(urth) Religious writers and audiences

[John Watkins]

Do people feel similarly betrayed by Doestoevsky?

Again, I find it bizarre.  I can't imagine thinking to myself "How dare
Author X have different views than me!"  I can imagine thinking "Well, I
don't choose to spend time on this," but not a sense of betrayal per se.

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:58 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> The comparison is a personally interesting one. Perhaps the difference is
> largely one of timing. I too felt somewhat betrayed by Lewis; I encountered
> Narnia not long after Middle-Earth, around second and third grade.
> Wolfe I discovered much later, and while I'm still waiting for the Great
> Atheist Novel, I don't feel betrayed at all. And Rand was clearly insane
> from the beginning.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 16:53:02 -0400
>
> From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Religious writers and audiences
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>
> 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.
>
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