A woman, fixing her heart and lifting her soul. Credit: John Phillips/UK Press/Getty

Didnāt it used to be a philistine thing, to look at art and ask: āBut what is it for?ā Iām sure it did. Iām sure it used to be appreciated that excess was the point when it came to culture, and a Gradgrindian insistence on utility was the mark of somebody who was dead on the inside.
Oh well. That, presumably, was then. This is the depressing now, and itās the people who claim to be on the side of culture who are pressing for the measure of it to be, not āIs it good?ā but āIs it useful?ā. And because we live in an era of relentless individualism, the only kind of useful that counts is making you ā the unique and precious consumer ā into a better person.
I came across a splendidly disheartening example of this in publicity for a new book called Wonderworks by Angus Fletcher, which publisher Simon & Schuster says āshows how writers have created⦠engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind.ā Sounds terrible, I thought, and so I read some of Wonderworks. And it was even worse than that.
Fletcher wants us to think of literature as a technology. Specifically, as āan innovation for troubleshooting our humanityā. Itās a thesis that comes with a dusting of neuroscientific talk about how āliteratureās inventions can plug into different regions of the brainā, and a lot of purple prose. āThe medicine men may have run out of unguents and potions; the heavens may have vanished or grown cold,ā he writes. āBut still, literature could fix hearts and lift souls. That, in brief, is why literature was invented and what it was invented to do.ā
Oh really? This is what those of us in the business of literary criticism call āa heck of a claimā. Was the poet who wrote BeowulfĀ āfixing hearts and lifting soulsā? Of course not. What they were actually doing was telling a baller story about fighting a big snake, imbued with reflections on feudal loyalty and vengeance which are semi-impenetrable from the society we live in now. That snake fight is forever, though.
Was Aphra Behn trying to āfix hearts and lift soulsā when she turned out Oroonoko? I am pretty sure that what she was in fact doing was getting rich, given that she wrote for a living and wrote a lot. Were the patrons who sustained literature before the arrival of commercial publishing in the āheart-fixing, soul-liftingā business? No; they were displaying their wealth and culture to other wealthy, cultured people ā and good on them, frankly.
Itās not that literature canāt be personally uplifting, or even morally improving; but when you insist that this is what literature is for, you make a claim that sits at odds with the manifest intentions of most writers and readers. Why do I read? Largely because I hate to be bored, and books are my favourite way of not being bored. (Also, a little bit, because I like people to think of me as someone who reads books.)
There is some psychological research suggesting that reading fiction helps people to exercise their empathy, perhaps leading them to act more generously. Whether those findings are robust and well-replicated, I donāt know, and Iām not really sure whether itās necessary to make any claim stronger than this one on literatureās behalf: reading stories forces you to spend time inhabiting someone elseās subjectivity ā Joan Didion, sinisterly, described writing as āan imposition of writerās sensibility on the readerās most private spaceā ā and doing so might make you better at imagining the inner life of other people.
But hereās the kicker: if it works, it only works because youāre thinking about somebody other than yourself. To approach literature in the way Fletcher urges us to ā as a shortcut to self-improvement which can help you āunfreeze your heartā with Samuel Beckett and ālessen your lonelyā by reading Elena Ferrante (both genuine chapter titles, I swear) ā is to approach it thinking only of yourself. Itās a solipsism utterly destructive not just to the enjoyment of fiction, but also to the quasi-medical benefits that Fletcher is touting.
Still, heās hardly alone in his efforts to turn art into cure-all. Reading Lloyd Evansā recent broadside against the āpleasure-free zoneā of contemporary theatre, I discovered this quote from Matthew Warchus, artistic director of the Old Vic: āFiction doesnāt have to be just a diversion or a pastime. It really can change individuals and societies for the better. Intelligent entertainment is a transformative necessity, not a luxury.ā Sounds terrible, I thought, although as I havenāt seen the āintelligent entertainmentā Warchus was referring to, I canāt give any judgement there.
But also, I donāt want to see anything thatās being touted as a ātransformative necessityā. I like being diverted. I appreciate a show that passes the time. Leaving the auditorium and asking myself ādid this change me individually and society as a whole for the better?ā sounds very, very tiring. Theatres are uncomfortable enough already with the terrible seats and inadequate toilet situation; I donāt see why they should start pressing on my conscience as well as my bladder. Do you know what people actually like? Cats and The Mousetrap, thatās what people like.
Yet the most fun Iāve had at the theatre has often been very uncomfortable indeed. Itās just that the discomfort has been dramatic, rather than didactic: the strain of being made to feel for two different people at the same time, of holding both sides of an argument in your head at once. The next thing Iām going to see is a revival of David Mametās sexual harassment two-hander Oleanna. It will probably make me furious. I canāt wait.
I suspect that any play aiming to āchange individuals and society for the betterā isnāt going to invoke that kind of tension. Instead, it suggests some of the dreary issue-based theatre Iāve diligently sat through ā the kind of play that knows what a good person would think, and is enjoyed by audiences made up of the self-identifying good. You come in agreeing and you leave agreeing, and actually, nothing is transformed.
The āusefulā approach to art is the shortest way to hollow it of any purpose at all. If youāre trying to āenergise your lifeā (another Fletcher chapter title, Lord help me) you should probably have a spoonful of peanut butter, and not ā as he prescribes ā read Frankenstein, which is a novel and an achingly tragic one, rather than a self-help tract. If you want to uplift the state of the nation, donāt watch a play, go into politics.
But if you want to read a novel or watch a play, you should do it for pleasure. It should feel like a luxury, rather than an obligation. It should be something that you invite to occupy your attention on its own terms, rather than conditional on its ability to fix you up ā and if it doesnāt occupy your attention, you can bail at the interval or after the first fifty pages. Perhaps art will improve you as a person. But if it canāt entertain you, I donāt see why you should give it the chance.
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