I agree entirely on the faults of postmodernism. Its presumptions make effective storytelling impossible. But I would differ, at least on the wording, with the assertion that the function of storytelling is to teach morality. That is the trap that Christian fiction tends to fall into, which makes it largely unreadable.
Rather, the moral structure of a story is a given from the start. Its moral norms are the rules of the game, which is why postmoderns can't tell stories because, for them, the game has no rules. The business of stories is not to teach what should be done, but to examine the difficulties of doing what we all know (in the story context) should be done. It is about the difficulties and challenges of performing moral action where the moral imperatives are known from the beginning. Hamlet's famous soliloquy is not about what is right -- the Almighty has fixed his canon gainst self-slaughter -- but about the difficulty of taking arms against a sea of troubles and the temptation to take the easy way out.
Moral action requires three things: Moral norms, a correct apprehension of the situation, and the courage to act. Even with a perfect grasp of moral absolutes, we cannot act correctly if we don't understand the situation and/or we don't have the courage to act and to pay the cost of acting. The role of stories in our moral development is not to teach the norms, but to help us learn to see straight so that we can apprehend situations correctly, and to help us develop the courage to act when we understand what the situation is and what moral norms require in that situation.
To this end, we should note, authors will sometimes create moral norms specifically for their story worlds. The moral imperative to toss magic rings into volcanoes does not exist in our world, but in The Lord of the Rings, it becomes the central moral norm on which everyone can agree, which then leaves the book free to focus on the struggle and the cost of obeying this imperative. That is the proper business of fiction.
John Gardner has some good things to say about the importance of a moral framework in fiction. Milan Kundera writes that in a novel theme is an existential inquiry. There may be "good writing" in material without a moral arc, but the pieces are unmoored existentially, in my opinion, and teach noting more than technique on a micro level. The reader learns nothing of note to take away, so I agree with what you say here, Lisa.
Who was it that wrote that good literature is like a mirror; if an ass looks into it, don't expect an angel to look out? The point being, that great literature teaches us more than the moment; it teaches us to look at ourselves, to grow, to become aware of possibilities about how to inhabit the world and our lives in meaningful ways. It’s about growth.
It’s about in der veldt sein. How we shape our world and how that reshaping shapes us. And that includes a moral compass and awareness of who and what we are. I mean, why else would John Donne’s no man is an island resonate so powerfully? We are all part of the main, and good literature should bring that awareness to out attention.
Excellent essay Liza. I agree with you 💯%. I was in an academic and academic influenced theological environment for a long time and I was always ambivalent about it. Now I pretty firmly believe it was entirely destructive and produced very little good fruit in the lives of the people who were involved in it. Postmodernism is a universal acid that damages and destroys whatever it comes into contact with.
Setting aside your caricatures of postmodernism: Big publishing has gone commercial, and Penguin is hardly representative of the industry. It's one of the few literary imprints left. Look at the deals on Publisher's Marketplace, and you'll see that it's extremely hard to publish a novel without a redemption arc. Even nonfiction is increasingly required to have a moral arc. The industry has many problems, but taking cues from Derrida is not one of them. If only!
Hah I almost got that! But seriously I am not a big fan of some of these post modern philosophers but TBH I haven’t read them other than Foucault. I’m more drawn intellectually to the so called analytic theories like Russell and Popper .
They're not nearly as flat or terrible as their critics pretend. Influenced by the messianic tradition, Derrida didn't question meaning for the hell of it but to find where texts tremble, having the potential to generate something new. Deconstruction wasn't a game; it was a project to bring about justice. He likened it to forgiveness, which also disrupts the order of things with something new. So this idea that he had no moral imagination is just bullocks.
You really think the narrator learns nothing? I thought she wanted to purge herself of consumerism and cheap beauty, to see things like a child again. And there's a scene I remember at the end where she's in central park and she sees a mother & child, and the child points at a "psychedelic crow" and asks, "What's that, mommy?" and the mother says, "That's a grackle, honey." I think the narrator has regained the ability to see the world like that child.
