What help can we get from writers? Not much!
In the olden days (before 2020) I could go to a book shop or library and browse the shelves among thousands of books - and it was hard to find a single one that was of material assistance in addressing my condition, my deepest needs.
Even old friends among books, are only helpful when I am in the right kind of mood to work-with-them.
Real books are more like people than they are like supposed 'texts' - that is, when we are really reading a book (which may be a very rare occurrence - or perhaps never, for some people): the book is alive.
Which is presumably why we can get such strong feeling about books - whether positive or negative. It also explains why (like people) books change; and (again like people, at least nowadays) books usually change for the worse.
So, we meet up with a book after a gap of some years, and are appalled at the corruption it has undergone in the meantime. We are sure that it did not used to be so nasty when we knew it before; but clearly, the the meantime, the book has made bad choices, not repented them, and doubled-down on its wrongness.
In the past it was probably possible for a book to 'do us good' with the reader in a passive relationship; and the good being done passively and without consent.
But as human consciousness has developed, all good things become a matter of conscious choice. We can be (and are) only corrupted by submission to the external, including by the effects of book.
Stealth propaganda and manipulation can only be negative, nowadays. It is not possible to improve modern people by 'smuggling' Christian ideas into stories (as CS Lewis tried to do with Narnia and may have succeeded in doing, 70 years ago - but not now).
Modern atheist-materialist cultural assumptions are indeed like Lewis's 'watchful dragons' in detecting and rejecting Christian goodness - nonetheless, these dragons must be identified, exposed and confronted.
Because the aim is for people to join the side of God by conscious choice - in mortal life as it will be after biological death.
To get benefit from a book, we must actively work-with-it - the book (as a text) does not Do Us Good.
(That Books Are Good-doers is a falsehood sustained by many people, who ought to know better - leading to the idea that 'bookshops' and 'libraries' are A Good Thing - regardless of their content: and that it is necessarily beneficial to encourage people to read more, and to read more books).
(Related lies are that places called schools and colleges are good things; and people paid to do something officially-called science or the arts are benefactors of mankind).
Regular readers will know how much I value JRR Tolkien's work, which I have met-with many times over the decades - and we still have a great relationship.
Yet 'reading Tolkien' clearly does most people no good at all; and apparently merely encourages them in their wickedness and folly - as is evident from the worlds of Tolkien fandom and scholarship (which mostly consist of explicitly evil-affiliated people, working in explicitly evil-affiliated 'Tolkien-themed' institutions).
The best that can be said of them is that they are - on average - Not As Bad as the very worst examples of people and institutions. Nonetheless Tolkien-related institutions and persons are (like everything else in The System) net-bad, and getting worse annually and inexorably.
So I am compelled to acknowledge that even the best of books are powerless to stem the corruption of our times.
It takes two 'people' to read a book - the words and the reader; and for that relationship to do good, the reader must be capable-of, and motivated-towards, knowing and choosing Good.
Otherwise - no matter the potential transcendental excellence of 'the text' - the reading-interaction will be unavailing in pursuit of good; rather like Jesus and the Pharisees.
Those who lack eyes to see, ears to hear, and do not even want resurrected eternal life; will fail to recognize even the Son of God, never mind benefit from a 'good book'.
Indeed, the goodness of a book will incite those on the side of evil to greater evil - directed against the threat of good - as with the army of Tolkien commentators, critics and interpreters - biographers, movie-makers and fan-fiction authors; whose true motivation is to subvert and spoil Tolkien, and if possible covertly-invert the understanding of his values.
The intent is to ensure that readers approach his work with false assumptions and expectations - which, of course, tend to be self-fulfilling, and are resistant to counter-evidence. A potentially good relationship of Man and book has thus been poisoned before it has even begun.
