Paul Luikart

Good fiction tells the truth of the world to the people who inhabit it, whether those people care to know the truth or not. And, of course, the truth stays true in all kinds of weather, even for the person who walks in the rain and claims that it’s sunny. Now, the John Keats people might say that it’s beauty enough for truth to be truth. “In fact,” I can hear them saying, “there cannot be more beauty than truth.” I’m not sure that’s true. The John Keats opposition, as if there were such thing as a codified group of anti-John Keats people, might say that in order for truth to be beautiful, it also has to be actionable. It’s not enough to simply be true, but beauty is truth and truth is beauty, in both of their brightest forms, when truth and beauty lead to action that opposes the ugly, the hideous, and the detestable. Even if that action is internal. To think differently, for example. Or even to consider thinking differently. If truth, though, in and of itself, is not inherently beautiful, then it is inherently redemptive. This can and should be found in good fiction. When fiction is written well, it provides a view not only to humanity’s bloody past and present, but also to the possibility of a peaceful future for all people.