Fiction for believers and nonbelievers -- how to find that balance

Hi there, fiction lovers --

This thread is about the threshold between a novel written especially for people who already know Christ, while at the same time the story offers real enjoyment for those who don't know or perhaps don't WANT to know Christ. Substance, depth, and entertainment all in one.

Can you recommend a read that fits this profile? Please share!

Thank you and best wishes,

A. D. Morel

author, A Skeptic's Luck (2013)
creative writing blog -- http://www.writermanna.com

The first thing that pops into my mind would be The Screwtape Letters-while I was an atheist, I still found it a good read, but then again, I was much more amenable towards religion than many other atheists and agnostics.

Some of George Macdonald's fantasy stuff might do. Most of his novels are very adamantly Christian, but Lilith and Phantastes would do well for readers of fantasy. Phantastes had an influence on C. S. Lewis while he was still a nonbeliever. I think it's kind of an odd book; it reminded me of Undine but other people like it better than I do. I like Lilith very much; it's a fantasy. The title character is Adam's mythical first wife and the theme is the possibility of redemption for all.

Another book that might work in that vein is Harold Myra's Children in the night, which is a Christian allegory about a world in which there is no light.

I immediately think of the works of Dostoevsky, especially The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.

The Second Victory by Morris West.

Out of my recent reading, there's Marilynne Robinson and Gilead or Home.

also:

Graham Greene

Brideshead Revisited

Paul Elie's article "Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?" in the NYT of December 19, 2012.

The viper's tangle by Francois Mauriac

Must respectfully enter a sincere Ho-hum in re Screwtape. On the positive side, I recommend Hadrian the Seventh by Fr Rolfe, The Time before you die by Lucy Beckett, and (with well-intentioned immodesty) my own Harmony Junction. Happy hunting! -- Goddard

"The Last Summer of Ordinary Times" by Deborah A Jaeger

Susan Howatch's Church of England novels.

Glittering Images, Glamorous Powers, Ultimate Prizes, Scandalous Risks, Mystical Paths, and Absolute Truths.

There is a little sex in books, but no graphic descriptions. Howatch is a meticulous researcher, and knows her territory very well.

In re #4. We must add Crime and punishment, and not merely because of its melodramatic and almost predictable conclusion. While in old Russia, let us add the late Tolstoy piece Resurrection. Peace, -- Goddard

I second Susan Howatch. Also perhaps Ben Hur, A Prayer for Owen Meany, North of Hope, Mr. Ives' Christmas, and Saints and Villains

I mentioned this query to two friends, both Christian, and both writers. One immediately mentioned CS Lewis, the other offered the surprising suggestion -- conceding that the author is an Indian Marxist -- of The God of small things.

Some may find him too quirky, and others find him too much a man of his time only, but I have overcome my original reluctance to mention the final three novels of J-K Huysmans: En route, La cathedral, and L'oblat.

>11 HarryMacDonald:: I know that I'm in the minority on this one, but I never particularly liked C&P, and my favorite Dostoevsky is The Idiot (but then, that may have to do with the fact that when I first read it in college, it was with a Russian-lit specialist who was also one of the most brilliant professors I ever had).

ETA: And the 1951 film version by Kurosawa is, like most of his work, a masterpiece.

I second The Idiot!!!

He's a love-him-or-hate-him kind of writer, but Walker Percy would be a good choice. And some of the hovels of Reynolds Price and Doris Betts (especially Souls Raised from the Dead).

I have not read anything by Doris Betts, but I heard her speak once at a Billy Graham crusade in Chapel Hill. I LOVE Walker Percy, but he is a love-him-or-hate-him type writer. Clyde Edgerton is another North Carolina writer who deserves a place beside Price and Betts.

One of my very favorites is Flatland by English schoolmaster and theologian Edwin A. Abbott.

Another love-him-or-hate-him writer (sometimes both at the same time!) is G. K. Chesterton.

Can't leave out Shusaku Endo, especially his novel Silence. He wrote another book called Wonderful Fool, that's interesting to compare with The Idiot.

>19 jburlinson:

One of my very favorites is Flatland by English schoolmaster and theologian Edwin A. Abbott.

It's a real trip, indeed — like reading Lobachevsky after studying Euclid. But I'm curious, jburlinson: it's been a long time since I read Flatland, and for the life of me I can't think what it has to do with Christianity.

