he four of us pushed back from the table with satisfied groans and adjourned to the library where a fire was blazing on the hearth in defiance of the winter storm outside. Paul, whom we preferred to call "the Doctor," flung his suitcoat over the back of a chair and himself onto the sofa, kicked his shoes off, loosened his necktie, and accepted the coffee I handed him. Stephens and Humphries pulled slightly frayed armchairs closer to the fire and sat, sighing happily. I leaned against a bookcase. Stephens lit his pipe.
"John," he said through a blue cloud, "You are almost a prince among men. I have been warmed and filled, and now I want good conversation. If you provide that as satisfactorily as you have the others, I shall confer royal status upon you without hesitation."
"Mmm hmm," I said into my coffee.
"Try again," he said.
"Alright. A remarkable thing happened the other night . . ."
"Why," asked Stephens, "do people always begin that way? Why not `An ordinary thing happened to me the other day'?"
"Because it's boring, of course," said Humphries, and he poked the fire with the tongs. A riot of sparks rose. "People don't want to hear about real life."
"Au contraire," said the Doctor, sinking deeper into the sofa cushions, "if a story's not realistic nobody will believe it."
"That's not what I meant. There's a world of difference between real life and realism, at least as I'm using the terms. By `real life' I mean what usually happens, or what might plausibly happen. But `realism' is the way the story is told, so that no matter how unbelievable the events, the manner is convincing. A person can accept anything if he's asked to properly."
"For instance?" I asked.
"Suppose I told a story about four men sitting around a fire and talking, but they all had four arms." The Doctor looked at his arms. He only had two. Humphries went on. "If I described what they did and said in a way that was consistent with the manner in which men with four arms would act and speak, you would not be distracted by the oddity."
I ran my hands idly over the books on the shelf behind me. "Some writers can't even tell about men with only two arms in a consistent fashion, even though we know what they're like."
"Precisely," he said, "and so the real problem in storytelling about real life is not to make it as close to real life as possible, but to describe it as consistently with itself as possible. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that the standard is `reality' when in fact it is `consistency.' That is also why I object to the use of obscenity in stories."
"I don't understand," said the Doctor from somewhere deep in the sofa. "Please clarify."
Humphries sat up straighter. "Well, those authors who insist that they must be free to use profanity in their books because that's what men do are missing the point of storytelling. Obscenity and profanity are not necessary in stories in order to make them believable, any more than is describing every moment of the day. Some moments are less important for maintaining the consistency of the story than others. If reality is the standard, then those authors may be right, but if consistency is the standard, they are wrong."
"What about stories where the foul language itself is important to the consistency of the story?" I asked.
"In the first place, it rarely is. In the second place, if it is, then it depends on why it's important to use it. If it is important to represent a man who is immoral, it can be done without describing his promiscuous acts. If it is necessary to represent one who is profane, it can be done without repeating his profanity."
"You seem to be objecting to foul language on two grounds, not simply on that of morality, as I had supposed you might," said Stephens, and he took the poker from Humphries.
"You're right," said the oblivious Humphries, "I do indeed object on moral grounds, though I think morality does not preclude an author from referring to the evil that men do; witness the Bible. But my argument here is a different one. An author who writes in a way that denies reality plays havoc with the Christian understanding of the doctrine of creation. But to write only about real life is no protection against that; to write consistently is. And it is not necessary to repeat men's evil in order to be consistent."
"But men do swear, and they do act immorally, and so it would be consistent to have them swearing and acting immorally in one's stories," objected the sofa.
"Yes, but morality demands that men not do it, and consistency in storytelling does not demand that I represent it when they do." Humphries sat back.
I strolled to another bookcase and pulled down a volume. "What about reading works that have already been written which include representations of immorality?"
"The Miller's Tale in Chaucer and all that," said Stephens.
"From the standpoint of consistency, it's a masterful tale," said Humphries, "but from the standpoint of morality, there's little justification for it. Chaucer gives no hint that he finds the story objectionable, though he puts it into the mouth of an objectionable miller. The immoral characters in the miller's story are the winners, and the miller's fellow travelers laugh and applaud him. The wife of Bath tells a tale well, but obscenely, and Chaucer passes no judgment on it at all, which is to say he approves it."
"But are you really saying that people shouldn't read a great classic like the Canterbury Tales?" I asked, taken aback.
"No," said Humphries, "or at least I'm not saying it yet. But I don't think writing it is excusable simply on artistic grounds, and I think it's inexcusable on moral grounds. And if I think about it long enough, I'll probably say before long that reading it for pleasure is inexcusable on moral grounds. Not that reading about immorality is wrong, but that reading immorality itself is wrong."
The sofa creaked and the Doctor emerged, sat up, stretched his arms along the sofa back. "A lot of people would disagree."
"Of course," said Humphries. "So what? Art does not exist for its own sake, but for God's, as does everything else. Therefore it is under an authority not its own. There are things an artist cannot do or say, and there are things a reader cannot see or read. To assert otherwise just because it's art is damned nonsense."
I brewed a fresh pot of coffee.
