It always sounds kind of trivial, but when I was a kid I was always so impressed by how serious the comic books were. I always liked how they were half way between literature and the cinema. I liked the visuals and I liked the simplicity of a certain type of moral dilemma.
The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.
I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.
The reason most of us go to the movies is to be involved in someone else's moral dilemma.
When we arrive at dilemmas in life and we are unable to decipher the right direction to go, if we hope to maintain our confidence in the process, we must (repeat must) allow the Lord to be our Guide, our Strength, our Wisdom - our all!
Sidney Lumet's chief preoccupation wasn't art. It was right and wrong in the American city, nearly always in New York.
It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.
I have always written about subjects that engage me - questions I can't answer myself. They apparently tend to be big moral and ethical issues!
Life is not simple, and people can't be boxed into being either heroes or villains.
Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer. What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.
Let me ask you a question Alex. What do you think is the greatest evil on this plant today?" "Is that including, or not including you?
