Fact is, it's true in many ways: my novels won't ever make the
“Great Books of the Western World” list. (http://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/40)
I'm not in a snit over it. Espionage thrillers about futuristic mercenaries,
clones and killer drones aren't going to change the world. I'm OK with that. As
a writer, I'm pecking at the keyboard to exercise my imagination, to spin a
yarn, hopefully entertain someone. Maybe even make a couple extra bucks before
my time is up. I just hope I'm more like Panera than Mcdonalds.
I'm aiming for that lofty goal because as a writer and artist who is
also a Christian, I'd like to inject some substance, trace-elements of
spiritual qualities in my work. After all, it is a product of my time and
labor, an extension of my person, if you will, and I'd hate to think my soul is
vapid and shallow. But that's the fear, the accusation, isn't it?
Which is what brought me to the charge of cowardice.
I finished Flannery O'Connor's “The Violent Bear it Away” (http://www.amazon.com/The-Violent-Bear-Away-ebook/dp/B009LRWWN6/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1375299985&sr=1-1)
I read it decades ago for some course and didn't get it at all. I was stunned
this time around though. The following passage in particular hit me.
“Tarwater clenched his fists. He stood like one condemned, waiting
at the spot of execution. Then the revelation came, silent, implacable, direct
as a bullet. He did not look into the eyes of any fiery beast or see a burning
bush. He only knew, with a certainty sunk in despair, that he was expected to
baptize the child he saw and begin the life his great-uncle had prepared him
for. He knew that he was called to be a prophet and that the ways of his
prophecy would not be remarkable. His black pupils, glassy and still, reflected
depth on depth his own stricken image of himself, trudging into the distance in
the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus, until at last he received his
reward, a broken fish, a multiplied loaf. The Lord out of dust had created him,
had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and
think, and set him in a world of loss and fire all to baptize one idiot child
that He need not have created in the first place and to cry out a gospel
just as foolish. He tried to shout, “NO!” but it was like trying to shout in
his sleep. The sound was saturated in silence, lost.”
Excerpt
From: O'Connor, Flannery. “The Violent Bear It Away.” Farrar, Straus and
Giroux.
Your mileage may vary, but what stunned me wasn't merely the
prose, the theme, the characters; it's classic American literature for a
reason. But I had the sudden intimate realization I lacked both the skill and
the courage to write something that messy, that audacious. There's an anger, a
certain mad daring, not to mention profound bravery needed to grapple with the
enormity of free will, Man's primal defiance and the mystery of God's grace
without imposing clichéd answers. I was numbed, humbled.
I confess that with rare exception, I
find most of the contemporary Christian artistic offerings as insipid as they
are sincere. My opinion is that as flawed as we believers are and will be down
here, the reality of God deserves better than the modern evangelical status
quo. The Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters and brought the entire
universe into being at the divine fiat. That is the spirit reportedly
indwelling us.
As an artist, a writer, I agree with
Akira Kurosawa that “The role of the artist is to not look away.” I understand what Steven Pressfield means when he
says “The artist is seeking the real by means of the artificial.” It's just that I flatter myself if I think that
simply waving around the live-wire of some controversy, spilling
some fictitious blood or allowing my non-Christian characters to drop an F-bomb
or three, I've struck a blow against saccharine mediocrity. It might be bold to
some, blasphemy to others. It might make me a shark in the koi pond, a vandal
in the Precious Moments Temple, but sizzle ain't steak. None of that is
inherently more gritty or authentic. It ain't necessarily so.
O'Connor's novel reminded me once again
true skill doesn't rely on gimmicks, that gratuitous detail isn't realism, and
that my work will never really ring true unless I'm willing to leave the
cloistered certainty of comfortable answers. As a Christian, an artist, a writer,
as a human being, I have to venture out into the mystery that is God, the
madness that is love and the scandal that is grace and redemption, and allow
them to speak for themselves.\
Patrick
Todoroff blogs at
His latest
book, Shift Tense - Red Flags is available at Amazon.com
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