A Writer's Place

This is a speech given by William Faulkner accepting a Nobel Prize in Literature. It gives very nice description of the role of a writer should play in society:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

I was surprised when reading a review of a new book has come out entitled The Magician's Book: A Skeptical Visit to Narnia, to note the bitterness with which the author, Laura Miller, recalls her realization as a teen of "what is instantly obvious to any adult reader: that the Chronicles of Narnia are filled with Christian symbolism."

C. S. Lewis is so forthwith about the Christianity in his works that her sense of betrayal is surprising. More surprising, however, is her claim that reading the Chronicles of Narnia as religious allegory is a willful misinterpretation and that she mean to reclaim them. "The Chronicles are unified," she writes, "not by anything resembling the exhaustive cultural stuff that Tolkien invented for Middle-earth . . . not even, really, by a cogent religious vision, but by readerly desire. Lewis poured into his imaginary world everything that he had adored in the books he read as a child and in the handful of children's books he'd enjoyed as an adult. And there is more, too: treasures collected from Dante, from Spenser, from Malory, from Austen, from old romances and ballads and fairy tales and pagan epics. . . The Chronicles," Miller concludes, "are a portal to other worlds, literary worlds."

Now, I have not read her book, but all of the reviews said generally the same thing. Which left me wondering how stories, other worlds and Christianity are mutually exclusive?

Myths and religion form the backbone of most fantasy. Sometimes their presence is overt-in The Iliad the gods are active participants in the plot. Other stories mask religion's presence but it is there; the injunction to follow a rule that is seemingly incompressible, to not open a box, eat an apple or to return home from the ball by midnight, points to the mystery of faith. The quest for some unattainable end, epic last stands, reliance on something besides oneself, these are all tropes that mirror and point to a Christian life.

Not only do most stories owe something to Christianity but the story of salvation history is itself thrilling. I know a professor who claims that you know the Bible was divinely inspired because of how perfect a work of literature it is, no person could have written it. It contains paradigms of tragedy and comedy, soul stirring pieces of poetry, the story of Jonah is even a perfect example of a ring cycle.

This is the point which seems to have eluded Ms. Miller, you cannot dismiss the religion and focus on the fact the C. S. Lewis wrote a smashingly good story because it is in large part the religion that makes it a smashingly good story. Grace, temptation, salvation these are what drives the plot of the Chronicles of Narinia. Incidentally, the same is true for many of the other books which Miller claims inspired Lewis as opposed to Christianity (Dante, have Christian undertones? No! He hid it so well also).

Sorry for the very heavy C. S. Lewis theme of late, I am going to leave off before start ranting about what was done to Peter's character in the Prince Caspian movie.

Is it written in the stars?

Words don't just tell the story-they can complete a deed, or they can begin one. The telling of a story can be part of the action itself. In the Anglo-Saxon world a deed was not complete until it was reported. That is why in Beowulf there is the recap once Beowulf returns home--he had to bring the story with him and report, else his task was not yet done. In this retelling the person is immortalized and the deed kept alive. If a persons deeds are great enough, they will be retold again and again, their tale preserved in stories and song. As Cohen says in The Last Hero, "I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive ... A song can keep someone immortal."

Stories take on a life of their own, gaining a certain truthfulness regardless of the actual facts of the events they are reporting. They have the power to strike fear or to inspire, to teach or to caution. Every great person eventually fades from memory but the story endures, even if only in bits of popular wisdom or folklore.

"'In the olden days," she said, "when a hero had been really heroic, the gods would put them up in the stars." THE HEAVENS CHANGE, said Death. WHAT TODAY LOOKS LIKE A MIGHTY HUNTER MAY LOOK LIKE A TEACUP IN A HUNDRED YEARS' TIME. "That doesn't seem fair." NO ONE EVER SAID IT HAD TO BE. BUT THERE ARE OTHER STARS.'"

According to Genesis, the world was begun with a Word. The world then is the greatest story, which is constantly being told through peoples words and deed.