What am I forgetting?

> 20. it's been a long time since I read Flatland, and for the life of me I can't think what it has to do with Christianity. What am I forgetting?

It's somewhat implicit, I suppose and perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but consider the broad outline of the tale (I hope I'm not spoiling the plot for anyone.) A square who lives in a two-dimensional world called Flatland is visited by a sphere who teaches the square about the richer reality of three dimensions called Spaceland. The square finds it extremely difficult to understand and then communicate the reality of the third dimension to his fellow inhabitants of a two-dimensional world. This radical proclamation is greeted by total consternation in Flatland and all adherents are massacred or imprisoned.

Does this sound like anything?

>21 jburlinson:: Ah! I'd forgotten about the massacre. But I also expect I read it along more generic lines of the response to any paradigm shift (as we say now), like Copernicus or Galileo — in short, the Semmelweis reflex.

Thanks for your response.

This is an interesting suggestion, but I am not convinced. The test, I suppose, is whether this book would have existed, or at-least had any resemblance to what we know, had Cervantes not been a Christian, or, for that matter, had Christianity never existed. On another front, a higly literate friend suggests that Flannery O'Connor might fit the bill as posed originally by A. D. Morell. I've not tested those particular waters myself. -- Goddard

Another book that isn't Christian per se, but would certain give both religious people and those who are questioning things lots to ponder is Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm.

Graham Greene, particularly The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter.

#26, and Brighton Rock as well.

I love Dante, and probably know more about him than anyone on this thread, but I seriously question how many people can grasp, without much mental wrestling, his particular Christian vision, or his often painful righteousness. As for Chaucer, witty and genial writer that he was, some of the Tales are blighted by some stuff which will always be a standing rebuke to medieval Christinaity, and indeed to humanistic values in any tradition, religious or otherwise. Still, we love him 'cause he was such a dam' good story-teller and word-smith. Dickens? Amen, amen. Smaller matter: weren't we originally talking about fiction? To include Dante and Chaucer, presumably in prose reductions, strikes me as futile and unfair to writer and reader alike, a bit like having sex through a shower-curtain.

If we're going to go medieval (says the medievalist), may I suggest Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies?

I've got a contrarian streak in me, so of Chaucer's works, I much prefer The House of Fame, perhaps because of its meditations on visionary dynamics and revelatory epistemological authority; but of the great English writers of the 14th century, my votes go to Langland and Julian of Norwich. But I'm not sure I would recommend either Piers Plowman or Revelation of Divine Love to the average non-believer looking for "a good read" (unless the criterion of "good" here could be glossed as "intellectually challenging", in which case both rate right next to Dante).

I think "Mother Jesus" might set some Christian's teeth edge.

In re #31. As to "Mother Jesus", let us consider what a commercial success that piece of crap The Shack was. Certainly the representation there of the Almighty didn't stand in the way of that work's reaching many a reader -- and a clientele which, I suspect, is not normally amenable to such efforts.

in re #6, I have started Gilead and finding it quite remarkable and lovely.

A book club I started at my Catholic parish/cluster in Portland has given me the chance to read some of the books above, including Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter and Walker Percy's The Moviegoer. (We've also done some Flannery O'Connor, Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen and Perelandra, which I'd already read.)

As regards most of them my feeling is "How do non-Christians understand this stuff?" and "Why do they sometimes like it?" The Narnia Chronicles are one thing. But what does one make of something like The Power and the Glory if you think the religious framework is completely bogus and empty? I imagine a high-school student forced to read it might read it like it "really" happened, and therefore systematically reinterpret the motivations and incidents to suit their point of view—that the priest was a selfish idiot, or whatever. An unsophisticated reader might translate it into a message about "sticking with what you believe." But a sophisticated reader can only see the novel as a giant set-up job for a point of view which—to one unsympathetic to that point of view—must only be of anthropological interest. Is it the religious equivalent of class tourism?

In the case of "A Good Man is Hard to Find," which I've read about once every five years since high school, my feeling is that Catholics and some other Christians get it (i.e., largely the ending), and everyone else is either uninterested in it, or baffled and interpret it in ways that can only be described as "flat wrong." (See http://faculty.irsc.edu/faculty/sknapp/fitzgerald.htm and LT discussion at http://www.librarything.com/topic/152327#4011743). The writing is, of course, very fine. Is that enough?

