Truth, Lies, Fact, and Fiction

“She says miracles aren’t allowed in fiction and makes other statements of a like nature. I haven’t read it…I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles.”

~Flannery O Connor

We've discussed art as truth here before, but I want to revisit it, in a more focused way. Jenna's post on Monday brought my mind around to truth and fact in fiction.  Flannery O Connor’s writing is often dark. Darker, at least, than much of the fiction we would call “a fiction of miracles”. We like miracles of light, we like a supernatural world of sweet baby angels and gentle spirits. In her tales the miracles are so Catholic they’re almost pagan - dark and dangerous and hidden. Modern miracles in a modern world, but with the taste of something primitive. A friend once told me that she “doesn’t read fiction because [she] likes to learn something” from her books, and fiction, not being factual, can’t teach. I was devastated - how do you not learn from fiction?

Part of the trouble is our relationship to truth. We tend to equate truth with fact. If something is true, it must also be factual. And so fiction is troubling to us - it is often too obviously true, while being just as obviously not factual. But how do we who believe in the truth of fiction, particularly the fiction of miracles, explain the truth that exists outside of fact?

I suppose I should spend some time defining my terms first of all, because definitions are often a huge stumbling block in discussions. By truth, I am referring to the foundation on which reality is based. It encompasses reality, but is not bound by it, and because of that there are many things that are true without being factual. Facts, the provable bits of reality are true, but so are the unprovable bits - miracles, dreams, and visions; and, more important for our discussion, so are many of the fictional stories, existing outside the factual world, but within the world of truth.

“To get back to the accurate naming of the things of God…The only way I can explain that is by repeating that I think evil is the defective use of good. Perhaps you do too..”

        ~Flannery O Connor

And that is the trouble - the defective use of the good is often harder to detect than an out and out bad would be. Subtle failings can be more seductive and more damaging than obvious flaws. Fiction should be true, not cluttered with half-truths and tiny lies. Beautiful, good, and full of mystery.

Secular Writers and the Religious Imagination

“The Catholic fiction writer has very little high-powered “Catholic fiction to influence him…But at some point reading them reaches the place of diminishing returns and you get more benefit reading someone like Hemingway, where there is apparently a hunger for Catholic completeness in life, or Joyce who can’t get rid of it no matter what he does. It may be a matter of recognizing the Holy Ghost in fiction by the way he chooses to conceal himself.”

      ~Flannery O Connor

Most of my favorite fiction writers are non-religious writers. This is in part because I don’t trust the writers of religious fiction to write honestly about the world they see, and in part because in an attempt to write accessible religious fiction, they too often seem to be writing without respect for the story. It’s I see in many religious writers - whether the religion is Christianity or any other, but it isn’t true of all religious writers. I love Flannery, I enjoy Lewis, and Tolstoy manages to meld writing and the religious sense richly. What are they doing right? When people ask me, “why Lewis but not Pullman?” I’ll generally say that Lewis feels natural, Pullman tries too hard, it’s jarring. But Flannery explains in better, “A writer’s moral sense must coincide with his dramatic sense.” A religious writer, any writer really, can’t write with discordant senses. A moral sense that is non-existent, or that sticks out of the text to beat the reader over the head is jarring, as is a moral that builds a sense of wonder in a cynical tale.

“When I said that the devil was a better writer than Mlle. Sagan, I meant to indicate that the devil’s moral sense coincides at all points with his dramatic sense.”

   ~Flannery O Connor

Flannery encourages the writer to work from his “felt life” a term she takes from Joyce, and a term I read as the need for the writer to be honest in his created world. If he experiences the world in one way and writes it another way, the effect is jarring and unpleasant to the reader. For me, reading secular writers, like Joyce and Hemingway can be a fascinating look at what the inherent long for God does in the soul of the secular artist. It’s difficult for me to imagine without their writing to guide me. And their writing raises me up in a way that many Catholic writers do not, because they write honestly of all the torments the soul can feel when it searches for what it doesn’t know.

Thoughts Jenna? Or Mr. Pond (I'm ever-hopeful)

Fantasy & Folklore: A Sense of Symbolism

“You slowly peeled me out of time;
I swayingly stepped into it
and yielded after subtle fights:
but now your darkling presence grieves
your gentle victory.

You conquered me and know me not.”

     ~Rilke

One of the greatest aids belief gives the writer is an ability to understand the symbols and images he uses. Belief, a relationship with the symbols, is something allows us to see them as living, changing, growing things; images with deep roots; and that understanding is the place from which to pull the nuance of meaning, without either over-extending the symbol or misrepresenting it entirely. Jenna’s Monday post emphasized it perfectly, “I believe in mysteries—”. Mystery is a challenge to us, especially as we populate our stories with characters from folklore and legend. We’re a jaded lot, and while we may love the old tales, too often we look at them with eyes unused to mystery. We need to retrain our eyes. Mr. Pond joined us again with a surprise, one of his tales woke up and walked the earth - thrilling, but is it unexpected? “There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of”.

Often, it seems, the writer will see as a symbol, a creature he loves or hates, like dragons for Michael O’Brien, and cling to one aspect of the symbolism, forgetting the rest in his enthusiasm. There is no relationship to the symbol, and the deeper meanings are lost. O’Brien is so full of the sens of the dragon as Satan image (dangerous, cunning, wicked) that he pushes out conflicting images of the dragon as counselor (powerful, wise, dangerous). It’s where the two intersect that the true symbolism is found. Dragons represent power, power outside of morality, and power of the mind as well as the physical power. Dragons are dangerous, but they don’t have to be a symbol of evil. Relationship to the image, how the author chooses to emphasize and down-play aspect of the symbol, is the key.

I am thinking especially of the symbolism of plants right now, Jenna mentioned them in last weeks discussion, and I am realizing more and more as I begin to reply, that symbols are shifting things, requiring an intimate friendship. I began by writing about birches - trees I love, trees I walk among daily for inspiration and friendship. In the spring, I bring in birch twigs to set on the altar, because my Saints love them. Birches bring so many good things: babies, healing, sweet dreams, and good spirits. But they’re also ghost trees, in birch groves, the souls of unshriven girls dance for the death of those who join them, late at night, under the waning moon. Birches link us to the dead, good and evil, they lean toward the good - all things have a leaning. But the tales speak mostly of the dancing girls, of terror and madness. Without a relationship we often miss an important aspect. Mr. Pond is right when he reminds us that “belief in fairies is certainly not [a] comforting thing.” As writers, we need to remember this, our fairies are not angels, and our angels are not merely fat cherubs.

"What will you do, God, when I'm dead?..
without me, you end up losing making sense...

I fret about you, God."
   ~Rilke

 Symbols are powerful, and now, living in a world that to often fails to appreciate them, we who write with them, need to write with love and understanding. Need to absorb their darkness and their light in order to make sense of them. In order to share them with the world.