The NY Times recently posted this article by Paul Elie, who wrote a book I love called The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which is a quadruple biography of four twentieth-century American Catholic writers (Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy). I thought what he said was intelligent and thought-provoking, and I’m curious what other people think. In fact, I’ve come up with questions, and if you have thoughts I would love to hear them (you can comment below and maybe there will be an *actual conversation* on my blog; or if you’d rather, you can e-mail me from the “About” page.
Here are my questions:
1. Are there fiction writers Elie doesn’t mention who you think are writing successfully from the perspective of believers or faithful people (Christian or otherwise)? For Christian ones, I thought of Ron Hansen, Linda McCullough Moore, and Brett Lott. Also Susan Howatch in some of her books.
2. He doesn’t say lots about this, but he seems to imply that there’s better writing from the perspective of people in other faith traditions. Chaim Potok comes to mind for Jews, for example, so in a sense I think he’s right. Why is this? Is Christianity like whiteness, the one ‘race’ that is invisible and has no history and no defining characteristics? That can’t be it, can it?
3. One of my courses last semester was about religion and modernity, and one of the things we discussed early in the semester was that (especially if you’re talking about something like Hinduism), the term “belief” is not ideal for describing what is most important about religion or faith tradition. What do you think? What is “belief” good for, and what are its limitations as a concept or a word? Are there better words that get at more of the core of what living faithfully is about?
4. Do you care whether fiction loses its faith? If you’ve read this far, my guess is you do — but whether you do or not, why?