What Is "Philosophical Honesty" in Postmodern Literature?

The question of the artistic "honesty" or "integrity" of a liteary text is often seen as a modernist preoccupation.Postmodernism--certain strands of "postmodern" thinking, at least--refuse such questions on the grounds that they arise within an ideal of aesthetic autonomy that has been discredited as theoretically naive, even politically pernicious, an ideological embodiment of class and cultural domination. The philosophical novel of high modernism, a vehicle for the "legitimate" exploration of philosophical questions, which trumpets its own aesthetic integrity in a literary form of unquestionable authenticity, is a literature which no longer seems possible. Yet, assuming that the "honesty" underlying such artistic activity has not simply disappeared; assuming that the modes of philosophizing in a literary form have rather been radically transfigured, a question remains: How might the problem of philosophical honesty be addressed in relation to contemporary, "postmodern" literature?

There are lots of dangers in posing the question in this way, including the implication that the distinction between modernism and postmodernism is a stark antithesis, or that postmodernism is in some sense a reaction to or a rejection of modernism. This, as the work of Lyotard and others has made clear, is not an adequate account of the relation between modernism and postmodernism. However, it is precisely this ambiguity of the relation which necessitates that the question of literary integrity in postmodernism be addressed. Is there any way to save the idea of artistic authenticity which arises in modernism and modernist aesthetics, while simultaneously recognizing that in postmodernism, particularly in postmodern and poststructuralist theory, this idea is subjected to critique? What happens to such ideas--should they simply be discarded? Have they simply been discarded, as quickly as they appeared?--or is there a way of reformulating them in such a way that they can be incorporated into a "postmodern" understanding of the literary text? Is there such a thing as the integrity of the text, despite the deconstruction of the self-enclosed work of art proposed by Roland Barthes and others?

In the following discussion I am going to make a series of distinctions which may be, or seem to be, excessively crude; but these distinctions should be regarded as provisional, to be upheld for the purpose and the duration of this essay only.

I. Two Kinds of Literary "Dishonesty"

The first such distinction is between two types of artistic "dishonesty," considered in relation to literary production. A quotation from the American filmmaker Samuel Fuller illustrates the first of these; the quotation relates not to filmmaking as such, but to artistic production in general, and the question of power as exercised by the author upon the text. The Hollywood director Howard Hawks once suggested to Fuller that he write a script of Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, which had never been filmed. Fuller relates the conversation that followed:

He asked me, "Do you like it?" I said, "Yes and no. I don't like any story where boy meets girl, it's a love story, and you get to the end and find out he has no cock and balls. It's dishonest." I told him I'd write an honest script. I gave him an opening scene. A World War I field hospital. The hero's on the operating table. A nurse holds a tin cup and the doctor drops the hero's cock and balls into it. The nurse takes her mask down and it's the leading lady--I forget her name in the book . . . Lady Brett. Now at last she knows what's wrong with him. Now it won't be a dishonest progression between them. It'll be something with more heart. . . . Hawks said, "Are you crazy? At Warner Brothers? You're really crazy." ¹

From this least precious of filmmakers, such a statement identifies a particular kind of literary dishonesty, involving the manipulation of the audience or readership, and a concentration upon literary effect rather than artistic integrity. These...