in ANNA KAR
ENINA and quite another for
him to read about it in most
modern fiction. Hus is not
only because in both the form
er instances adultery is con
sidered a sin, and in the latter,
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF
IVAN DENISOVICH. By Alex
ander Solzhernitzyn. Dutton.
$3.95
By Rev. Leonard F. X. Mayhew
This is an important book. It
is the detailed description of a
single day in the life of a pri
soner in a maximum security
labor camp for political con
victs in the days of Stalin’s iron-
fisted tyranny. The account is
completely authentic. Alexan
der Solzhenitsyn, now a teach
er of mathematics, was a poli
tical prisoner in a Siberian
labor camp for eight years.
The chilling simplicity of his
story and the disciplined un
derstatement of his writing
heighten the effect of every in
cident he narrates. The result
is overwhelmingly moving. Sol
zhenitsyn has chosen his hero
well. He himself, an intellec
tual, must have been able to
analyze his plight, to relate ef
fects to causes, to lay blame
where it was deserved. In some
way this may have eased the
at most, an inconvenience, but
because modern writing in
volves the reader in the action
with a new degree of intensity
and literary mores now permit
him to be involved in any action
a human being can perform.
IN OUR fractured culture,
we cannot agree on morals,
we cannot even agree that moral
matters should come before
literary ones when there is a
conflict between them. All this
is another reason why the high-
schools would do well to return
to their proper business of
preparing foundations. Whether
in the senior year students
should be assigned modern
novelists should depend both
on their parent's consent and
on what they have already read
and understood.
The high school English
teacher will be fulfilling his
responsibility if he furnishes
the student a guided opport
unity, through the best writing
of the past, to come, in time,
to an understanding of the best
writing of the present. He will
teach literature, not social
studies or little lessons in de
mocracy or the customs of
many lands.
And if the student finds that
this is not to his taste? Well,
that is regrettable. Most re
grettable. His taste should not
be consulted; it is being form
ed.
horror of those eight years.
The hero of the noveL Ivan
Denisovich Shukkov, is a sim
ple man, a farmer, forced to
survive without sophisticated
resources of any kind. As for
so many Russians, the turning
point of his existence came with
the German invasion in 1941
In 1945 he was captured by the
Germans but contrived to es
cape within a few days. Upon
his return to the Russian lines
his story was disbelieved by die
hypersensitive security police
and he is accused of treason
and espionage. Confused and
helpless before his accusers
and afraid that he will be exe
cuted if he maintains his inno
cence, he “confesses” and is
sentenced to ten years in a con
centration camp.
THE BOOK describes one out
of the monotonous desert of
thousands of days of Ivan’s pri
son term. It begins with the
clang of a rail at reveille and
(Continued On Page 4)
Stalin’s Tyranny
