Owen Strachan thinks so. “Be of good cheer, evangelical-arts-aficionados. Good things are afoot.”
Category Archives: Authors
N.D. Wilson on Adapting ‘The Hound of Heaven’ for Film
Author N.D. Wilson has directed a short film of the Francis Thompson poem, “The Hound of Heaven.” Shadowlocked.com has part of an interview with Wilson on how everything came together.
So what’s it like adapting somebody else’s work as opposed to your own?
Well, honestly I’m far more comfortable adapting other people’s stuff than my own. And actually, in some ways, because I can be a stickler. I can be a stickler to try to stay true as I possibly can to their vision, when I’m adapting their stuff. But when I’m adapting my stuff, I don’t feel any loyalty at all to it. I feel complete and total authority to change whatever I want, whenever I want.
And so when I’m adapting C.S. Lewis or even trying to serve Francis Thompson, I felt like I could write an intro, like I could write an opening monologue for Propaganda, but I couldn’t bring myself to edit the poem. No matter how many people told me, “Well, surely you’re not going to do the whole poem”, it was like, “No, I’m gonna do the whole poem. I’m doing all of it.” Because I really wanted it to come through.
If I’m doing my own things, like I’m doing 100 Cupboards, I’m thinking, like, “Oh, wow, I can throw this part away, and do this other thing that I was going to have in the novel, and I needed to cut it for space, but now I can put it in. I can take things that ended up on the cutting room floor of my novel, and put them into the film.” And I feel completely at liberty to do that. And that’s dangerous.
Read more about the movie here.
“I fled him . . . in the mist of tears . . .
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”
Recommending ‘The New World’
Observant film critic Jeffrey Overstreet recommends Terrence Malick’s The New World for our Thanksgiving viewing. He shares his insights into the extended cut version and a personal encounter with Malick’s father.
The New World is an extravagant achievement in historical recreation. It’s also the most refined example of Malick’s visual poetry, which he developed through Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. He has a meditative style all his own that will aggravate many viewers who prefer straightforward narrative and conventional Hollywood flourishes. He’s not an entertainer so much as he is a poet who uses pictures instead of words. Creation itself pours forth speech, as the psalmist says, and Malick invites those with eyes to see to look closer and listen carefully.
P. D. James Dies, 94
Crime novelist Phyllis Dorothy James, also Baroness James of Holland Park, died today in her home. She was 94.
Her publisher states, “This is a very sad day for us at Faber. It is difficult to express our profound sadness at losing P. D. James, one of the world’s great writers and a Faber author since her first publication in 1962. She was so very remarkable in every aspect of her life, an inspiration and great friend to us all. It is a privilege to publish her extraordinary books. Working with her was always the best of times, full of joy. We will miss her hugely.”
In this interview last year, Lady James talked about growing old with this, “All things rather close down eventually. I was waiting for the old brain to shut down, but I do hope that is the last thing to go.”
Glimmerglass
“Some years ago,” writes John Wilson, “I described the novelist and poet Marly Youmans as “the best-kept secret among contemporary American writers.” That’s still true today (so I think), and if you haven’t tried Youmans yet, her new novel, Glimmerglass, is a very good place to start.” (via Prufrock)
Faber’s Book of Loss and Strange New Things
Michel Faber has a fascinating story behind his novel, The Book of Strange New Things
Steve Paulson of TTBOOK interviews Faber here as part of a show on science fiction.
The Reason Lecrae Changed His Tune
Musician Lacrae has taken some heat for switching from writing explicitly Christian songs to writing songs on themes with broader appeal. He has appeared with artists and on shows that have drawn criticism from those who think the right thing to do is stick with people who claim to follow Christ.
But Lacrae says another believer, Andy Crouch, changed his mind a few years ago. Jemar Tisby explains, “Crouch says in his book, Culture Making, ‘If culture is to change, it will be because of some new tangible (or audible or visible or olfactory) thing is presented to a wide enough public that it begins to reshape their world.’ He proposes that instead of condemning, critiquing, copying, or uncritically consuming culture, something new has to displace the old. It appears Lecrae has been making new music in an attempt to do just that.”
The tension point for this idea will be at the place where those who want to change people apply their cultural creations. I’m sure many will continue to create things that won’t get anywhere near the people they want to influence, and they will say they are making new culture, but it isn’t changing anyone. They’re making Halloween candy in hopes of changing Christmas.
Le Guin: ‘Resistance and Change Often Begin in the Art of Words’
Author Ursula Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at this week’s National Book Awards and inspired the crowd by holding up freedom as an author’s best prize. “We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”
She said many things needed to change, and that change often begins in art, specifically the art of words. Writing books according to marketing formulas for corporate profit is a rotten idea, she said. We need artists.
Her speech was short, so you can easily watch the whole thing here.
In an interview, Le Guin said, “If you’re going to create a world out of whole cloth, that is to say, out of words, then you better get the words right.” You can read about her and her many books in The Guardian.
The Autobiography of a Pioneer Girl
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her autobiography before her Little House Series
Wilder places the story of the schoolteacher and his improvised igloo in the winter of 1884–1885, but the setup is strongly reminiscent of the “children’s blizzard,” a storm that struck without warning on a warm day in January 1888 and killed more than a hundred schoolchildren as they struggled to get home. Wilder did not always remember events in their true chronological order, and it seemed likely that she misplaced this one. But she does not give the teacher’s name, and the Kingsbury County newspapers that could complete the story have been lost, so there, it appeared, the matter would rest.
Jerry Jenkins’ Christian Writers Guild Shuts Down
Popular Christian novelist Jerry Jenkins has closed the doors on the Christian Writers Guild. The Guild was founded in the 1960s. Jenkins has owned it since 2001. Christianity Today has some details on why it is shutting down, perhaps due to diverging interests for Jenkins and Dave Sheets, the recently resigned guild president. Sheets is now heading up BeliversMedia, which will offer many and more of the things found in the Christian Writers Guild.