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Art & Soul Report
Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Monday, April 11, 2005
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This is a long post, my after-action report from the Art & Soul Conference at Baylor. Three writers from the weekly Strange Land workshop made the trip: Allison Smythe, Karen Luo and me. You may not want to read about every adventure in all of its glorious detail, but at least skip through for things that might interest you. I've added some headlines to the text. Trust me, it was a great conference and well worth reading about.
Christoper Ricks
According to Wikepedia, Christopher Ricks "is known as a champion of Victorian verse, for his enthusiasm for Bob Dylan, and for his opposition to literary theory." All three virtues were in evidence during his keynote address at Baylor. Ricks is Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, an honor that is ordinarily accorded to poets rather than critics. He is also an atheist, a point he made at length near the close of lecture. So why was he at a conference titled Art & Soul? First, because he's devoted his life to the study of verse, including religious verse, and has a great deal to impart on that score. Secondly, because his criticism of the way even our aesthetic tastes have become polarized is something we need to hear. More and more, Ricks argued, people have come to appreciate art not because of its felicity but because it reinforces our belief systems. We consider art "good" if it confirms what we believe is true. In a sense, we are losing our ability to enter imaginatively into the work itself and appreciate it for what it is. In the same way that we should be able to value others and enjoy their friendship in spite of disagreement, we ought to appreciate art that comes from a very different place than our own.
During the course of his opening remarks, Ricks made a comment that stuck with me throughout the weekend. He said that, in the same way that genuine erotic art always runs the risk of being mistaken for pornography, truly religious art runs the risk of being mistaken for blasphemous. If no one harbors that suspiscion about your work, then it isn't taking the kind of risks that make it truly religious. This put me in mind of one of the riskiest books in the Bible, Ecclesiastes, a treatise so honest and open-ended, so devoid of pat answers that there are plenty of Christians I know who would consider it blasphemous in a heartbeat if it weren't in the canon. Is Ricks right? For a Christian artist, that's food for thought. Another point he made in relation to Bob Dylan is that that artist who seeks the widest audience is forced to work within cliches. It's unavoidable. If this is so, then I think the key is to breathe new life into them -- easier said than done -- and that requires (a) recognizing the cliche for what it is, and (b) transforming it through piety, irony, or some other twist that signals to the careful reader that you know it's a cliche and he's meant to look beyond that.
To learn more about Christopher Ricks, check out this recent profile in The Guardian.
Publishing Panel
After the opening session, the conference broke into panels for the afternoon. Allison and I attended the publishing panel, a group of three book editors moderated by Books & Culture editor John Wilson, who has written his own account of the event. The panel included Jon Pott of Eerdman's, Lil Copan from Paraclete, and Dave Long from Baker's Bethany House imprint. Many topics were covered, but the discussion of literary fiction interested me most. Paraclete published Suzanne Wolfe's Unveiling and plans to publish one or two literary fiction titles a year. Paraclete will also continue its fiction contest as an annual event. According to Copan, Paraclete's literary fiction is being published for the general market -- in the case of Unveiling, though, most of the reviews -- including a glowing one from Books & Culture -- have appeared in the religious press. Based on what the panelists said, the two main obstacles to literary fiction in the religious market are (1) lack of audience and (2) lack of material. Christians don't buy literary fiction -- or if, like me, they do, they don't buy it at Christian bookstores. Christians don't write literary fiction -- or if, like me, they do, they don't take it to Christian publishers. (Sure, there's some circularity in that reasoning, but it seems to reflect widely held assumptions.)
Jon Pott summed it up nicely. Eerdman's doesn't publish fiction as a rule, he said, but if they did it would be literary fiction. The reason they don't is that no one they would publish would want to be published by them. If you're that good, in other words, you'll have no trouble at a publisher known for literary fiction. He noted that the quality of fiction they typically receive is not high -- of course, he was measuring it against John Updike, which is a fairly high standard. Still, I left with the impression that, if pioneers like Paraclete manage to succeed in literary fiction, the Eerdman's idealists might be tempted into the fray. Paraclete is small, though, and the odds of one small press single-handedly creating an avenue for Christian literary fiction (or whatever we want to call it) are pretty slim. As Dave Long pointed out at our Sunday barbeque (more below), whenever Christian publishers have attempted to get into literary publishing, the returns have always been disappointing.