To me, postmodernism is basically instability of meaning, which is a staple in art. It also has a place in rational discourse if you're careful. I tend to think the problem starts when postmodernism is used as a replacement for rational discourse, at which point things have a tendency to take on the meaning the interpreter wants to see.
Liza, another great piece. I think the fault lines extend beyond the "moral vs. meaningless" divide. Too much of today's so-called literature is grounded in solipsism--the author's as well as the protagonist's. That creates a vacuum where moral considerations--even moral awareness and the choices implied--can't thrive. Just finished Ian McKewan's What We Can Know, which features characters who are arguably moral-less, yet the book as a whole carries genuine moral weight about the consequences of our individual and collective actions.
You seem to conflate two issues: identity-driven narrative and nihilism. Didactic writing can be enjoyable but also obnoxious. The novels you cite as classics (by Tolstoy, Fitzgerald) work despite the characters’ moral stances, not because of them. I have spent no time in English departments but surmise that literature in every era has a mix of overtly didactic stuff that is extensively read (e.g. Harry Potter, which I personally don’t care for but respect for its popularity) and pure fiction, devoid of moral message (e.g. Thomas McGuane, front of my ming because I just read his 2025 book of short stories A Wooded Shore, every sentence of which is a purely brilliant, original creation) that hopefully is read, perhaps less extensively. Lolita and Moby Dick may have morals hidden in them (although VN famously fumed against such nonsense), but we do not read them for that reason.
I agree on the perils of postmodernism but wonder if you’re over simplifying. I’m thinking of Chekhov, one of my favorite writers, where for the most part, characters seem to learn little from their travails. Of course, if I remember correctly, Tolstoy seemed to have the same complaint about Chekhov’s work.
Very interesting points here. I also prefer reading older works of literary fiction rather than some of the newer books that come out. The new stuff is entertaining, sure, and I think having a gripping plot and likeable or "relatable" characters is important to some extent (even if the themes and message are valuable, no one will read it if it isn't a little exciting). But I still think the moral value is the most important part of a book, so my favourites tend to be books that actually changed my life or my beliefs in significant ways and not just the ones that had characters I liked. On the level of word choice and sentence structure, many of the new bestsellers are also lacking, as you have pointed out in a previous post about the MFA writing style. I also think fiction should make someone more empathetic. Dickens is very sympathetic to children and the poor, like Hardy is to women. Of course you don't have to read them through a class-based or feminist lens but I still think reading them has the potential to make someone a more empathetic or understanding person. In one of your posts you said AI can't replace jobs where a human connection is important and I agree that humanities students would be well-suited for these types of roles because I think literary fiction helps develop empathy. I know you mentioned Anna Karenina here and elsewhere on your Substack, and you make it sound very interesting so I will definitely read it. My favourite novel happens to be Jude the Obscure and I think it actually challenges the idea of a traditional family and marriage, so perhaps it is very different from Anna Karenina? But nonetheless I expect literature to deal with these kinds of big, consequential questions and not just be entertaining.
On-the-nose points. The contrast between the vivid ideals of the flesh-and-blood Babbitt and the empty conformity of Lewis’s fictional one can map almost one-to-one onto the comparison between meaningful literature and modern meandering work.
These forms have invaded the realm of science fiction and fantasy as the "grimdark" genre. It's supporters will defend it as a type of realism, but most of it is vulgar pornographic violence.
Nevertheless, I found My Year of R+R to be one of Moshfegh's better structured novels. Its best elements, as always with Moshfegh, were shock factor and nihilism. For me, her writing is a less egregious example of the Postmodern Sad Girl genre.
Still waiting for a new book from her. Lapvona was disappointing.
