Hence the title of this blog post. Cui Bono<\/em> is Latin (pretentious, I know) for \u201cWho stands to gain?\u201d Who benefits? What\u2019s the motive? The classic question of hard-boiled detective novels. But really, who does benefit from writing? Some might argue that the chance, albeit slim, at immortality and wealth is worth it, which, I suppose, would put career writing in that same category of practical retirement investments as playing the lottery. Others might take a more utilitarian path, claiming that writing about pressing social issues justifies the difficult writer\u2019s life. That\u2019s a noble goal, and I\u2019m not going to denigrate that kind of self-sacrifice. Certainly, great works of writing have, on occasion, changed the world for the better. But really, there are other, more practical ways of enacting change. And furthermore, a great many of the canon literary works \u2013 and many of the books found in literary traditions outside of the Western canon, for that matter \u2013 don\u2019t have pressing social commentary at their hearts. So, Cui Bono<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n To explain (my) answer to that question (there are, of course, a great many more answers to that question), I\u2019d like to look at a lesser-known story of J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s, Smith of Wootton Major<\/em>. Now, as I\u2019ve been brought up first in Christian homeschool networks, then in two separate private Christian universities, I\u2019ve been exposed to an educational environment that grants Tolkien a status somewhere between minor literary sainthood and demi-deity. Despite this, a great deal of the man\u2019s devoted fan club hasn\u2019t read anything beyond his Middle-Earth legendarium, which I think is a great shame. Smith of Wootton Major <\/em>is the story of a young man named Smith, who, by plot contrivance, swallows a fairy-star. As a boy, Smith\u2019s village has a ritual wherein the head cook of the village creates a Great Cake, an artistic magnum opus that contains many trinkets for the village children to find when they eat the Cake. One of these trinkets is, of course, the star, which Smith accidentally eats. The star allows him to travel throughout fairy-land, having a great many wondrous and terrifying adventures, until he, inevitably, grows old and must pass the star on to the next generation of children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This, I think, is an appropriate metaphor for the benefits of artistic endeavors. An artistic creation – the Cake – contains something transcendent, something magical, something greater than itself. It is given to another, and in so doing, allows him to see beyond the physical world, to transcend into a more beautiful world. Smith cannot keep this gift within himself, so he must give it to another. Great literature can, and should, reach for a transcendent reality; it should attempt to place the author and the reader within the cosmic drama of the human story. I think this principle can apply to all art, really, but since this is a writing blog, I\u2019m going to limit my scope of analysis to literature. It should seek to make physical reality greater than it seems to the senses; the sun brighter, the wind crisper, flowers sweeter-smelling, etc., etc. In other words, it should make life more desirable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this point, I\u2019ve probably lost quite a number of you. This kind of take seems na\u00efve and cheesy, particularly in light of the awareness of the never-ending torrent of all-too-human evil that defines the modern era. Our ancestors could believe in fairy tales, but they had the luxury of not living in a world with nuclear bombs and climate change and cronyist corporate overlords. To which I say, first, blanket cynicism is as defensible and intellectual of a position as blanket na\u00efvet\u00e9. Second\u2026yes. You\u2019re right. Good writing can\u2019t exist in happy-go-lucky-land, playing with rainbows and ponies and whatnot; that\u2019s the domain of children\u2019s television and the source of a never-ending stream of gratingly catchy singalongs. In fact, I don\u2019t think good writing ever did exist in that state. It\u2019s practically a meme at this point how gruesome and brutal some of the old stories, even fairy tales, were. In my chosen example, Tolkien\u2019s Smith\u2019s world is as violent and dangerous as it is beautiful. Smith is often frightened by what he sees, and the real world is no different. A writer that doesn\u2019t reflect the reality of the world, with all that is terrible about it, is going to ring hollow to a discerning, informed reader. But for all this, writing that can reach beyond the corruption, terror, discrimination, and waste of the world is just\u2026that<\/em> much more powerful. Writing is, really, more of a journey of authorial self-deception than a gift given by the author to the reader, whereby the author must convince themselves<\/em> that there is something desirable about life and invite others along for the journey. Good writing, desirable writing, writing that benefits both self and others, acknowledges and embraces the surrounding horror and notes that, in spite of everything around it, there\u2019s something that makes life worth living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Benjamin Lang I\u2019m fairly certain that, throughout the long history of scribblers, the vast majority of wannabe writers have, at some point, dropped their quills\/pens\/keyboards, put their head between their hands, and stared at the wall in that unique stare that signifies Existential Crisis to anyone unlucky enough to be in the area. Why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/dazed-starling\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2022\/03\/33499665151_e6a03c2d93_b.jpg\")