Why is modern storytelling so disappointing?

Recently, I started reading three new novels.

One of them I came across on a table in Waterstones, a new historical novel set in early medieval England, a period I’m very interested in. The cover is beautiful and the back cover is full of commendations for this wonderful new work of literature, praising not just its good writing but its insight and depth. Good to look at, something that would impart wisdom. I paid out my valuable money for it.

I did not finish the novel; I’m going to put it in recycling. I don’t even want to give it to charity because I can’t see the value in letting anyone else read it. Some of the praise on the cover was true: it was indeed well written, in the sense that the descriptions are vivid, it makes good use of the English language, the thoughts are well-phrased. This is indeed high-quality literature. The problem was, it was just disgusting.

All the time. A beautiful scene would be described evocatively, and then the author would add a description of the smelly substance or bodily excretion or some other disgusting thing that was present. The plot itself was disgusting. And, I wondered, why? And why would anyone want to read this, deliberately filling their minds with such images?

The second novel was equally well written, has equally gained accolades as good literature. Again, the descriptions are evocatively phrased, language is used creatively, the characters are well-drawn and believable. I did, sort of, finish this one, in the sense that I skipped to the final chapter and read it. (It was a murder mystery, amongst other things, and I wanted to know who did it.) But I could not bring myself to read through all the story in between, this time because the characters were all so unpleasant. They lived self-indulgent, hedonistic lives, in a hook-up culture with no sense of commitment, and their selfishness led to considerable suffering for everyone. I had had enough of them very quickly.

Why is this good literature so bad? Why did none of the fulsome praise I read for these novels ever mention how incredibly unpleasant their contents are? And why think this is good stuff to have in your head?

A widespread problem

A lot of online commentary on modern storytelling in popular film and television bewails its poor quality. It’s becoming commonplace to hear complaints that scriptwriters, for whatever reason, are no longer prepared or able to produce drama that people actually want to watch.

And audiences are noticing. The Marvel and Star Wars franchises – both juggernauts that seemed unstoppable – are suffering loss after loss as audiences fail to watch their offerings. Disney in general seems to be losing money hand over fist. Series are being cancelled because of poor viewing numbers.

Conservative commentators have pointed out that part of the problem is that in the effort to reflect progressive values and politics, the resulting stories are unsatisfying even to the point of making no sense. They are just badly written.

But as my two novel-reading experiences show, even when well written, they can be utterly unsatisfying. It’s not that people have lost all talent or that good writers no longer exist. On a storytelling level, both these novels were high quality - they were also just nasty.

Then I started a third novel. I still haven’t finished it, but so far I certainly plan to. It is also very well-written, originally in Russian and skilfully translated. It is not that this novel is any less aware that life can be unpleasant: bad and even disgusting things happen to the characters. But I’m not put off by this novel; indeed, I’m really enjoying its intricacy and depth. And I can’t quite put my finger on why the bad things depicted in this novel don’t repel me in the same way. But I suspect that it is because the author is Christian.

The bad things are presented as bad, not neutral or good. It is accepted that this is a fallen world, but fallenness is mourned and understood as what it is. Moreover, everything is written in a context of hope. It is a coherent world that for all its suffering – and it depicts plague and illness and death in its medieval setting, it is no utopia – is able to be positive about life and community.

It is easy to be glib about such conclusions, and goodness knows there is plenty of bad literature by Christians. But to live in a hopeless world can make even good literature terrible. The gospel makes sense of the world, and it shows.