I agree entirely on the faults of postmodernism. Its presumptions make effective storytelling impossible. But I would differ, at least on the wording, with the assertion that the function of storytelling is to teach morality. That is the trap that Christian fiction tends to fall into, which makes it largely unreadable.
Rather, the moral structure of a story is a given from the start. Its moral norms are the rules of the game, which is why postmoderns can't tell stories because, for them, the game has no rules. The business of stories is not to teach what should be done, but to examine the difficulties of doing what we all know (in the story context) should be done. It is about the difficulties and challenges of performing moral action where the moral imperatives are known from the beginning. Hamlet's famous soliloquy is not about what is right -- the Almighty has fixed his canon gainst self-slaughter -- but about the difficulty of taking arms against a sea of troubles and the temptation to take the easy way out.
Moral action requires three things: Moral norms, a correct apprehension of the situation, and the courage to act. Even with a perfect grasp of moral absolutes, we cannot act correctly if we don't understand the situation and/or we don't have the courage to act and to pay the cost of acting. The role of stories in our moral development is not to teach the norms, but to help us learn to see straight so that we can apprehend situations correctly, and to help us develop the courage to act when we understand what the situation is and what moral norms require in that situation.
To this end, we should note, authors will sometimes create moral norms specifically for their story worlds. The moral imperative to toss magic rings into volcanoes does not exist in our world, but in The Lord of the Rings, it becomes the central moral norm on which everyone can agree, which then leaves the book free to focus on the struggle and the cost of obeying this imperative. That is the proper business of fiction.
John Gardner has some good things to say about the importance of a moral framework in fiction. Milan Kundera writes that in a novel theme is an existential inquiry. There may be "good writing" in material without a moral arc, but the pieces are unmoored existentially, in my opinion, and teach noting more than technique on a micro level. The reader learns nothing of note to take away, so I agree with what you say here, Lisa.
Who was it that wrote that good literature is like a mirror; if an ass looks into it, don't expect an angel to look out? The point being, that great literature teaches us more than the moment; it teaches us to look at ourselves, to grow, to become aware of possibilities about how to inhabit the world and our lives in meaningful ways. It’s about growth.
It’s about in der veldt sein. How we shape our world and how that reshaping shapes us. And that includes a moral compass and awareness of who and what we are. I mean, why else would John Donne’s no man is an island resonate so powerfully? We are all part of the main, and good literature should bring that awareness to out attention.
Excellent essay Liza. I agree with you 💯%. I was in an academic and academic influenced theological environment for a long time and I was always ambivalent about it. Now I pretty firmly believe it was entirely destructive and produced very little good fruit in the lives of the people who were involved in it. Postmodernism is a universal acid that damages and destroys whatever it comes into contact with.
My goodness! Terrific!
Setting aside your caricatures of postmodernism: Big publishing has gone commercial, and Penguin is hardly representative of the industry. It's one of the few literary imprints left. Look at the deals on Publisher's Marketplace, and you'll see that it's extremely hard to publish a novel without a redemption arc. Even nonfiction is increasingly required to have a moral arc. The industry has many problems, but taking cues from Derrida is not one of them. If only!
Hah I almost got that! But seriously I am not a big fan of some of these post modern philosophers but TBH I haven’t read them other than Foucault. I’m more drawn intellectually to the so called analytic theories like Russell and Popper .
They're not nearly as flat or terrible as their critics pretend. Influenced by the messianic tradition, Derrida didn't question meaning for the hell of it but to find where texts tremble, having the potential to generate something new. Deconstruction wasn't a game; it was a project to bring about justice. He likened it to forgiveness, which also disrupts the order of things with something new. So this idea that he had no moral imagination is just bullocks.
You really think the narrator learns nothing? I thought she wanted to purge herself of consumerism and cheap beauty, to see things like a child again. And there's a scene I remember at the end where she's in central park and she sees a mother & child, and the child points at a "psychedelic crow" and asks, "What's that, mommy?" and the mother says, "That's a grackle, honey." I think the narrator has regained the ability to see the world like that child.
