Better Fiction: The Blog

Edgy Christian Fiction: What does that mean? Does it exist?

Did a little snooping and came across a novel by Tosca Lee called "Demon: A Memoir". The premise sounds a bit like a Christian version of "Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S." I looked up that title to make sure I got it right. Even after twenty years, for some reason that book has been stuck in my brain. Title's right. Couldn't remember the author. It's Jeremy Leven.

J.S.P.S., if memory serves, stands for Just Some Poor Shmuck.

I don't know anything about the book by Tosca Lee. Which doesn't answer the Edgy Christian Fiction question one bit. I can't answer it. Can you? A trip to the book store makes Christian Fiction look like the realm of Chick Lit and Tim LeHaye. From the library, we pick up Peretti and Dekker. I could use some help here.

On the small press side, there's Double-Edged Publishing. I have a story in their "Distant Passages: Volume 1," so there's a reason they come to mind. I've also had stories appear in some of their magazines, but they have broken into the realm of book publishing with titles by Jane Lebak, L.S. King, Michael Ehart, and R.L. Copple. These are Sci-Fi and Fantasy titles, offering something a little different.

Since I've brought up the specter of magazines, I'll mention Relief Journal (reliefjournal.com) which strives to present something outside the Christian norm of fiction. (I'm assuming that guarantees no Amish love stories. Do I sound jealous? I do, don't I?)

Take a look at Stephen Swanson's meditation on dark Christianity in his blog article: "Stephen King and the Christian Soldier". It gives me hope. I recently wrote a poem that tried to capture the dark reality of what it cost God to pave the way for our adoption as the children of God. It's not something I think the classic pew-sitter wants to look into. I'm sure many would disapprove and find the work offensive. The truth is, our salvation wasn't pretty folks.

Swanson writes: "All too often, we Sunday School-ize these stories and forge a lie that definitively does not fit the Philippian admonishments of Paul."

Absolutely. The Bible is honest. Brutally honest. While the world cried that "The Passion" had gone too far, people who read the Bible, who believe the Bible, knew it was actually worse. There are things you just can't logically film. Horrors we can't even imagine. What does it mean that He who knew no sin became sin for us?

Besides, according to Isaiah, Christ didn't even look human when they were done with him.

Edgy stuff.

Wade Ogleree

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What if you coin a phrase and no one uses it and then they do and you really, really regret it? Four years ago David Long coined the phrase "Emergent Fiction". I seem to remember a more recent interview where he said he was actively hoping the term doesn't catch on. There are good reasons for this. (I wish I could find the interview. I can't.)

First, a search for the term pulls up early-childhood fiction not edgy Christian fiction.

Second, it bogs down every discussion of the term in the Emergent Church and the unknowable-reality aspects of postmodernism.

Let me just say for the record that Emergent Fiction, should you ever feel pressed to use the term, has nothing to do with the Emergent Church (though the term was borrowed by Long from a book written about the movement) nor does it mean fiction written from a postmodern world-view.

OK?

According to a Publisher's Weekly article from September of 2004, "Long defines emergent fiction as realistic, apolitical fiction featuring flawed Christians who are deeply engaged in their faith. It must be well written by authors who are committed to their art and craft."

Also, in January of that year, Long wrote:

"I’ve yet to fully understand the notion of a postmodern Christian. Postmodernism, pretty much by definition,(I thought) is embedded in the notion that there are no external absolutes and that personal experience is the reliable only “truth.” Christianity on the other hand has that whole omniscient, never-changing Holy God-thing going on. It seems that once someone makes the leap to Christianity, they pretty much become post-postmodern. If someone wants to write in with an explanation, that’d be groovy.

"On the other side of the fence is postmodern fiction, for which I’ve yet to see a useful definition, grouping, or attractive reason for reading any of it. The English department of the University of Western Cape (in South Africa, of all places) says this:

"'Postmodernism does not believe language can reveal truths about the world, but rather holds the opposite view as everything is seen in linguistic terms: all explanatory systems like history, religion, etc. can be reduced to linguistic formulas: they have persuasive powers rather than truth. This leads inter alia to postmodern trends such as reduction, randomness, multiplicity, self-conscious reflexivity, intertextuality and absence of depth.'"

That seems clear enough.

Of course, the accusation that there is no attractive reason to read any of it goes a bit too far for anyone who has ever enjoyed Margaret Atwood or Kurt Vonnegut. Still, any Christian who read Vonnegut's "Timequake" must have felt, as I did, the overwhelming impending loss for the man's soul, even while he lived. Thankfully, books like "Slaughterhouse Five" rise above postmodernism and its failings.

I bring all this up to begin a discussion on the potential for a subculture of fiction that meets Long's definition of Emergent Fiction, and maybe more.

Again, in his blog, "Faith-in-Fiction", Long wrote: "Why, oh why, would I ever wish that Christian novelists dabble in the tool box of postmoderns? Do we really need any more precious or cloying metafiction? Or disastrously ponderous deconstruction? Do we need the author to stick himself in his stories (i.e. Paul Auster) or turn them into fun-house glass mazes (i.e. John Barth) or write them without the letter "e" (i.e. George Perec—and still the most impressive yet inexplicably pointless literary achievement ever in my mind. His novel, A Void, was written in French without that vowel and then TRANSLATED into English without them, too. Are you kidding me?)?

"Anyway, creating more odd postmodern writers isn't my goal. Certainly not simply for the sake of doing so in any case.

"But, we need some acknowledgement by authors of the breadth of tools at their disposal. And it would an awareness of the limitations, strengths, problems, and inconsistencies that offer themselves in fiction."

I can see his point as an editor. Personally, though, I think the world of Christian fiction could use a little bizarre experimentation. Let's get a little post-postmodern. Let's get a little weird.

Wade Ogletree

Melinda Reynolds' Angel series begins the first Friday of October. See the links at the top of this page.

A preview:

Angel Warriors: An Introduction

by Melinda Reynolds

I am Angel

Three small words that encompass my Eternity:
Heaven’s Warrior,
Mankind’s Defender,
And God’s Servant.

Created by God to be His Warrior.
To be Archangel Michael’s Second-in-Command;
To be more than any other Angel had ever been.
Purity, innocence, and perfection comprised my being, my spirit, and my heart.
And yet, I challenged each of those qualities…
***
Such was, and now is, my life:
As it began, as revealed to me;
As it transformed, as experienced by me;
As it reached fulfillment, as formed from me.
The culmination of an Angel Warrior.
***
I am called Mihdael,
and this is how I came to be…