Harry Potter vs. the Cullens

I'm having a very weird literary experience right now: I'm reading both the end of the Harry Potter books and the end of the Twilight books - first time through, on both counts.

I'll follow with a fuller review of both later, but just now I have to say that they've very different from each other, despite both being YA fantasy.

I've read Stephanie Meyer says her books are about love. And I've read that J. K. Rowling says her books are about death. And I can see why they'd each say what they've said.

But here's the thing, as I go back and forth between the two series: I think they've got it switched. For one thing, Meyer's love reads a bit more like lust to my eyes, and I can't help but twine that with the theme of death, as in "the wages of sin is". (Despite her best efforts - and her stories are very compelling - the "undead" never lose their creepiness. If you think about it, that's probably a good thing.) And there is death aplenty in the Rowling's books, but I keep thinking of, "No greater love has a man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends." For all about her stories that makes me uneasy, in their best sections, they're about that kind of love.

And then, when I think about that verse, the "no greater love" one, I think about what Jesus said next, that he has called us his friends . . . and then I'm not thinking of Rowling's books or Meyer's books at all, but rather about Jesus.

There's only so much you can say about death and love in fiction before your mind forces you back to the bright light of the real world in order to sit and contemplate the victorious One who by dying conquered death, and that because of the great love He has for mankind.

And so I'm back to wondering why I read fiction at all. Perhaps because even in its imperfection, fiction prompts us to ponder reality in deeper and deeper ways. Perhaps it's even the imperfection itself that prompts us toward meditating on God and his mercies. When we read world-building exercises that are lacking in some areas, it makes us think about how they're lacking, and what is really true, in the real world, the one God Himself made. The good parts of the fiction show us the glories we might, for our blindness, have missed on our own (like how Aslan makes you realize what joy really means) and the imperfections make you yearn for the real, God-created world again (like how Edward Cullen makes you shiver at the idea of an all-human eternity).

I don't know - and I'm not trying to start a Harry Potter fight or a Twilight fight. I think in both cases you can make a decent argument for reading them and a decent argument against. (Though, disclaimer: I'm pretty sure Twilight would be bad for teenage girls full-stop, and not because of the vampires, but because, though the heroine saves herself for marriage, she acts nothing like the way a real girl wishing to be chaste would need to act. If you want to be chaste in the real world, you have to flee temptation, not wallow in it. That's just the reality of making the decision to wait till marriage. You have to be like the little sister in the Song of Songs, you have to be a battlement. And in terms of how virtue is practiced, Twilight is wildly unrealistic, and I don't mean unrealistic in the "there are no werewolves in real life" kind of way. Fantasy is supposed to be unrealistic in that way. But virtue is supposed to translate pretty directly in fantasy; that's the point of the genre, really. Bella's actions are just bad modeling, and Meyer is so good at making her situation emotionally appealing that I think the book hangover could be very damaging at that stage of life. I'm sure there are exceptions, but fifteen-year-olds aren't known for their objectivity, you know?)

Okay, I got way off track there. Anyway, anyone else read both series and have the same impression? Oh, and am I going to change my mind when I read the last few books?

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. Touchstone has an article in its upcoming issue about Twilight that sounds absolutely fascinating.

Finding Your Voice, or, It's All About Worldview

In writing circles, people talk a lot about "finding your voice". This confused me for a very long time, until I realized that what they meant - aside from being consistent stylistically - was "have a coherent worldview that you always write from". In other words: be a an integrated person, and let your writing come out of your true self. Also, hopefully? out of your mature self. (Um, make that, maturing self. As that process oughtn't to come to an end till death.)

Voice has a lot to do, I think, with what you think is important and with what you think is true. You're not supposed to write didactic books (i.e., stories where the moral is the point, rather than the story being the point), but on the other hand, nobody likes stories that lack a moral perspective (even if that perspective as simply as, "happy ever after is good" - a common moral in your basic romance). I think that "voice" is where that moral has to come in. It's not what's explicitly said in the narrative, it's what's implicitly assumed on the part of the author. And those implicit assumptions are a lot of what attract us to an author. For instance, one of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, has an implicit assumption that biology matters - that a person is not just soul, but body. Their bodies matter: their disabilities, their level of exhaustion, their gifts, their predispositions, etc. That always comes through in her stories. Her characters aren't just cerebral; their decisions always show up in their bodies or their actions. I appreciate that, and it's something that draws me to her books.