After the panel, I met Dave Long for the first time in person, as well as Fire By Nite's Stan Shinn, who is blogging about the event, too. Stan gave me a copy of Fire By Nite's debut issue, which includes an interview with Dave, and asked to include one of my pieces in the next issue. As you can imagine, I agreed.
Jeremy Begbie, Part 1: Tension
The conference broke for dinner after the publishing conference. I left campus and checked in at the hotel, then received a call from my friend Luke, who'd driven from Dallas to attend Jeremy Bebgie's lecture that evening. Luke is a student at Westminster Theological Seminary. He introduced me to Dan, his study partner in Hebrew class, and the three of us hung out at Starbucks until it was time for the lecture. Like many a college campus, Baylor has a serious parking problem. Even its public venues are woefully underserved. As a result, we cruised around campus for twenty minutes trying to find a spot, then drove back to Starbucks, left our cars, and hoofed it. By the time we arrived, Begbie was already into his presentation. In the darkness, we stumbled down to some of the few available seats -- providentially, they happened to be directly in front of Allison and Karen.
Jeremy Begbie is simply amazing. First, some background. Begbie's Mars Hill Audio Journal interview is my all-time favorite, and every Mars Hill subscriber I've ever mentioned it to remembers where they were when they heard it. I was in Minneapolis, driving around town in search of used bookstores. The segment was so fascinating I had to listen to it again -- and again. In the meantime, I had gotten lost on the unfamiliar roads, so I listened once more as I tried to find my way back to known territory. Part of it was Begbie's style, which reminds me of Robert Greenberg's addictive music history lectures for The Teaching Company. Part of it was the way Begbie integrated theology and music, transforming the former from a system of abstractions to visceral, lyric truths. After that experience, my ear was attuned to Begbie's name. A few months later, I happened to be reading It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. The editor, Ned Bustard, asked contributors to recommend titles for further reading. I was amazed to see how frequently Begbie's books appeared on those lists. In fact, I've been building a collection of them myself ever since.
All this to say that my expectations for Begbie were high. He exceeded them. There's no way I can do justice to the lecture. It hinged on an exploration of the way that sentimentalists -- people who jump to (false) resolution, skipping over the tension necessary to the achievement of true resolution -- have influenced (and dare I say, corrupted) Christian worship. He made his case at the piano keyboard, illustrating the way that the three-part structure of music -- tranquility, tension, resolution -- is echoed in drama and redemptive history. Can we arrive at redemption without first working out creation and fall? The lens through which we should see is the three days of Easter. Begbie said that the tendency in so much church music today is to skip over Friday and rush to Sunday morning -- or worse, to give the impression that Good Friday was "good" at the time. To fully appreciate the resurrection as it was for Christ's first followers, we have to see the crucifixion as it was for them, too. We cannot have theology or worship without the cross.
During the course of the break, Luke and I discovered that two of our former students from Christchurch were in the row ahead. Sean and Tyler are campus intellectuals now, perfectly able to teach their old youth pastor and Sunday school teacher a thing or two. It was great catching up with them. You can imagine how proud I was to know that the two Baylor lads who'd been under my tutelage, such as it was, knew where to be when Jeremy Begbie was on campus.
Peter Leithart
The next day, I attended a panel that included a presentation by Peter Leithart called "I Don't Get It: Humor and Hermeneutics." In spite of the title, Leithart does get it, and thanks to him I do, too. It just so happens that the issue he addressed -- the postmodern concept of intertextuality and its critics -- is something I've been thinking about recently. In essense, Leithart was staking out territory somewhere between Derrida's extreme stance that there is nothing outside the text and the critique of Kevin Vanhoozer, which posits the author's intention as the key to meaning. According to Leithart, texts are "porous." They have borders, but the borders are permeable. Authorial intention shapes them, but so does context and so do other texts.
