Right now I’m reading another of my free Kindle downloads; an American biographical work that I’ll review when I’ve finished it.

The story itself is pretty interesting. The manner of the telling, not so much.

The author, according to his Wikipedia entry, was an estimable man. A Christian clergyman, he devoted his life to the production of uplifting literature.

The man can barely stand to go a paragraph without pausing to direct the reader’s attention to the moral lesson. He wants to make very certain that we are never in doubt when he himself disapproves of his subject’s words or actions.

He also shows very little critical sense. He moves from fairly reliable source material to pure fantasy, and doesn’t seem to notice that his subject’s character and manner of speech have changed radically from one source to the other.

In short, he doesn’t really care about the facts. He only cares about imparting moral lessons. Like the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland, he can’t stop saying, “And the moral of that is…”

And it occurred to me, how is that different from the writings of the postmodernists, in most any discipline? For them as well, facts are irrelevant. The point is the narrative. Since truth (they believe) is relative, whatever you say is true, provided it promotes your personal truth.

The only difference is the goal. The old moralist sought to serve an absolute morality.

The new moralist seeks to serve his own private vision, which for him overrides all other considerations.

But in their methods they are identical.