Puzzle, puzzle. What to say about The Ale Boy’s Feast, the final book in Jeffrey Overstreet’s remarkable fantasy tetralogy, The Auralia Thread?
I have highly praised the author’s writing skill and creative imagination, and I stand by those evaluations. Overstreet is a writer of rare ability, and he has created an unforgettable world, familiar enough to be recognizable but different enough to be exotic and evocative.
Yet the whole thing works out to a resolution that leaves me… troubled.
Maybe I’m just not smart enough to get the point.
Or maybe leaving me troubled was the point.
In this fourth volume of the series, there are as usual several plot threads, but the chief ones concern two groups struggling to make their way to the promised goal of New Abascar. One is a group of refugees from Old Abascar, the ruined kingdom, trudging through Fraughtenwood Forest. The other is a group of former prisoners and slaves, fleeing the semihuman Beastmen through underground rivers, led (when they’re willing to listen to him) by the Ale Boy, who was once the friend of the girl Auralia, who wove the colors that set off the story.
Eventually they will reach the promised land, but it will not be exactly what they hoped for.
I think I understand now why there’s been controversy over these books. Although faith is affirmed as true and valuable, there seems to be a message that none of the things we’ve been told about God is more than a useful myth. I thought I saw messages of both syncretism and universalism. And other messages that made no sense to me at all.
Also, the ending was… strange. I think I understand why the author chose to end the story as he did, but it seemed a poor payoff for readers who had followed him faithfully through four long books.
So my final reaction is ambivalent. I recommend The Ale Boy’s Feast, as well as the entire series, in terms of literary style and creative storytelling. In terms of message… I don’t know.
Lars,
I have been following JO for a long time, since before his first novel when he was just a movie reviewer. He is a talented and creative writer, but he has, especially in the last few years, flirted with the edges of orthodoxy. One blatant example is his article defending the theology of Rob Bell. I appreciate his talent and an disappointed but not surprised to hear this review. I will read the book just for some closure.
Very interesting (both Lars and Caleb).
Caleb, maybe you misunderstood that Rob Bell article. Wasn’t he just saying that talking about the subject deeply was important? Didn’t Francis Chan say the same thing?
What’s wrong with being orthodox??
Melissa, you’re referring to the Caleb’s comment, “flirted with the edges of orthodoxy.” He means that he believes the author is moving out of orthodoxy, writing positively about slightly off or somewhat unorthodox ideas. An example of this is a person who says he believes Jesus is the way of salvation, but maybe there are other ways and who he is to judge other people’s beliefs. Does that make sense?
“…[Caleb Land] believes [Overstreet] is moving out of orthodoxy, writing positively about slightly off or somewhat unorthodox ideas. An example of this is a person who says he believes Jesus is the way of salvation, but maybe there are other ways and who he is to judge other people’s beliefs.” – Phil
The amount of presumption about my beliefs here is making my head spin.
Let me scratch the surface of the problems here with, oh, a top ten list:
1. Mr. Land does not know me. But he is apparently comfortable making presumptuous statement about the state of my faith.
2. The title of my favorite book on Christian faith is, as a matter of fact, “Orthodoxy,” by G.K. Chesterton.
3. If I were to describe my journey of faith, I would describe it as a journey “further up, further in” to Christian orthodoxy, as a matter of fact. And the questions I’ve wrestled in writing this series have, I believe, been part of that process.
4. There is a character in The Auralia Thread who *does* believe that there is no way to know truth, that we only tell each other stories to make ourselves feel better, and that whatever version of the truth you like best is fine. Of course, King Cal-raven rejects this person in the end as a fool, a fraud, a manipulator, and an egomaniac and continues to follow the “signposts” (to borrow a term from C.S. Lewis) toward what he believes to be source of all beauty and truth, determined to find it even if it means giving up all that he has.