One day, when I was thinking about voice, and about mine in particular, I came across this quotation in Brennan Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel:

The gospel of grace calls us to sing of the everyday mystery of intimacy with God instead of always seeking for miracles or visions. It calls us to sing of the spiritual roots of such commonplace experiences as falling in love, telling the truth, raising a child, teaching a class, forgiving each other after we have hurt each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise and sexuality, and the radiance of existence. Of such is the kingdom of heaven, and of such homely mysteries is genuine religion made. The conversion from mistrust to trust is a confident quest seeking the spiritual meaning of human existence. Grace abounds and walks around the edges of our everyday experience.

I read that recently as I flipped through that book, looking for a certain anecdote. But, in all this thought about what my “voice” as an author is, I thought that this came close to describing it.

My voice is something like “domestic glory”. It’s about home and sex and God. It’s about seeing God’s glory in the middle of home. It’s about what “home” means. It’s about romance and dogged faithfulness. It’s about grace not just once, but every day. It’s about salvation in the midst of grinding tedium. It’s about how grinding tedium isn’t grinding tedium but is, on second glance “a long obedience in the same direction”. It’s about how we, male and female, reflect the glory of God. It’s about how a view of the mountains ravishes your soul but how you are not allowed to spend all your days gazing at the mountains. But about how someday that stomach-dropping thrill of terror and delight will be permanently yours when you fall down at the feet of Christ on the Mountain of the Lord. It’s about how sex is not a spectator sport, but how at the same time sex can be used as a metaphor for just about everything and how we put almost everything into it: hope, fear, delight, duty, joy, desire, anger, escape. And how it’s not just a metaphor, but our en-souled bodies acting out a spiritual truth: this is unity, the two shall be one, the two are still two. And there is fruit that comes of that, there's new life. And in life there is fecundity and there is intricacy and the waste is at war with the abundance, and not everything good survives but everyone who turns to Christ is saved. And life's a mess and we hate the mess and He hates the mess too, but He will come in triumph and judge the living and the dead. And it will one day be all put right and it will one day be finished.

Anyway, I’m babbling now. But this is something like what I’m about. That if you look very hard, you can see it. You can see God’s glory in everyday life. And that every day we walk in the midst of a story. Real life is NOT less interesting than fiction. And good fiction is NOT less true than real life. We walk in the midst of a story. We are not the authors. But if we look closely, we may be able to discern the author’s intent. And if we ask, He may help us to see it as He sees it.

So when I write, I write stories that try to say that. Not by saying all that, like I just did here. That would be non-fiction, and I'm just not that good at it. But this is my worldview; this is what other writers would call my "voice". And if I do my job well, when you read my stories, and follow my characters through their adventures, for an hour or two, you might see the world something like this.


And writing all that makes me remember, once more, why I have to be careful about what I read. Because my thoughts and emotions do tend to echo the novels I've read recently. In other words: there are authors out there who have really good, strong voices, and you should always beware of letting someone else into your head. :D

Anyone else get "book hangover"? And who gives it to you? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing? Or, as I suspect, does it depend on the author?

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links:

Amy at A Joyful Journey writes about the living with the loss of her eldest daughter and the hope of Christ in Grief in the Shadows. This is the gospel. Thank you for sharing this, Amy.

For my fellow writers: This Is Your Job.

A post from Matt Kennedy: Why Read the Bible? I especially appreciate his reminder that we all worship something.

The customer's not always right . . . especially when it comes to those new-fangled computers. This is hilarious - thanks for the story, Josh!

And again, thanks to my brother: check out this ceiling covered in beetle carapaces. It's beautiful!

After reading up on growing out my hair, I couldn't help but find this trailer really interesting. I have no authority to speak to the issues this movie is about, but the way culture and personal appearance interact is eye-opening.


Hope you had a good weekend!
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

reading the New Testament after reading the Old

I'm reading the Bible chronologically this year, and I've just made it out of the Old Testament (yes, in October).

Wow. It's like when you've spent a few months watching TV shows on your little laptop and then you go over to a friend's house and see something on her HD. You thought you'd been watching before - and you had - and you thought'd you'd gotten the gist of it - and you had - but you had no idea how brilliant and big and glorious it all was.

Reading the gospels after reading all of the Old Testmanet is like that. My jaw keeps dropping.

I read Joseph addressed by the angel as "Son of David" and the weight of that label astounds me. He's introduced by the gospel writer as "a righteous man" and then, when he obeys the angel without question, you see that it's true. With his simple obedience and good heart, this is an Isrealite Jeremiah would have swooned over.

I hear the story of Jesus making a whip of cords and driving the merchants out of the temple and I almost can't catch my breath, because it's HIM, it's the LORD. It's the same Person, the same words, but all of the sudden He is a man and He's present and this is what the God of Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel does when He becomes incarnate. He chastizes and punishes, and yet spares, and He tells you why He's doing it and He cares. It's like the words of the prophets come to life and walking around. In fact, that's exactly what it is.

