Ben Hur, the novel, part 22

So what do we say about Wallace and Ben Hur.

Wallace did not respect his readers. He did not teach them anything by doing good research. Instead, he pandered to all the worst tendencies of Victorian melodrama.

He stole material from every cheap novel and play of the previous couple of centuries, except that he got the name Iras for Balthazar’s daughter from Shakespeare.

He pandered to every bigoted Victorian concept.

Only about 10% of what’s in this novel got into either of the two films made from it. The big thing in both of them was to get to the chariot race somehow because both filmmakers realized that it had everything – sports, excitement, death, and revenge.

It’s pretty sad to say that a novel this long is only 10% worth passing along to posterity, but that’s the case, unless you want to pass along myths and bigotry. They have their place in novels, but it’s not a good place unless you’re writing for an audience of liars or bigots.

Put it another way. I’ve been bingeing Burt Lancaster movies and came across one where he plays a trapper who is forced at arrow point to accept a black man as trade goods in exchange for an entire winter’s furs. While the movie has lots of humor in it, you can’t admire Lancaster’s character because without hating the black man, he is still cruel to him and minimizes the past sufferings of blacks. You probably wouldn’t watch that movie just from my description, even though I can throw in that they become allies in the end.

But it shows how non-haters have nothing to congratulate themselves on if they buy into the lies. Which is partly what my Fact-Checkingblog is about, and why this string of posts belongs there.