To me, postmodernism is basically instability of meaning, which is a staple in art. It also has a place in rational discourse if you're careful. I tend to think the problem starts when postmodernism is used as a replacement for rational discourse, at which point things have a tendency to take on the meaning the interpreter wants to see.
Liza, another great piece. I think the fault lines extend beyond the "moral vs. meaningless" divide. Too much of today's so-called literature is grounded in solipsism--the author's as well as the protagonist's. That creates a vacuum where moral considerations--even moral awareness and the choices implied--can't thrive. Just finished Ian McKewan's What We Can Know, which features characters who are arguably moral-less, yet the book as a whole carries genuine moral weight about the consequences of our individual and collective actions.
You seem to conflate two issues: identity-driven narrative and nihilism. Didactic writing can be enjoyable but also obnoxious. The novels you cite as classics (by Tolstoy, Fitzgerald) work despite the characters’ moral stances, not because of them. I have spent no time in English departments but surmise that literature in every era has a mix of overtly didactic stuff that is extensively read (e.g. Harry Potter, which I personally don’t care for but respect for its popularity) and pure fiction, devoid of moral message (e.g. Thomas McGuane, front of my ming because I just read his 2025 book of short stories A Wooded Shore, every sentence of which is a purely brilliant, original creation) that hopefully is read, perhaps less extensively. Lolita and Moby Dick may have morals hidden in them (although VN famously fumed against such nonsense), but we do not read them for that reason.
I agree on the perils of postmodernism but wonder if you’re over simplifying. I’m thinking of Chekhov, one of my favorite writers, where for the most part, characters seem to learn little from their travails. Of course, if I remember correctly, Tolstoy seemed to have the same complaint about Chekhov’s work.
Very interesting points here. I also prefer reading older works of literary fiction rather than some of the newer books that come out. The new stuff is entertaining, sure, and I think having a gripping plot and likeable or "relatable" characters is important to some extent (even if the themes and message are valuable, no one will read it if it isn't a little exciting). But I still think the moral value is the most important part of a book, so my favourites tend to be books that actually changed my life or my beliefs in significant ways and not just the ones that had characters I liked. On the level of word choice and sentence structure, many of the new bestsellers are also lacking, as you have pointed out in a previous post about the MFA writing style. I also think fiction should make someone more empathetic. Dickens is very sympathetic to children and the poor, like Hardy is to women. Of course you don't have to read them through a class-based or feminist lens but I still think reading them has the potential to make someone a more empathetic or understanding person. In one of your posts you said AI can't replace jobs where a human connection is important and I agree that humanities students would be well-suited for these types of roles because I think literary fiction helps develop empathy. I know you mentioned Anna Karenina here and elsewhere on your Substack, and you make it sound very interesting so I will definitely read it. My favourite novel happens to be Jude the Obscure and I think it actually challenges the idea of a traditional family and marriage, so perhaps it is very different from Anna Karenina? But nonetheless I expect literature to deal with these kinds of big, consequential questions and not just be entertaining.
On-the-nose points. The contrast between the vivid ideals of the flesh-and-blood Babbitt and the empty conformity of Lewis’s fictional one can map almost one-to-one onto the comparison between meaningful literature and modern meandering work.
These forms have invaded the realm of science fiction and fantasy as the "grimdark" genre. It's supporters will defend it as a type of realism, but most of it is vulgar pornographic violence.
Jonathan Franzen won the national book award and his friend Dave Wallace hung himself.
No idea what you’re talking about.
Nevertheless, I found My Year of R+R to be one of Moshfegh's better structured novels. Its best elements, as always with Moshfegh, were shock factor and nihilism. For me, her writing is a less egregious example of the Postmodern Sad Girl genre.
Still waiting for a new book from her. Lapvona was disappointing.
*Definitely* reading this. Thx mucho!
Thank you. Well said