As a metaphor for understanding the nature of texts and interpretation, Leithart proposed humor and the idea of "getting" a joke. Whether or not a joke is funny depends on both the joke, its teller and the audience. Many jokes presuppose a knowledge of the outside world (and other jokes) for their intelligibility. Leithart's examples included the movie Shrek, which makes no sense at all to people who aren't familiar with fairy tales, Disney movies and pop culture, and a joke his children didn't "get," in which a priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar, and the bartender says, "Wait a minute, is this a joke?" For us to laugh at a joke requires an authorial intention, an effective delivery, a shared context, and the ineffable ability to "get it." Getting it is what interpretation is all about. More than procedures and constructs, interpreters need skill. They need the hermeneutical equivalent of a sense of humor. For more, see Leithart's post Interpretation and Jokes.
On the strength of this lecture, I bought a copy of Leithart's book Against Christianity. I'm only a few pages into it and already I'm underlining left and right.
Robert Flynn
After Leithart's lecture, I joined Allison for an author reading. When Robert Flynn rose to speak, I expected something elegaic and grandfatherly. Instead, I was introduced to some ferociously good satire. Flynn read from a collection of stories called Slouching Toward Zion and More Lies. Just about every sentence in the story was a punchline of its own, ripping through religious pretension. In the story, a rural Baptist couple travels to the Holy Land as part of a television preacher's package tour. Flynn is a Baptist (and a Marine), and he spent most of his time skewering his own, but he also managed to send a few shots over the bow of modern Judaism and Islam, too. As he read, three thoughts circled through my mind: it's funny, it hurts, and it's true.
During the Q&A afterward, Flynn spoke about the redemptive power of satire. One of the things that has always surprised me about Christian writing is how little interest it has in the follies and foibles of Christian culture. Perhaps this is because evangelicals write with the hope of evangelism in mind, and they worry that too honest of a portrayal would turn unbelievers off. Flynn has no qualms, and has turned his considerable wit to the problem for years. I'm surprised I'd never heard of him before now.
Dinner with Dave and Dee
We had a two and a half hour break before Friday's evening session, so Allison, Karen and I went out with Dave Long and novelist Deeanne Gist. Dee graciously drove us to the restaurant -- an authentic hole-in-the-wall Dave had researched earlier -- in her Excursion, which meant that the rest of us didn't have to worry about finding parking spaces when we returned! Dee's book was the first one Dave had acquired for Bethany House, so we had the opportunity to quiz both of them about the process. As you can imagine, all sorts of inside information flowed freely, the sort of thing I couldn't possibly share. Dave also demonstrated the art of authorial self promotion. He's written two novels himself, and the key to promotion is being able to summarize them succinctly. If I recall correctly, he told Karen that the first one -- Ezekiel's Shadow, which won a Christy Award -- was "about a guy," and the second -- Quinlin's Estate -- was "about a house." When pushed, he revealed more details, but I had to admire the way he could sum up complex plots in a word or two. I'm going to follow his lead from now on, and whenever people ask about my work in progress, I'll say: "It's about..." and then stare off into the distance.
Leif Enger
I haven't read Peace Like A River, mainly because people keep telling me that I should, but now I feel like the eternal dunce. Leif Enger's lecture Friday night was everything an author's talk should be: witty, humane and profound. Somehow, he captured the essence of the conference -- divine comedies -- better than any other speaker, and he did it primarily through storytelling. The heart of his talk consisted of reading passages from his correspondence with an elderly fan -- a self-described "old bat" -- named Claudia. The letters were so good that John Wilson asked afterward whether Enger had written them himself, and when he said he hadn't, Wilson asked, "Could you ask her to write me some letters?"
