Fiction, again...

Recently while staying in another city, I picked up a novel off the shelf where we were staying.  It's by a well-known Christian author and I'd seen it advertised, so I was curious.  That, and I was looking for something to peruse while watching the kids bike endless circles around the cul-de-sac.  (There's no flat land for biking where we live, so they love to practice when we travel.)

The author has sold tons of copies and won several awards.  It was a love story, which I like as much as the next guy.  But it read more like an adolescent fantasy played out in the lives of 30-somethings: a woman facing repercussions from a crime committed against her in the past.  Two men - a (perpetually single) older brother and a would-be lover - selflessly laboring to protect her.  The three main characters struggling mostly with emotions of blaming themselves for each other's pain.  The primary growth was learning to "trust God" by growing in willingness put others at risk (if risk there was - precious little actually happened in the book besides people jumping at shadows) in order to enjoy life.  They were all reported to be in enviable physical condition, but mostly drank coffee and sodas throughout.  I was interested at first to learn that the main characters were extremely wealthy, and thought that would lend itself to some interesting explorations, but it turned out to be merely a plot device to facilitate eating at nice restaurants and flitting around to scenic backdrops in - yes - a private jet.

I guess that's what makes a classic different from a best-seller.  It's nice to lose a few hours to the fantasy of nice clothes and handsome pursuers, but no one is likely to be proud to have enjoyed this book; it doesn't appeal to the higher elements of our nature.  It isn't making a statement based on the culmination of years of thought on, well, anything.  The book's messiest problems clean up better than breakfast at our house.

This became something of a rant.  I'm trying to understand why these books are so popular.  Is this the life people actually want?  Perhaps it's because the thing wrong with protagonist Sara is not her fault, and can be romanticized.  Then there is the element of an older brother's loyal protection.  Unexamined fantasy does get some mileage.

I love fiction, because it can be both so enjoyable and so powerful, and I'm trying to figure out what makes good fiction good.  I've always imagined that really great fiction comes out of truths discovered that take such powerful hold of the writer that the ideas themselves forge stories to test and explore their repercussions in the stark reality of life.  (Tolstoy comes to mind...)  I confess to dreams of one day falling headlong into the grip of a story that has to be told, but so far it hasn't happened.  So I'm happy to keep living these days, and reading fiction.  There is truth to be mined yet.

Three Years In...

On coming to love this place.

Long months I gazed across these hills
The window but a picture framing
Distant beauty, veiled, compelling,
Clear panes nonetheless obscuring;
Glass dividing worlds.

Long days I walked their rocky trails
To feel the chill, the sun's sure rising,
Unsure of rest or meals arriving,
Seasons' slow change still surprising
One who knows not what the signs reveal.

Long nights I heard them sing their mystery
Beneath the specks of light that dot their sides -
Learned early mornings out of doors,
Sandalled feet on earthen kitchen floors,
I'm learning how the year divides.

I know the chores of sunrise and the evening still,
The people and the animals, the flowers and the smells,
The taste of tea with yesterday's milk,
The cheerful conversation's lilt;
I know what the mournful horn betides.

At last the window opens and the breeze bears in
The secrets and the spices of these hills -
Still life like the dawn arising
Rich and moist with all that's living
Riddles with woodsmoke unfurling
Long years still.

Missing

In all the dreams I dreamt of you,
Your features vague, your presence true,
So plain the fellowship we knew,
I felt sure you were dreaming, too.

Birch shadows danced on both our eyes,
The wind that brushed your cheek touched mine
Didn't the warmth of lives entwined
That thrilled my heart, yours also find?

How then do I not hear your voice?
Were you waylayed, deceived, delayed?
Was it some minor, mystic choice
Of yours or mine, our fates betrayed?

Oh nameless, soulless misery
To mourn the one I've never known -
But do you also grieve for me,
Or do I weep alone?

This Overseas Life

It's a double-edged sword.  Sometimes I feel like just living here is an accomplishment.  After all, on the worst, most unproductive day, we're still here.  I'm still making a home and raising my kids in a land where smoke and spices fill the air, cows and goats share the city streets with us, pants for men haven't become universal, and we are surrounded all day by foreign languages that we are beginning to decipher, to use.  And by foreign, I mean languages that send me racing to wikipedia at the first sign of a suspected cognate to trace common ancestors through ancient tongues like Sanskrit and Persian.  Some days it's enough for me just to be making a life here, hearing the storied trains howl through the night, walking to the store past landscapes right out of Kipling.

On other days, I feel the weight of this choice.  My cousins were my favorite playmates when I was young, but I'm happy if my oldest can identify his cousins by name in a picture.  My kids will never know the simplicity of moving through culture like fish in the ocean; there will always be something foreign about them, like an accent that can't be placed, a studied mannerism from the momentary pause to consider - is a handshake here appropriate or offensive?  My parents are strong and energetic, and I see my Mom's tears every time we part; they want to invest the years they have in these children, and know them while they are small.  I'm raising my children without a library.  These things are always in the back of my mind; they get sidelined in the decision process, but they are the stuff of life.

And what I'm buying with this life, is it worth it?  That sort of thinking can keep you up at night.  I'm not here because it's better, or might be.  I'm here because Jesus somehow, through years and doubts, brought me here.  Because He's here, and this place and these people become worth my whole life and more in His love for them.  I'm here because there's fellowship with Him down this road, and He is worth it.  And so the adventure and romance don't have to stand on their own; they are just a bonus.  And the cost, well, it isn't repaid here.  For my part, it's an investment in eternity.  For the part my parents and my kids have to pay, I trust that my obedience to the God who loves them better than I ever could is the best I can offer them.  This is my service, my spiritual act of worship, this overseas life - cows and all.

Fiction

I just read a novel that had no point I could see except to weave a tale.  I thought, beforehand, that I'd enjoy a book like that.  And I did.... but it was like food without enough salt; I kept missing something.  It was a story of a girl who falls in love the summer before starting college, gets pregnant her senior year during a one night stand with someone else, has the baby, and eventually marries the man she was originally in love with (not the baby's father).  Her love story, her decisions about the baby, her struggles to make a life for herself with a baby and to cling to hope that there could be a future for her with the man she loves after she's betrayed him, were fairly well developed and interesting.  But it seemed to be art in imitation of life - or maybe of art.  I felt like the girl's voice didn't mature much during the course of the 7 years the book covers, and that at each stage the background of her life and motives were based mostly on stereotypes:  independence from family in high school, diving into the party scene in college, pursuing excitement (while supporting herself and her baby) after she graduated.

Somehow I've always thought that novelists wrote to play God, or to imitate or honor him; to show what choices lead to what consequences, who wins and who loses, in a world where they have absolute control.  This novel read more like the 5 o'clock news:  there was no meaning; only events.  But the book won several awards, and how I'd like to understand what's behind that.  Perhaps there was more there than I saw...  And if not, how do I feel about a novel written just to entertain?

A place apart...

I wanted to be the urban hermit, but another guy (my age, it seems, but advanced in angst) thought of that one first - about twelve years first.  He spent the name for one adolescent rant.  Well, let him have it.  Here's hoping he's figured everything out since then and didn't need to post more.  All the best, Isaac.

Life is full swing, with kids and cross-cultural living, and it generates more words than I can contain.  This is to be a place to let them out, where they can be lost amidst the torrents of the internet, like my favorite place to be alone - in the midst of a crowd that is too busy to notice.