I'm with Harry on the Screwtape Letters. I don't think it's that great either, and, again, I don't see what attractions it would hold for a non-believer. The Great Divorce is a far better book, but of even less interest to the non-believer.

>34 timspalding: But a sophisticated reader can only see the novel as a giant set-up job for a point of view which, to one unsympathetic to that point of view, must only be of anthropological interest. Is it the religious equivalent of class tourism?

That seems a little harsh. Great art is great because it allows us to empathize with people and view points that are utterly different than our own. This is true across cultural lines, so it can certainly be true across religious lines and lines of belief/nonbelief.

Yes, what southernbooklady said.

Perhaps some of Tim's restlessness may have something to do with the various authors' literary skill and values, a restlessness which I share (can you believe that Tim, we're in agreement on something?!). Somewhere earlier-on I think I mentioned some earlier titles, and I would continue to recommend writers who toiled before our lifetime (well, the lifetime of some of us!). Incidentally, since this thread started, I have finally been reading -- after decades of delay, the Story of an African farm, by Olive Schreiner. It certainly deserves scrutiny by y'all in this thread.

>34 timspalding: I feel a bit obtuse in saying this. I don't really understand the problem you see, Tim. I become confused when I try to get at it by extending the questions you ask.

What do non-Christians make of the St. Matthew Passion? Why do they sometimes like it? Why do I, with no belief in an afterlife, think that Heinrich Schutz's Musicalische Exequien is a masterpiece? What is a non-believer or a unitarian to make of the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat BWV 552 with its trinitarian structure? I don't live in fifth-century Athens, but Antigone knocks me flat.

I think, with southernbooklady, that if works of the imagination don't communicate beyond some circle of initiates then they're pretty limited and definitely not great.

Am I missing your real point?

>38 librorumamans: Antigone knocks me flat

A favorite of mine!

I understand perfectly the points which southernbooklady and librorumamans have made here, yet -- characteristically -- I must propose an amendment which I hope may be taken as friendly. There is a strong temptation for us to say something like "I know just what Dante felt", or Mozart, or John Donne, or Raphael, or you name them. No: we don't, because, no matter how enchanting their work, and how convincing a case they make for their own vision, we almost always start from different assumptions. We do not hear the Matthaeuspassion the way Bach did. Having said that, I am not saying that a pious and musically literate Lutheran necessarily DOES hear it that way either, though I honestly think it's important to try to adopt that vantage point to have the richest possible experience.
This is a fascinating and important topic. I refer those interested to one of the liveliest books to address this kind of thing, Bach the master, by Rutland Boughton. In it, Bougton, born two hundred years after Bach, and an agnostic revolutionary socialist, essentially argues that he understood Bach better than Bach did. On the face of it, it sounds absurd and pretentious, but in the working-out of his argument, he reveals aspects of Bach's thought and art which have rarely -- to my knowledge -- been detected either by the musical community or the theological one.
Let's keep this up! -- Goddard

I agree with much of what has been said above, but I believe some kind of engagement with a culture you are reading about helps your understanding. For example, I have read and reread Dostoyevsky for years. I thought I had pretty good handle on him, at least for a casual reader.

However I went to Russia for the first time in 1999, and all of sudden Dostoyevsky made a lot more sense to me. I realized he was not making these people up--and that many Russians are much like the characters in his books. It is one thing to read about Rogozhin. It is quite another to have a conversation with him! (Or someone very much like him.)

>40 HarryMacDonald: I completely agree with both paragraphs.

T. S. Eliot, when asked by a rather dull grad student what he had meant when he wrote "Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree", replied that he had meant "Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree".

Yet Eliot also wrote

... one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. ... (East Coker)

So I think it's reasonable to go on the basis that creators both know and don't know what they're doing and what they've done. Shakespeare doubtless knew that King Lear wasn't just a bit of tosh, but he probably had very little idea that he'd written King Lear, the basis of an industry.

Or, put another way:

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare's Ghost
Sat for a Civil Service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly ...
Because he hadn't read his Bradley.

         — Anon.

(Edited to remedy a shortage of leopards.)

>38 librorumamans:: "Antigone knocks me flat"

>39 southernbooklady:: "A favorite of mine!"

Me, too -- so much so that I devote a full week to it when I teach the first-semester-freshman humanities/history course at my college ("Civilizations and Religions of the Ancient World"), making it the sole representative of the Greek theater.