This isn't anything new and special; I think everyone who's read the OT and then the NT has probably seen this. But it's stopping me in my tracks with amazement nonetheless. Because it's the same personality. The continuity isn't in genre or time period or even cultural mores. But it's in person. Jesus is God. With the OT so fresh in my mind, I can see it in every word He speaks, in every action He does. This is the God who created, who loved, who chose, who guided, who dictated, who rebuked, who urged, who forgave, why will you die, oh Israel?, who promised. This is what God looks like when He becomes man, this is what He has to look like. This is why writing "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever" was true. Because He was, and He is, and He will be.

Wow. Just, wow.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

never seen Vivaldi quite like this

Hat tip to NPR's Monkey See blog.

falling in love, but not for real

So, as I was doing dishes, I was thinking about my WIP (work-in-progress). Specifically, I was trying to think of a good model for my heroine. There are actually a few real-life people she reminds me of, but I need a different physical model.

I read an interview recently where an author said that when she copies her friends’ personalities for her characters, her friends never notice unless she copies their looks too. As soon as she copies their looks, they say, “hey, that’s me!” But if she just copies their personalities, they never know it’s them.

I thought that was really funny.

Anyway, that’s part of the reason for finding a celebrity to serve as my heroine’s physical model. But here’s the creepy part (at least, when I discovered that this was true, I thought that it was a bit creepy): to write a romance, you have to be half in love with your characters. I mean, you have to be able to think like the heroine enough that you fall in love a bit with your hero. Otherwise, you can’t write her emotions properly. And you have to think like the hero enough to fall in love a bit with your heroine. The creepy part? Trying to fall in love a bit with a character that you’ve based on someone you know just feels really weird. Hence: the celebrity model.

(quick interjection here: my current hero and heroine are NOT based on anyone I know. For me, that's just too awkward, because if I truly based a character on a friend, how could I ever answer them if they asked? But they do remind me of a few people.)

But then I got to thinking: if it feels weird to fall in love a bit with someone you know, shouldn’t it feel weird to fall in love a bit with someone you don’t? with that celebrity model? Or, even more pertinently, with your character? Isn’t that a bit odd?

I suppose the first answer is: it's not really falling in love. It's just something like falling in love.

But after having said that, I don't think I have a good answer, at least not without defending fiction itself as an enterprise. The whole point of stories is to identify with the characters. You get scared alongside the hero, gird your loins for the battle when he does, groan at his defeat, wince at his stupidities, share in his triumphs – all this as if they were your own. Your arm is seconding his at every sword thrust.

And fiction, as such, seems pretty defensible. Parables, at least, are. And don’t we find ourselves there?

Which brings me back to my hero and heroine. The first point of novels, I think, is to entertain. Drawing you in is the point. Otherwise, you’d just read essays. If a novel is a message book, it’s a failed novel. Let’s get that clear.

On the other hand, if the novel has no message, it’s probably a failed story. But the message should come out of the story. The point is, that we live life. The point is, if we learn nothing from our life, we’ve lived it badly. It’s the same for our hero and heroine.

So, what about romances? Well, part of the point of reading romances – aside, of course, from the main point: reading a good story – is learning a bit more about what it is to love. How we ought to desire, to woo, too win. How to begin as we mean to go on. How to be begin at all. How to begin again.

(Which is part of why, btw, a certain variety of romance is crap. Because the answer of “how do I order my desires aright?” is not “by taking a thuggish brute, having lots of implausible s** with him, and thus turning him into Dad of the Year.” Yeah. No.)

Romance is the glory of finding someone utterly Other, nonetheless loving him, and shaping yourself round so that you can live happily together. It’s surrendering a life where you put yourself first, and committing to – ever after – making someone else’s good your good too. It’s self-sacrificing to the level not just of your soul, but of your body. It draws you out of yourself and at the same time gives you a reflection back at yourself so that you can see the beauty you didn’t know was in your own face.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. I finally decided that the person my heroine resembled most physically - though she's not quite right - is Robin Wright Penn, as she was in the Princess Bride.

crown braid on shoulder-length hair

Kerry asked, so . . . here is what my crown braid looks like from the back (forgive the glare from the flash!):

In this picture, I started the braid over at the right, just above my ear, braided all the way around, counter-clockwise, and ended in a tail that would have stuck a couple inches off the right side of my head. I then pinned that tail up so that it ended at the same spot where I started the braid, which makes it look like a complete circle.
And this is what it looks like from the front:


I'm sorry I don't have a picture of my hair down. It's only down in early in the morning and late at night, and it's usually dark then! But it's about at my shoulders.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell