Some books are more worth reading than others, and this is why

Should Christians read shilling-shockers?[1]

Shilling shockers were all the rage in late Victorian Britain. For one shilling, you could buy yourself an afternoon crammed with swash-buckling violence, sensational plot twists and lurid descriptions of the nation’s criminal underworld. Nineteenth-century critics argued, slightly condescendingly, over the benefits and drawbacks of mass literacy if this was the kind of reading material people would choose to fill their heads with. There were real concerns about moral degradation and copycat violence – not dissimilar to current discussions around violent gaming content. Academics formalised the conversation in early twentieth century discussions around “canonicity”. What was worth reading, and why? Were there certain criteria which had to be met to establish a novel, poem or play as containing literary value? Which authors should children be encouraged (aka forced) to read in school? How do you determine which writers to spend time researching?

These are complex questions in themselves. When it comes to integrating questions about literature with spiritual formation, the complexities increase. If Christians are going to read for pleasure, does it matter what they choose to read? Pastorally speaking, are there books we want to recommend in church and others we ought to urge Christians against engaging with? What happens when fiction is disturbing rather than comforting?

Reframing the Reading Challenge

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of completely banning books. Some books are more edifying than others, but all our consciences vary and our experience, tastes, season of life, emotional capacity, and personalities will impact what we derive pleasure and benefit from reading. In Philippians 4:8 Paul says “whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” If a book is going to leave us contemplating excellence, then embrace it! The problem is, literature, like the life it reflects on, is generally more akin to gold ore than pure bullion.

Choosing to have a varied reading diet and developing how we read will help us to grow the necessary discernment and selectivity for answering the question of what to spend our time engaging with. And the answer will be different for everyone, and even different across different seasons of our lives.

Shipwrecking Escapist Adventure-Romance

In Treasure Island, Stevenson embarks on a reading lesson as well as a treasure hunt. He takes an established genre, the children’s adventure romance, and introduces a sense of threat and danger.[2] Other children’s writers at the time tended to mollycoddle the juvenile imagination with saccharin didactic tales of sunny islands and flat, stereotypical characters, where honour, obedience, and courage went rewarded and savage behaviour quickly terminated in a sticky end.[3] Stevenson created an island adventure which interacts in illuminating ways with this wider literary context and sharpens the reader’s critical faculties.

One of Jim Hawkins’ first reading lessons occurs when he observes the villagers’ responses to the pirate Billy Bones’ chilling tales (if they were in print, they’d definitely qualify as shilling shockers). Although they profess to be terrified, the audience keep coming back for more. Jim realises the power of the storytelling arouses people’s interest and admiration despite their moral scruples. A yarn spun in such a way as to excite terror is one worth listening to again, for inspiring such a strong reaction in the audience demonstrates its quality. Jim watches with slight bewilderment, unsure what to make of the villagers’ behaviour. As the story develops, it becomes clear that Jim is just as susceptible to manipulation as Billy Bones’s audience. Bones warns Jim about an evil one-legged pirate who subsequently haunts his dreams. When he encounters the one-legged Long John Silver he writes:

Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in Squire Trelawney’s letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man, Pew, and I thought I knew what a buccaneer was like—a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.

Treasure Island warns about underestimating the power and the pull of romance and its attendant stereotypes. Although it is part of the joy of reading to allow our fictional experiences to be immersive, immersing oneself in a storyworld does not amount to relinquishing our critical faculties as readers. Reading ought to be immersive in the sense wild swimming is immersive. While the plot unfolds with ease in languid sunshine, we can drift along with innocent unbridled delight. If there are sections that feel a bit like riding white water rapids, we will have to be much wearier as we make progress.[4] The narrator may or may not be telling the truth – like the silver-tongued Long John. Our creative task as a reader is to analyse and respond to the point of view we’re being given in the narrative. Which characters are reliable? Which are delusional? Who’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes? Where is the author helping us out? Where is the author complicit in keeping us in the dark? Hopefully, this adds to our reading pleasure. Who doesn’t love the thrill of a twist?! As readers, we need to be discerning but generous towards the characters we encounter.[5] What are characters, after all, but imaginary slivers of humanity?

Treasure Island is far from being a shilling shocker itself, but the way Stevenson presents the power and thrill of Billy Bones’s storytelling suggests that sensationalist fiction communicates something significant about human psychology. We disregard the imaginative power of casting an absorbing tale at our peril. Popular books might not be as aesthetically pleasing or as wholesome as Treasure Island but reading them with discernment gives us a glimpse into what people find compelling. As Christian readers, we can engage empathetically with the characters and the author at the state of affairs in their storyworld, yet look beyond the limits of the page to the hope, satisfaction, comfort and safety we have in knowing Jesus. Challenging books can drive us to our knees as we see the world from a different perspective, understand more about the deepest yearnings of another human soul, or mourn the bleakness of a life lived outside Christ.

Fictional hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.

External Links:

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (it’s not just for boys!), £3.50. Good introduction and includes an essay on Stevenson’s writing experience.

E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (it’s not just for academics!), £3.85. Thought-provoking and clearly communicated.

[1] “shilling shockers” is a term used to describe the kind of melodramatic, sensationalist writing that often characterised cheaper volumes of light fiction during the mid to late nineteenth century. “Penny dreadfuls” were the name given to lower brow popular journals, newspapers and magazines.

[2] “Romance” here being the critical term for “novel” where the aim is not to remain within the bounds of the realistic, probable, or even possible, not a love story.

[3] E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, discusses how character develops (round) or remains static (flat) through a narrative arc and different effects are achieved by deploying different character types.

[4] When we’re reading contemporary adult fiction, conscience may demand we hurry over unnecessarily graphic descriptions or skip some passages altogether.

[5] For more on this dynamic of the reading life, see Alan Jacobs, The Hermeneutics of Love: A Theology of Reading (2004?)