Tortoise in the Crosshairs?

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Thursday, September 28, 2006
|
Permalink

 
Reading Angela Hunt's sincere tribute to Jerry Jenkins this morning reminded me of Mick Silva's latest 'reality check,' a post titled "Taking on Low Quality in CBA, aka Professional Suicide." For Hunt, Jenkins is a hero, but for Silva he's a kind of spokesman for what's wrong with evangelical fiction. Both praise Jenkins personally. Hunt says:

You'd almost have to be living in exile not to know that Jerry wrote the mega-best-selling Left Behind series. But you may not know that apart from that, Jerry is one of the most prolific writers I know, writing for children and adults, writing in fiction and nonfiction. He's also a devoted father and husband, the sort of man who really places his wife and children as a priority. Perhaps I admire him for that commitment most of all.

Silva says:

Even though by his own admission, this writer of over 150 books has written the Left Behind books to "put the cookies on the bottom shelf," and despite the fact that he runs a very profitable service for beginning writers to learn the craft of good, high-quality work, Jerry Jenkins is a man of deep convictions. I've known him since my early days at Focus, and I've been to his conference more than once as a publishing representative (though probably for my last time now).

Now I'm on record as being not a particularly huge fan of the Left Behind series, but I think Jenkins, whom I've never met, could probably serve as a good example of "giving back" after extraordinary success. Also, he's made some pretty candid statements about the state of evangelical fiction, so he earns my respect as a truth-teller. I actually use one of his remarks in a lecture I give called "Faith in Today's Fiction." The Arkansas Democrat Gazette quotes an interview Jenkins gave:

Interviewer : Do you feel the Christian writing market differs much from the secular market?
Jenkins : Yes. There is not as much good writing. We forgive too much if the motives are right.
Interviewer : Do you believe it is easier to break into the Christian market than the secular market?
Jenkins : Oh, certainly. The Christian market has less competition and lower standards.

Since Mick Silva's concern centers on good writing, lamenting low standards, it would seem that there's some agreement between the two. But the problem is that, like Thomas Kinkade (whom Silva mentions), Jenkins and LaHaye have become, via Left Behind, iconic stand-ins for the "low standards" argument. Their success, in a sense, has elevated them to representative status. The question is, can you take issue with the work and what its success represents without taking issue with the man himself?

Not everyone intreprets the success of Left Behind in the same way. For Silva (and I admit, for myself), it says something about the dumbing down of culture in general. There's a sense that this isn't the kind of art we want to represent Christians in the larger world. This isn't the foot we'd like to put forward. But Angela Hunt reads the situation differently: "The popularity of Jerry's books proves that he's reaching the masses, and it's obvious that God is using Jerry's work in an amazing way." I think she's right. There's no question that a bestseller, by its very nature, is reaching the masses, and there's also no question that the Left Behind series, whatever its faults, has been used by God in an amazing way. If you don't believe me, try critiquing the book from an aesthetic point of view for a large Christian audience. The odds are there will be people present who were either converted or strengthened in their faith as a result of reading Left Behind. Does that render the aesthetic argument null and void? I don't think so. Instead it points to the profound mystery of God's ways.

So if God is using it, does the person who criticizes Left Behind in effect criticize God's work in the world? Not if you ask me. To my mind, it's possible to make a statement like Jenkins' above -- "not as much good writing," "we forgive too much," "lower standards" -- and still acknowledge the usefulness of what's been done. It isn't an either/or proposition. Still, I think Hunt makes a good point about how success makes targets out of men like Jerry Jenkins:

Jerry's success has inadvertently reminded me of the "turtle on a fencepost" lesson. What's that? Simple: when you see a turtle on a fencepost, you know that someone put him there. And you also know that the turtle is in a vulnerable position. It's easy for folks on the ground to throw stones at the turtle, and there's not a lot the turtle can do about it.

It seems to me that our criticism, to be of value, must be balanced and precise, so that it addresses the issue and not the man. Thanks to fame, authors like Jerry Jenkins and Dan Brown stop being people to most of us; they're something more akin to brands. Trashing Dan Brown is like trashing Wal-Mart; it's the icon and what it stands for that people denounce, not the human being. It's not the work itself but the fact that such work, by its success, becomes representative and normative. But when the brand is a person, too, things get complicated, to say the least.

For evangelical "book talk" to move forward, there has to be a way to engage on the level of ideas without descending into the personal. Since this is a relatively small, close-knit community with a temperament more ecclesiastic than academic, there's a tendency for all conflict to become personality conflict. All too often, disagreement is seen as a form of disrespect -- and the expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is Mick Silva committing professional suicide? I hope not. To some, he might look like a groundling throwing rocks at a defenseless tortoise; to others, David and Goliath might be a better analogy. But the important thing is the one both Silva and Jenkins seems to agree on: that the standard of Christian fiction is lower than it could be, and there's no shame in addressing the issue openly.