5. I did not defend the theology of Rob Bell. I do not know the theology of Rob Bell. I have not read Rob Bell’s book. I *did* use the occasion of the controversy over Bell’s book to share a few questions that I occasionally ponder… questions that are the subject of many of the writings of the church fathers and mothers all the way back to the disciples themselves… but that places me firmly within traditions of orthodoxy.
6. I am very accessible. On my blog. On email (joverstreet@gmail.com). On Facebook. On Twitter. On Tumblr. On those sites, I regularly celebrate Christian faith in a variety of ways. I am available to anyone for an interview or a casual conversation. I know, this takes all the fun out of speculating about my faith, but there it is. My thoughts might be disappointing if you’re excited by the possibility of heresy; they will have the sheen or ordinary testimony instead of the sparkle of insinuation.
7. I’m disappointed that Mr. Walker, the reviewer, was so let down by the final book’s conclusion, especially since I built the whole series to lead toward those exact events. If he remains puzzled about it, again, I’m available to discuss it with him.
8. I don’t write stories to deliver a “payoff” to readers, but to follow characters and their questions on a journey that leads to revelations, revelations that leave the reader with some sense of resolution and a world of new questions. That is what the best stories have always given me, and it’s what I hoped to provide here. (I’ve had deeply satisfying conversations with other readers about what they found in the conclusion, so I’m sad that Mr. Walker’s experience was different.) I will assure him, though, that I had no thoughts whatsoever related to “syncretism” or “universalism.”
9. It’s interesting to me, the idea that readers think they can delineate what I do or do not believe about Christian orthodoxy from a fantasy novel that was never meant to be an allegory about religion. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t thinking nearly as much about religion as I was about art, and how so many different works of art whisper mysteriously about the truth and invite me into a fuller encounter of God through beauty.
10. Even if I had strayed off into some form of heresy, I do not choose my literature based on the soundness of a novelist’s doctrine. The Scriptures tell us that “eternity is written in our hearts.” Those who commit themselves to telling a good story, or crafting something beautiful, will reflect, to some extent, the glory of God, whether they like it or not. I have come to believe in the Gospel more powerfully as a result of the art of unbelievers. In fact, I am more often persuaded of God’s glory by “non-Christian art” than by “Christian art,” because I encounter beauty and excellence more often there than in the art of those who are seeking to persuade me with a “message.” If my own stories are “strange,” it is only because I am finding the world to be strange, and the grace of God to be even stranger and more astonishing the farther I travel along this road.
Grace and peace to all of you.
Jeffrey Overstreet
Mr. Overstreet,
Would you mind sharing here the church denomination you belong to?
I can’t give you a simple answer to that. In my experience, a healthy faith is a growing faith, and a growing faith usually takes the believer on a journey. I grew up in a Baptist church in Portland, Oregon. For the last 16 years, I’ve attended a Presbyterian church in Seattle. I am not currently a member of a particular denomination; I have been reluctant to “sign on the dotted line” with any denomination as my faith continues to grow and change, as anybody’s does. There is much in Presbyterian churches that resonates with me, but I have a deepening love for liturgy — for praying the poetry of the church that has endured for centuries. Many of my favorite writers are Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Jesuits, Episcopalians, Anglican. So I can’t “plant a flag” in any particular camp, as I find occasions when Christ speaks powerfully to me from any of them, and as I often find myself in conflict with certain aspects of others. But I will recite the Nicene Creed with conviction. For me to live is Christ. That is enough for me, for now. And anyway, I have found in past experience that to declare allegiance to a denomination tends to set a lot of people to judging, presuming, and labeling.
And how about you, Mr. Lynch? Can we make this a conversation, lest we run the risk of looking like an examination?
It seems inadequate to say I hope we have not offended you here, but I don’t know what to say. Jeffrey, I think you may have called us on the carpet for a judgmental habit we may have developed. We need to reflect on that.
Even that seems inadequate.
Thank you, Mr. Overstreet. We know the background of writers like Lewis and Tolkein, and I think it gives insight to what they think. I’m not in the public eye, but I’d be happy to tell you I hold to Reformed Theology. So, depending on what kind of Presbyterian denomination you attend, we have much in common.
