Ever since there have been such things as novels, the world has been flooded with bad fiction for which the religious impulse has been responsible. The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty in the process as possible. His feeling about this may have been made more definite by one of those Manichean-type theologies which sees the natural world as unworthy of penetration. But the real novelist, the one with an instinct for what he is about, knows that he cannot approach the infinite directly, that he must penetrate the natural human world as it is.(HT: JT)
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. Martin Luther
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Flannery on Bad Christian Fiction
Flannery O'Connor:
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love Flannery...he's such a great author
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