Communication

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by jase mitchell
07/15/05
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What a sappy sentimental bunch of writing here. Good grief.....no wonder pagans sell so many more books. It's not about dirt and grime, but let's at least have some imagination outside the touchy-feely-emotional junk here.

There is some good writing but the "stories" are not stories...they are sermons pretending to be stories.

Where are the Flannery O'Connors and Walker Percy's in this culture? Anyone can write sentimentality.

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Autumn Waldroup

20 Jul 2005

Thank-you for your comment on my article, "Original Meaning." I agree Christians call fall into a "feel good" routine at times - but I don't think that is an across the board accurate generalization. And while I appreciate your general statement - regarding SAP, I would be interested in specific suggestions regarding writing style and structure as that seems to be the most helpful for any aspiring writer - Christian or pagan. And as to your comment about pagans selling the most books - the two best selling books of all times are both Christian books, but I'll bet you already knew that.

Jacque Sauter

15 Jul 2005

O’Connor was very interested in the essential mystery of life that any honest seeker of truth will surely encounter if they but ask enough questions. In “A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable,” O’Connor as storyteller speaks of her quest of understanding the mechanism and mystery behind a good story: I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicated where the real heart of the story lies. This having to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity. The action or gesture I’m talking about would have to be on the anagogical level, that is, the level which has to do with the Divine life and our participation in it. It would be a gesture that transcended any neat allegory that might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with reality. In this same essay, she describes belief “as the engine which makes perception operate,” at least for her. Seeing the world as she does through the eyes of Christian orthodoxy, the eternal realm of God and the temporal realm of humanity are inextricably linked. To her, this is an almost unfathomable mystery, and it is by this mystery she weaves her stories. She describes her characters as being so hard headed that nothing short of an act of violence will give them pause to examine their lives. Beyond this, she notes, violence has other heavenly parallels, for, in the words of Jesus, “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” The shy, introverted Southern girl who died young and never married viewed life through the peculiar child-like eyes of faith, wonder, and mystery—and a strange twist of macabre. When she looked around her, she had an eye for the unusual and a gift for being able to capture it, be that through her painting, linocuts, or prose. Perhaps she understood well what my acquaintance told me so many years ago: it isn’t so much about pleasant appearances, but about distinction. Is this why her stories stick in one’s mind so, troubling one, compelling one to pause and reflect on life from the angle of distinction that only Flannery could paint with her unique perspective of the world, filtered through the caricatural shallow Southerners of her imagination with all their many maladies and all their many afflictions.
Could there be something to this idea of “indirect communication” after all? Is existence more meaningful than abstraction? Is truth more than dogma? So many mysteries ripped open, their innards spilling out, the blood red sunrise casting its ghastly hue on the reader’s face, twisted and contorted purple, looking for all the world like a man gasping for his last dying breath, until falling upon his ears he hears “the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hellelujah.”19 Hellelujah to the Highest, indeed!

"I HAD NOT HEARD OF HER BEFORE.WILL INVESTIGATE" Thank you for sharing.

Jacque Sauter

15 Jul 2005

P.S. I copied and pasted that from my search process. :)

Jacque Sauter

15 Jul 2005

I hope that you will post one of your exciting stories soon! Glory to God!!

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