Tolkien Was No Hobbit!

The literary devices we understand in a western context are limited. There are unwritten rules, if you will. A memoir is to be true, a novel is to be fiction or imagination. This has not always been the case. In the Book of Job, for example, the writer employs parallelism, an ancient form of Hebrew poetry. The writer narrates the story, then gets to a part where he wants to express Job’s deep emotional feeling, and breaks into poetry, saying “I wish I was never born, cursed is my mothers womb” and so on and so on. The modern western mind reads this and believes Job actually said this as the text is a “historical account.” I mean, the Bible actually says this is what Job said. But the Hebrew mind, when reading the original text, might have known that because the writer has broken into poetry, he is actually putting words into Job’s mouth, using an art form to paint a picture of a “greater truth.” The writer, then, is getting to the deeper truth, do you see? Now, many people believe Job actually broke out into poetry, but I find this absurd. Job did not speak in poetry, especially poetry so calculated. That would make Job a very, very strange man.

Here is why I say all of this. It seems that literary devices are changing back to a style which we see employed in many books of the Bible, including the books of Moses and Song of Songs. If any group of people should understand these devices, it should be Christians. And yet we defend a post-enlightenment, western, black-and-white, grid division of literature as the only method of communicating truths. And, in so doing, in my opinion, we look like idiots who can only think in categories, as though reality were simple enough to dissect into a few parts.

The changes in literature are not new or foreign or bad, and the Christian, of all people, should be able to understand, and to some degree even applaud, the creative styles authors are beginning to employ.

How are these styles already playing out in literature?

Here are some popular examples: David Sedaris writes non-fiction essays and many of us have read his books. They are quite funny. Sedaris, however, often breaks into absurdity to get laughs. His mother, in one of his essays, runs over a rabbit in her car, and when she gets out to check on the rabbit, the rabbit stands up and cusses her out. Sedaris does not feel the need to explain that the rabbit didn’t actually stand up and cuss his mother out. He is being funny, and if the reader gets it, the reader gets it, and if the reader doesn’t, Sedaris feels no responsibility to help him. He can do what he wants. It is his book and his story. Is Sedaris’ book fiction or non-fiction? It’s marketed as non-fiction.

Another example would be Edward Morris’s biography of Ronald Reagan, in which Morris writes a non-fiction account of the Presidents life by inventing a character and having that character act as a lifelong friend of Reagan, interacting with actual events in the President’s life. It was a great book, and a very creative idea. Was I angry about Morris’ creative methodology to account for a true history? No, the author was forthright from the beginning. But what if Morris wasn’t? Well, if we say he would be in the wrong, we also have to criticize God for not penning an author’s note at the front of Job, or for that matter explaining the dialogue discrepancies in the Gospels.

I appreciated that Morris was willing to break out of categories in an effort to paint a “greater truth.” And I have no problem with God using poetry to paint a picture of a greater emotional truth that couldn’t be arrived at by stating the mere facts.

If you think about it, then, these categories are quite limiting. Let’s say a writer wanted the reader to think an account was factual until a point in the book. For various reasons, perhaps suspense, perhaps the fact people learn better when they think accounts are true. What is a writer to do if he or she goes into their project submitting to the categories? How would one create a “Sixth Sense” dynamic, or a “Usual Suspects” ending?

In this sense, categories cripple a writer’s ability to both entertain and paint Homeric or greater truth.

The truth is, truth is not black and white, and our categories are little more than tools to aid us in our ability to suspend disbelief.

I like Jesus’ response to the question “what is truth?” His response was simply “I Am.” Hardly a logical concept.

Was Frey wrong? Sure he was wrong. The essence of the truth he created was very different than the essence of reality. In addition, he romanticized ideas to make himself look good, not to paint a conceptual picture of a historical account or an allegory of a greater story. There was no truth behind his lies, in other words.

But my point is this. Lets not assume the walls coming down between the categories are going to tumble down and crush the concept of absolute truth. To some degree, it will but the crumbling of the walls may also make elbow-room for creative expressions of greater truths. And that isn’t a bad thing.

Note to the reader: Things Donald Miller did not say in this article. 1. He did not say there is no such thing as truth. 2. He did not say he does not believe the Bible is true. 3. He did not say Blue Like Jazz is full of lies. 3. He did not say he was the one who got glitter in the copier at Kinko’s.

File Under: Conspiracies

Posted on February 15, 2006 12:00 AM