Will we ever be rid of the sophomoric notion that only what’s ugly, mean, base, stupid, cruel, or evil is “real”? I was so sure C.S. Lewis totally debunked that in The Screwtape Letters, but then along came The Maze Runner.
https://leeduigon.com/2012/12/21/the-maze-runner-etc/
From the Fallen World With a Big Fat Curse on It Publishing Co.
Lee, your remark today about the older post is something I’ve been griping about for a long time — and not just about contemporary works. As long ago as my college days (when we were chipping our notes onto stone tablets, as I recall), I once wrote a term paper claiming that not only were Dickens and Chesterton greater realists than Houseman and Hardy, in that the former pair saw a more rounded version of life than the latter pair did, but that the latter pair were actually the more naive optimists in that they expected life to be perfect and thus fell into despair when life turned out to have some pain. Believe it or not, I actually got a top grade for that paper, even though the professor didn’t entirely agree with all my conclusions. But that was a looooong time ago, when professors didn’t demand that their students all march (or think) in lockstep.
And I still think Dickens and Chesterton were greater realists than the so-called “realist” school, which should have been called the kvetch-and-moan school.