Before I tell you about a fascinating book and the questions it raises about Christian fiction and Christian allegory, I want you to know that I know the author.
W. Bruce Cameron (pictured below), author of the novel Emory's Gift, and I enjoy spending time together at the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, of which I used to be president, and which has honored Bruce with several prestigious and well-deserved awards. For one thing, Bruce is a funny, funny guy. And I used to write humor for a living. I know what's not funny.
In fact, Bruce grew up in the Kansas City area and attended Shawnee Mission East High School.
Bruce specifically asked me to read Emory's Gift because he thought some of the reviewers and readers were not grasping the fact that it's a novel full of Christian allegory. That fact alone should cause readers to think about the deeper meaning of a story about a junior high boy whose friendship with a grizzly bear helps to redeem the boy from the despair he felt at the death of his mother and from the disconnection he felt because of his father's emotional distance after that death.
The novel has elements of mystery and the fantastical to it. The bear communicates with the boy, Charlie Hall, and tells him his name is Emory and that he's really Emory Bain, a Civil War soldier. Oh, and that he's come to Charlie to deliver a message.
Huh?
Some things are, on their face, seemingly impossible to believe. Perhaps you've heard of a boy named Jesus born of a virgin, a boy who was God in human flesh. Yeah. Like that. Or perhaps you've heard of the biblical stories of the day the sun stood still or the parting of the Red Sea or the resurrection of Jesus. Stuff like that. Stories that our fact-centric intellect wants to throw out as ridiculous.
But as you get deeper into Bruce's novel about Charlie and the bear (and Charlie's efforts to find and understand romance in junior high), you find yourself (at least I found myself) willing to begin to suspend disbelief, especially given that Charlie himself -- and eventually his father, when Dad gets let in on what's going on with the bear -- also seem unable to explain it rationally or make sense of it.
I asked Bruce to tell me what he'd like reader to look for in terms of Christian allegory in this novel, and here was his response:
What I would say to a person looking for Christian allegory is that the
arrival of the bear in Charlie's life is the catalyst for bringing him back
together with his father in a close and loving relationship, much the way
that Christ brought mankind back to having a relationship with the Lord,
with whom man had developed a strained, distant, fearful stance. I would
say that even if you are not Christian, you have to agree that historically,
Jesus came, there was a big circus, and then he was gone and to a lot of
people it was as if he'd never come, especially at first. Same with the
bear. And I would say that when a person comes to the profound conclusion
that Jesus is his savior and brings a message of love from the Lord, it can
immediately become less important than if he's going to kiss a girl at the
dance. In other words, despite Jesus, most people spend most of their time
engaged in petty pursuits, unmoved to try to accomplish great things even
though the message is truly good news.
The novel also raises broader questions about one's purpose in life as well as about the means of salvation and what salvation means -- especially what the consequences are after one has experienced it.
Years ago I used Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, to write a longish piece for a magazine about what "moral fiction" is.
My point, as I recall it, was that fiction is a ridiculous waste of time if in some way it doesn't raise moral questions -- the questions that matter for all eternity (or at least for all day). I'm not talking about novels with obvious "morals" to them presented in a preachy way. Rather, I'm talking about creating stories in which the characters are required to wrestle with difficult, poignant moral issues so that, in turn, the readers wrestle with them, too.
Bruce's novel, thus, is a good example of moral fiction -- in this case with clear Christian overtones, though that aspect of the book is handled gently and well. Indeed, this novel, to the careful and attuned reader, will raise all kinds of questions connected to faith.
I could carry on here and tell you how well Bruce demonstrates in this book that he understands 13-year-olds and their run-amok emotions, but once I got going on what all I liked about this book, this post would roll on through Tuesday of next week.
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MARRIED PRIESTS NOT THE ANSWER?
Although the married Catholic priest who wrote this interesting piece says reform of the priesthood is needed, married priests aren't the answer. That's consistent with what a married Catholic priest (also a former Episcopalian) told me a few years ago when I interviewed him for a story. He felt he was married both to his wife and to the church -- and often there was a tug at both ends about commitment. No doubt Protestant clergy experience that tug, too, but on the whole we Protestants think the advantages of having married clergy outweigh the disadvantages.
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