(urth) Religious writers and audiences

Sat Jun 5 13:53:02 PDT 2010

Personally I find the "betrayal" narrative bizarre whenever I hear it.
Secular writers and religious writers alike "color" their fiction to reflect
their political, moral and/or metaphyiscal beliefs, yet one very rarely
encounters this "betrayal" storyline outside of discussion of certain
Christian genre writers.  I guess in the right-wing fringe media we hear
about evil homosexual/pagan agendas hidden in works, but no one takes that
stuff seriously.

I might ascribe this to the generally liberal or progressive attitudes of
most literary critics, academics, and, plausibly, much of the educated
reading class in the United States.  But that doesn't really wash in my
experience.  I know countless people, many of liberal predispositions, who
have read and allegedly enjoyed The Fountainhead--and Rand is far preachier
than Lewis, Wolfe, or even Card.  And Neil Gaiman has written about his
feelings of betrayal as to Lewis's religiousity, but never expressed similar
feelings toward, for example, Kipling's imperialism.

I think the problem (if there is a unique problem here and not just soft
bigotry against religion in general or a particular religion) must be the
perceived deception.  The idea that Lewis might be planting ideas and images
surreptiously in one's head that would act to soften one's views towards
traditional Christianity can be conceived of nefariously.

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:48 PM, Pedro Pereira <domus_artemis at hotmail.com>wrote:

> I'm an atheist. Sometimes I do feel here and there a certain morality
> aspect rising from the books at certain points, but I can't say I ever felt
> preached to by Wolfe. Plus, I view the character as someone different from
> me and not necessarily sharing my world views so I can live with that.
>
> Curiously I have more problems with Wolfe's interviews than his books. He
> is viewing the world from the point of view of a religious person (nothing
> wrong with that and oviously expected) but sometimes his opinions, specially
> moral ones, feel to "colored" for my tastes, if you know what I mean.
> Sometimes I even feel somewhat offended, like when he attributes the "good
> morals" of the world to the rise of christianity (respect for others,
> charity, etc) and kind of goes against Islam, giving as example an
> experience from a friend of his who was at some point in some islamic
> country, etc. Maybe some of you remember this interview. I felt that it was
> such a naive and simplistic view of things, and beying an admirer of an
> obviously very smart person I felt disappointed.
>
> His work, however, never made me feel as an "outsider" (lol), I was always
> abble to connect with the characters, the story, etc, without feeling that I
> was reading a book whose main objective was to preach to me through some
> dissimulated means. I'm also abble to feel the sense of wonder at
> "revelation", like Silk when he finds the Outsider and so on, even though
> I'm not religious myself.
>
> I fell in love with Wolfe's prose when I was in my early teens (12 maybe),
> I had no idea who he was and I had this book called "shadow of the torturer"
> that I borrowed from an uncle of mine. Even though it was a translation it
> felt special, unique, and quite different from what I had read before. And
> then there was the beautifully imagined world, which has no paralel. Even
> after I discovered that Wolfe's religious beliefs/views played a big part in
> his work, I never really felt betrayed or dissapointed. I guess it actually
> made the whole thing more interesting, more "real".
> ------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 11:22:16 -0700
> From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com
> To: urth at lists.urth.net
> Subject: (urth) Religious writers and audiences
>
>
>  So recent discussions have me thinking about a book that's a couple of
> years old new, but on topic: _The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in
> Narnia_ by Laura Miller. Basically: young girl loves Narnia, clueless about
> the religious aspect. Grows up, eyes open, feels betrayed by the allegory.
> Gets even older, comes to terms with loving a book that she does not at all
> "believe."
>
> But it brings to mind two questions about Wolfe:
> 1) In what sense do people feel that his books are "allegorical" (even in
> the loosest sense) of his (or any) religious views? I take it here that
> allegorical means more than being informed-by-religion and actually
> instructive-of or apologetic-for a certain theology, as Lewis apparently
> wanted Narnia to be?
> 2) How do his non-Catholic readers react to the overt theologizing and
> moralizing that is obviously there at times? (This would go for even
> Catholic readers who might find something non-orthodox.)
>
> I know my views aren't shared by everyone on the list, but I'm skeptical of
> the idea that Wolfe is always or even primarily interested in writing his
> own beliefs into his books in any overall consistent way. He seems more to
> be experimenting with ideas rather than working out a consistent theology,
> as it were.
>
> But even when he's doing something obvious, like the
> Severian-as-proto-Christian angle, I find myself fascinated although I'm not
> particularly Christian (or particularly anything). I've had other friends,
> particularly the a-religious type, who can't get past the feeling that he's
> preaching to them to the "what-if" attitude in which I read him.
>
> But I was curious about any variety of views we have on the list.
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
> *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> *Sent:* Sat, June 5, 2010 12:17:31 PM
> *Subject:* Re: (urth) traveling north
>
> And Tolkien would weep a silent tear to see his work called "allegorical."
>
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
>
> > It's my understanding that was how it started with he drawing distant
> time
> > and CS Lewis drawing distant space, but as it took on a life of its own
> it
> > became increasingly allegorical and less literally our world. Though with
> > events like the Bending of the Roads, pretty much any discrepancies can
> be
> > explained away.
>
> No; Middle-earth (or, more properly, Arda) goes back to long before
> his famous "bargain" with Lewis. He began writing what would become
> _The Silmarillion_ during WWI.
>
> The product of the "bargain" was never completed.
>
>
> --
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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