One of Enger's anecdotes put his own fame in perspective. He recounted how he'd gotten to know Baylor professor and author Greg Garrett while the two of them were doing book signings at the Austin Book Fair. They were in a tent together, virtually alone, with plenty of time to get to know one another, thanks to the fact that the tent next to them housed actor-turned-novelist Ethan Hawke. Hawke's line stretched outside his own tent, in front of Enger and Garrett's tent, and down the street to the capitol building. They comforted themselves with the knowledge that, while he was signing a lot of books, Hawke didn't have any opportunity to get to know anyone. This was one of many endearing sad sack stories Enger told. Most of the others concerned girls either beating him up or threatening to.
Jeremy Begbie, Part 2: Resolution
I had no idea at the time that my encounter with Jeremy Begbie was going to have a three-part structure. He'd given the aforementioned lecture the night before, and as we entered the Powell Chapel for Enger's lecture, we encountered him outside the building and exchanged a few words. Begbie doesn't seem to know anything about English reticence -- which might have something to do with being a Scot. I tried to suppress my sycophancy as much as possible during our chat. To do that, I pretty much had to keep quiet. As we entered the chapel, our group parted ways with him, and I thought: "That was pretty cool."After Enger's speech, we headed for the reception. Near the end, Begbie arrived at our table, sat down for a few minutes with us, and then suggested that we hang out for a while before calling it a night. So we all marched back to the Excursion and headed into Waco. (Pictured at left are Jeremy Begbie, Deeanne Gist, me, Karen Luo and David Long. Allison snapped the picture.) I have to admit I was amazed. The big speakers at these events are typically swamped by hangers-on (like me). You go to them, but they don't usually come to you. Begbie was gracious, charming and quite funny. He surprised me by admitting that he doesn't read much fiction. I asked who his favorite novelist was and he mentioned that he'd liked The Girl With the Pearl Earring, though he hadn't finished it. Of course, the rest of the group saw wonderful possibilities in all this when it comes to book blurbs. I had a vision of my book cover with the following inscribed: "The best novel I've read all year!" - Jeremy Begbie." And it would be perfectly true, so long as he kept to form.
Sadly, there aren't any Jeremy Begbie posters I can hang on my wall or anything like that. But I've decided to honor the man in a different way. At Worldview Academy, where all the other faculty members are passionate devotees to fantasy baseball and football, I've been trying to get a fantasy theologians league going. You win when your theologians publish great books or, in the case of long-dead ones, when great books are published about them. You lose when your theologians drift into heresy or sign mutual tolerance pacts with Druids and Scientologists. I'm going to add Begbie to my starting line-up. In addition to adding a strong theologian, it will also give the team some much-needed theme music.
Lauren Winner
It was kind of like having Parker Posey starring in a movie about Lauren Winner, except it was Lauren Winner and she was more interested in being Anne Lamott. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from Winner's lecture on "Writing and Prayer," and I really enjoyed it. She talked about five ways that writing is like prayer. For those who adore bullet points, here they are: (1) They both are undervalued because they don't seem "productive"; (2) They both require silence (and listening); (3) They're both easier to talk about than to do; (4) They both require discipline -- though not a "fetishized" discipline; (5) They're both a community undertaking. Lauren Winner is an academic -- she's working on her PhD dissertation now -- but her lecture was lucid and disarmingly transparent. I came away thinking that, although spiritual memoir is not really my thing, I might make an exception in this case.
To end the lecture, Lauren did something interesting: she led the group in a meditative prayer based on a passage from the Gospels. Believe it or not, hers was one of only two prayers I heard during the conference -- the other was Peter Leithart's. It was my first experience with this form of meditative prayer, which I believe she said was based on Ignatian practice. As foreign as it is to my own background, I can appreciate the appeal.
After the lecture, which took place on Saturday morning before lunch, Allison introduced me to Kim Alexander and Michael Capps, who were manning the Image booth. Since the 2005 Image Conference is going to be held in Houston this fall, we offered our services as spear-carriers.