I am a little surprised at your reaction to Lars and Caleb, though. As I said, you are in the public eye and you are open to some judgement and examination. Isn’t that what we do with art when the art isn’t for art’s sake but supposed to be for His sake (I’m thinking of what you say in the first pages of Auralia’s Colors).
I certainly apologize if I’ve misconstrued the meaning of the books. This is entirely possible.
However, I’m left with questions. Agreed, the character who thought all the old stories were lies was a bad character. However, I couldn’t see that his argument was ever refuted. The good characters continue to believe in something, but there’s no suggestion that the Eternal has spoken to us, and that there’s a sure truth we can place our trust in. Or to put it in another way, I see nothing here to challenge the chief error of our time–that we know nothing certain about God, and that one answer is pretty much as good as another. The reader who calls himself “spiritual but not religious” will be perfectly comfortable with this story.
I realize the theme is art, not salvation, but issues of ultimate truth are addressed quite a lot.
In short, these books seemed (to me) to reinforce the chief error of our age. It seems to me that a Christian story ought to (at the very least) challenge that error.
I’ll be happy to learn that I’ve misunderstood.
Perhaps the Eternal isn’t speaking to you through this story, but it certainly spoke to me, and I’ve heard from plenty of other readers who picked up on those themes without prompting.
For what it’s worth… the following is LOADED with spoilers.
Here are just a couple of the ways in which this is, for me, a story about the Eternal.
Krawg, in Raven’s Ladder, participates in a storytelling contest in which he tells a story spontaneously that seems to be coming from beyond himself. Like a prophet caught up in a vision, he tells a story of entities who shattered the unity of the cosmos out of jealousy and pride. He doesn’t know the power of the story he’s telling.
By my lights, the Seers who haunt the whole saga are clear parallels to the villains, the “puppeteers,” in Krawg’s story. But Krawg’s story is interrupted before we get to the end, so we never know if the puppeteers are all destroyed, or if they go on in enmity toward the one who originally made them, or if any of them are reconciled to their maker.
Meanwhile one of the Seers, having stolen a man’s mind, heart, and body, is so impressed by this man that he cannot bear to let him go. So when he finds out that even by claiming the body he cannot claim the whole person, he is distraught and goes seeking where he might find this man to whom he became so attached. While Cal-raven and his companions don’t even know what they are seeing in the closing scenes, that monstrous rebel surrenders. I’ll say that again. He surrenders at the shores of the lake, in the light of the holy mountain that seems to be the source of Auralia’s colors and all that is true and beautiful. And one of the Keepers carries him up. It’s the prodigal son coming home, giving up, in the end, his war against his Maker.
What is more: When Cal-raven discovered that there was more than one Keeper, his faith was shaken. And who hasn’t experienced this… their picture of the Way Things Are being shattered, fractured, changed. But Cal-raven does not give up. He does not rebel in his bitterness. He steps back and seeks a new way to reconcile the “facts” with his faith. And lo, there are many Keepers (just as there are many insufficient depictions of Christ, just as they are many incomplete “denominations” of the church, just as there are many “reflections” of God in art and nature). If we insist that only one of them is the Complete Truth, we set ourselves up as the Authority. But we are not the Authority. We all fall short. We all have incomplete knowledge of God until we see him, at which point we will be changed in a moment, for we will see him as he is.
Cal-raven came to suspect that all of the Keepers were agents of the True Keeper, the true source, the Master beyond his comprehension. Like those little birds that circle the crown of feathers in Cyndere’s midnight, the Keepers circle the truth, performing different roles in representing and serving and drawing all seekers toward that truth.
And it is through Auralia’s sacrifice that these colors become a beacon. It is through the Ale Boy’s compassionate quest that the world becomes redeemed. Above all, it is through the mysterious work of a character who goes almost overlooked in the series, but who claims that he has come into the world to seek out his “lost family,” who is able to move back and forth from the Expanses to the country of the great shining lake, who is always to be found pursuing the lost and working to restore them… it is through this character that we are given a picture of how the original “puppeteer”… the one who cuts his puppets’ strings that they may love him freely, that they may fly like kites without controllers… loved what he made.
