Fiction

Pilgrim's Progress

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Back on July 24, 2003, Dr. George Grant blogged on John Bunyan and Pilgrim’s Progress. He briefly described the circumstances in which Bunyan wrote, and generalized on the book’s theme and styles.

For nearly a decade, Bunyan had served as an unordained itinerant preacher and had frequently taken part in highly visible theological controversies. It was natural that the new governmental restrictions would focus on him. Thus, he was arrested for preaching to “unlawful assemblies and conventicles.

The judges who were assigned to his case were all ex-royalists, most of whom had suffered fines, sequestrations, and even imprisonments during the Interregnum. They threatened and cajoled Bunyan, but he was unshakable. Finally, in frustration, they told him they would not release him from custody until he was willing to foreswear his illegal preaching. And so, he was sent to the county gaol where he spent twelve long years–recalcitrant to the end.

My favorite part of this book is in the Interpreter’s House. I don’t remember which picture impressed me most at the time I read it, but this one is a good one and illustrates the Interpreter’s House section.

Then I saw in my dream that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and hotter.

Then said Christian, What means this?

The Interpreter answered, This fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the Devil; but in that thou seest the fire notwithstanding burn higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason of that. So he had him about to the backside of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of the which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire.

Then said Christian, What means this?

The Interpreter answered, This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart: by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, that is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul.

The full text can be found at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Non-fiction

God of the Fairy Tale

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[first posted July 29, 2003] Shaw Books, an imprint of Waterbrook Press which is a division of Random House, has quietly announced the upcoming release God of the Fairy Tale from Jim Ware, coauthor of Finding God in the Lord of the Rings. Ware is a writer, folklorist, and Celtic musician, which are just credentials I wish I had. The book reports to be an examination of twenty fairy tales, retelling them and highlighting their themes. It’s the type of thing I would hope any reader could do with their children, but Ware will undoubtedly bring significant insight into the literary analysis. This work probably echoes Tolkien’s opinion that myth is not an untrue story, but a story which delivers essential, though maybe not factual, truth. The Gospel can be considered a myth, a beautiful story, but one that is true in almost every way it’s told. (Should you wonder why I say “almost,” I think that Philippians 2 describes the emptying of Jesus which the best of us cannot fully understand and may even interpret incorrectly.)

In related news, Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin is now available and is currently #2 on Amazon.com.

Writing

Not a writer

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I don’t want to know anything more about the VT monster. (I won’t write his name. He’s not worth the effort to learn how to spell it. I will repeat the name of Prof. Liviu Livrescu, again and again. May he live forever in honored memory. Yad vashem.)

As a writer, I suppose I should be fascinated by the dynamics that led the VTm to write a B-movie ending to his life’s story. I was bullied plenty as a child. I can sympathize with moody loners better than most.

But he lost me when he did what he did. He ceased to be interesting at that point.

I’ve blogged before about the banality of evil. In fiction we like to think up fascinating, multilayered antagonists, urbane Bond villains and Hannibal Lectors, accomplished and witty and charming, who are the kinds of people you suspect you’d like if you knew them. What we think we’d be like if we took up the practice of evil.

Yet so often, in real life, the bad guys turn out to be walking stereotypes. Abused or neglected as children. Poor social adjustment. Shy. Alienated from the peer group. Fascinated with violent games and movies.

Until the moment they set out to orchestrate their Big Moments, they have my sympathy. I think I could have been like that. I had a fair number of the same issues in my own life. Still do. I hope they get help. I hope they find somebody to love them. I hope they confess their self-centered, obsessive sin and find grace at the foot of the Cross.

But that ends when they strap on the guns (or bombs) and go out to hurt innocent people. When they do that, they are not only committing evil. They are becoming clichés. A smaller matter, it goes without saying, but if you want my attention, don’t do a Cagney imitation.

There was a time when the Charles Manson story fascinated me. Right up until I saw David Frost interview him, years back. Watching and listening to him, I realized there was nothing special about him. He was just like any number of stoners I met back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Manson wasn’t some Satanic mastermind. He was a narcissist with a messiah complex who eroded his inhibitions with drugs.

Boring.

There was a time when I was fascinated by the Jack the Ripper mystery. I’m still sort of interested in it, not so much in the criminal himself as in the story and the setting. And the enduring mystery. The fact that the crimes are unsolved prevents us from learning how banal the killer probably actually was. If (as I suspect is true) Sir Robert Anderson’s contention is correct, that the killer was a man later committed to an insane asylum, well, QED.

I suppose there are exceptions. Ted Bundy, they say, was charming and “played well with others.” But I haven’t studied his story closely, and it appears to me to be a rare exception.

The VTm thought he was a creative writer. He wasn’t.

Creative writers have to be able to come up with original endings.

Authors

Bret Lott Honored in Seattle

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Author Bret Lott (Jewel, A Song I Knew By Heart) is to receive The Denise Levertov Award on May 8, 2007, at the Seattle Art Museum. He is the fourth to receive this honor. “The Levertov Award is presented annually in May to an artist or creative writer whose work exemplifies a serious and sustained engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition,” reports Image Journal.

In related news, literary awards are important cues for readers who might not notice or hear of a book otherwise, according to Maya Jaggi. She writes, “Good fiction is a dialogue between story and reader, to which a reader brings not only personal history but imaginative experience of other books. Judging is as much about being open to others’ readings as trying to persuade them of your own.”

Religion

Out of uniform

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In my list of Thinking Bloggers last night, I didn’t include Roy Jacobsen of Dispatches From Outland and Writing, Clear and Simple. This omission was not due to any waning in my enjoyment of his work, but due simply to the fact that he almost never posts anymore.

Just a hint, to nobody in particular.

I sat down at the computer tonight, and suddenly realized I hadn’t planned anything to blog about.

So I resorted to the scribbled post-it notes I collect in my pocket planner. There I found this thought, which is apropos of nothing in particular:

“If God answered all prayers in the same way, it would make Him appear to be an object, a device we can manipulate. But beyond that, it would make us objects as well. Uniformity is dehumanizing.”

One of the convictions that grows on me with every passing year is my revulsion against uniformity, when applied to humans. Uniformity is great in science and industry—understanding the laws of nature makes scientific progress possible, and the standardization of parts made valuable (and not so valuable) things available to more people than our ancestors could have dreamed of.

But the great enterprise of the modern Left has been to make people uniform. For all their talk about diversity and personal self-esteem, their definition of justice is equality, not of opportunity but of results. They believe (sincerely) that this will enrich human life, but in practice it reduces people to interchangeable ciphers. Why did Stalin have no problem murdering millions of people, merely because they were inconvenient to his plans? Because they were just numbers to him, just units. There were plenty more where they come from. I do not say that those who work for equal distribution of wealth are all like Stalin. But Stalins inevitably rise to the top when they acquire power. I think we see this in the increasing hostility to the very existence of humanity seen in sectors of the ecological and animal rights movements.

Many people think Jesus preached equality of wealth. They are wrong. He preached equality of contentment, a very different thing

Religion

Will Europe Survive Islam?

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Richard John Neuhaus writes on “The Much Exaggerated Death of Europe” in May’s First Things. He says, “In the fine phrase of David Hart, Europe is dying of ‘metaphysical boredom.'” But Philip Jenkins disagrees, Neuhaus explains, and addresses the complaints direct.