A Fortunate Error
I decided to attend one more session after lunch and then drive back to Houston. My plan was to drop in on the panel featuring Terry Lindvall, whom I'd met the first day, and Leland Ryken, whose books I greatly admire, but I arrived from lunch a little late and accidently went to the wrong room. I sat in the back and, before I could realize my error, I was sucked into the aesthetic world of Thomas Gordon Smith, the Platonic ideal of the Architect. First, the look: bowtie, three-button jacket, white shirt with blue windowpane check, and the glasses -- the glasses. Where do architects find those iconic glasses? Smith is part of a movement in architecture he calls "new classicism," a revival of interest in classical forms exemplified by Vitruvius. He focused on ecclesiastical architecture, contrasting modernist churches with ones whose design comes from within the traditional of church building handed down over the ages. It was fascinating stuff.
Afterward, I spoke with Smith, who was kind enough to give me a book recommendation and answer a few questions, and also with architect Mack White, a graduate of the University of Houston architecture school, who had some interesting thoughts to contribute on the subject of church design. The Q&A session naturally raised the question of the big, suburban brick boxes that so many of us worship in. It's funny to think how many of us say things like "Don't put God in a box" while worshipping him inside of one. Here's a note I made during the discussion:The church building, if it looks like a chuch, becomes a form of proclamation, a public statement to the surrounding community that is just as striking -- if not more so -- than the door-to-door visitors and four-color church brochures that are launched from within those nondescript brick boxes.I told White, a Houston native, about my favorite suburban intersection -- Highway 6 and FM 529 -- where I noticed one day that behind the Petsmarts and Barnes & Noble's and Gaps and gas stations there is a copper, cross-capped dome from a Coptic church that sometimes glistens dazzlingly in the sun. That visual statement, as hidebound and traditional as it may seem, is more striking to me than a thousand billboards for a thousand would-be megachurches with their smiling clip-art congregants and happy slogans.
Coda: Sunday Afternoon at Dee'sDeeanne Gist invited some friends from Faith In Fiction to cap off the event with a barbeque at her luxurious pad in the Woodlands, just north of Houston. We dined in style at poolside thanks to the culinary expertise of Dee's husband Greg. The picture features (from left): Deeanne Gist, Dave Long, me, Angie Poole and Chris Fisher. Over lunch, Dave explained the secrets of successful publishing and how to trick editors into buying your book. Sadly, I can't reveal any of the details. Just don't be surprised if I rocket to the top of the bestseller list in the next week or two, in spite of not having a book out.
Dee has promised to come down to Montrose for one of our Thursday workshops, and I'm going to hold her to it! Her book is coming out this summer and, after hearing all the "behind the scenes" news, I'm looking forward to reading it. Of course, I was hoping for a freebie, but Dee is going to make us all buy them at retail, a case at a time. As long as she signs it for me, I don't mind. As he was leaving, Chris shared some great news, too: he's just placed a story in The Texas Review. I've read the piece, and it's pretty daring, told in second person. The only thing it needs is more colons. (Actually, that's an inside joke: Chris is always taking me to task for using too many colons, but I think literary fiction can't have too many of them: it lets the reader know how serious you are about punctuation.) Chris brought his wife Jennifer to the barbeque and she turned out to be the life of the party. I already knew that she'd sung the part of Serpina in Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, an operetta my voice teacher cast me in (as a mute). But I had no idea of Jennifer's most admirable trait: whenever Chris gets ahold of one of my stories to critique, she always insists on reading it, too. That is pretty cool. Naturally, this revelation led to a discussion of spouses who read (or don't read) our work. Angie said she'd never known paper could collect dust until she asked her husband to read one of her pieces. Greg has promised to read Dee's book once it's in print -- not before. Laurie reads my stuff during commercial breaks. Unless the commericals are more interesting, that is. All in all, it was a great time and I'm grateful to Dee for arranging the whole thing and being such a wonderful hostess.
If you've read this far, congratulations. Believe it or not, there is plenty that I've left out in the interest of time. No doubt I'll leak more information as time goes on. But that's all for now.
