There is a great interview up at the Onion AV Club with Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi. It's a great read. Mainly becasue Martel says some extremely insightful things, and because it shows that he's a first rate intellectual, who could probably do anything, but has decided to gift us with stories and not treatises. Thank you Yann Martel. Of particular, personal note, is this quote.
Christians—part of this is based on my personal experience, and part of it is based on my intuition—don't read fiction. The Bible is enough for them. Jesus is enough for them. That otherworldliness of the Bible stimulates their imagination enough. Ardent Christians are not novel readers. Now, having said that, I did receive letters from Americans who were very Christian. I remember one man liked the novel, liked the story, but didn't find the fact that Pi practiced more than one religion all that amusing. He said "I've been put on this earth to spread the word of Jesus, and Jesus is the only truth, and to claim to be Christian and do something else is to be muddled and lose your way." I haven't received any equivalent letter from a Hindu or a Muslim.
I think Martel is basically right. Christians are often sated by the richness of the Bible story. I think this is a very basic paradox of the faith. Christians find their faith in Jesus to be so good that they loose curiosity and hunger for the world around us, earning our reputation for insularity. This phenomenon is really annoying to people who don't find their imaginations satisfied with the Bible story, who hunger to go to other places too. I think beyond the inconvenience for more creative Christians, there is something quite wrong with our insularity. Our insularity of the mind translates into an insular sub-culture.
However, I'm a little uncomfortable with Martels characterization of Christians as a whole. While he's write that most Christians don't read novels as adults beyond the evangelical cannon of Lewis and maybe Tolkein, it's equally true that most Americans don't read many novels, at least the kind of novels that Martel's writing. Life of Pi was a huge success, selling into the millions, that's not but slim shaving of Americans. I don't know that Martel's argument, that thoughtful Americans, who read novels, are disproportionately non-Christian, is very persuasive.
I think some of this has to do with the terrible doctrine of creation prevalent in mainstream Protestantism (and, I believe in popular Catholicism). There's a Gnostic attitude towards this world. This produces apathy--if not downright antipathy--towards writing about the world, particularly fiction. Unless there's a message directly and explicitly about things that the mob identifies as appropriately religious, it's perceived as not mattering.
But we have to remember that God made the world, and made it good. Confessional traditions, particularly the Reformed tradition and Catholicism at its best, have a doctrine of creation which allows for the creation and enjoyment of good and engaging fiction. Unfortunately, this requires a degree of theological and intellectual sophistication which is sadly lacking in today's culture.
Posted by: ryan at November 10, 2007 2:05 PM