Okay, those are just a couple of starters. I could write a book about how this is a story about the Eternal truth that burns up all false gods, all lies. But then, I *did* write four books and the stories will have to stand on their own. I am only sharing what I sought to depict, and what, for some, has come through.
The more I come to know Christ, the more intimately he draws me into relationship, the more dazzling his mysteries become to me. The more I know, the more I want to know. The greater the intimacy, the greater the mysteries. One by one, my feeble notions about him are shattered, and I can only respond in awe, in a state of inspriation, reverence, and service.
Some of that is influencing this story, although I only saw that in the revisions.
Krawg, telling his story, is playing out what I sometimes experience, and what so many artists experience… a sense that we’re scrambling to keep up with a story that has taken on a life of its own, that it is bigger than us.
Now, whether I told the story well, that’s open for debate.
But I have been blessed to find readers who gathered all of what I have just described and more, things I hadn’t even noticed. So I am content that in spite of time constraints and all that I still have to learn about writing, I did what I could with what I’d been given, and that will have to be enough. There are cracks in everything. I will hope and pray that even in my errors, the light gets through.
Of course, any work of art knows more than the one who made it. So I am only sharing my own interpretation of what I experienced and wrote, and it’s early yet.
You are welcome to your own interpretation. But I hope these details will help you understand why, for the author, this is a very personal testimony of how the Eternal goes on victorious… through testimony, through reason, through art, through beauty, and through the suffering service of those who bear the image of the suffering Christ in the world.
Of course, like some of the characters in this story, by acknowledging the mysteries inherent in truth, I will seem to some readers to be “playing with fire.” Some would prefer a “faith” that is no faith at all; they would prefer an exact doctrine that serves up all the answers. But that is not the Jesus I encounter in the Bible, who answers questions with parables… stories that are as inspiring as they are mysterious and endlessly provocative.
You say you’re left with questions. Praise God. If I had written a story about airtight certainty, it would not have been a story about faith. As more than once character observes in this saga, “Every question answered asks another.” And that is why faith is an everlasting journey into intimacy. God save me from ever thinking I’ve come to the end of questions.
P.S. Would someone who is “spiritual, but not religious” be “perfectly comfortable” with the story of the Prodigal Son? Because that is only one of the several parables I had in mind as I told these stories. It is retold quite blatantly in this saga. If that story was good enough for Jesus to tell, it’s good enough for me to retell, so long as I tell it to the best of my ability. It provided a backbone, as did the sentiments of Psalm 19… that the heavens themselves declare the glory of God.
Nevertheless, my compulsion to tell stories comes from a desire to know more, not a desire to declare my own certainties.
First of all, Mr. Overstreet, I want to express my thanks for your taking all this trouble with my obscure review. I hesitate to waste your time with further discussion.
But, in a nutshell, it just doesn’t work for me. What I see in the Auralia Thread is religion with myth, beauty, intuition, but no dogma. I’m one of those emotionally impoverished people who don’t want a religion without dogma. I want something for my soul, but I also want something for my intellect.
Or, perhaps, I just don’t have eyes to see or ears to hear.
And thank you for being willing to discuss it, Lars.
I never meant for the characters to discover a religion. They were investigating a mystery. They were looking for their origins, for the true history of their world, and for the source of the art that moved them. Some of them found it. It was a way of exploring what mystifies me about the works of art that have inspired me in my life, and wrestling with the many and varied ways in which people misunderstand, abuse, or exploit artists. If I’d been writing about the establishment of a religion, it would have been a very different story indeed.
Thank you, though, for sticking to discussion of the story, and not stirring up speculation or gossip about my church affiliation based on a story I’ve written.
Mr. Overstreet, my question was from curiosity and based more on certain comments you’ve made on your blog. I didn’t finish the first book, so I haven’t read the series.