Fiction as art and the tapestry of life

In third grade, I took a test which placed me in an advanced science class. A few weeks into the course, the teacher saw that I enjoyed science—especially the speculative elements. He took me to the school library and pull a book from the shelves: A Wrinkle in Timeby Madame L’Engle. I devoured it. A novel that used speculative science as a basis for an exciting plot! I was hooked. I moved on to classic science fiction authors: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and more. (My choice of reading material also made me the focus of ridicule by those who were much cooler than I. Today this would be called “bullying.” I saw it as a rite of passage.)

I had read a lot before that momentous event, but my choices had no direction. I read story books, books about planes, or American football. I read the backs of cereal boxes, and I read under the covers with a flashlight at night when I was supposed to be sleeping.

I had found a genre that resonated. My parents, ever supportive of my off-the-path interests, gifted me a subscription to the Science Fiction Book Club. A brand new book arrived in the mail every month. Maybe two.

When I was fourteen, I asked for a typewriter for Christmas. After exchanging a puzzled glance, my parents said: “we’ll see.” A few weeks later, a brand new Corona Selectric appeared under the tree on Christmas morn. I began writing—science fiction, of course. I started with short stories, some of which I sent out to magazines, only to receive rejection after rejection. Undeterred, I started writing novels, too, though I never finished the first draft of any.

In High School, one of my friends showed me the first volume of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and offered to let me borrow it. The bold themes and the world-building skills of Tolkien entranced me. A new genre to love! (I didn’t realize at the time there is a good bit of overlap between fantasy and science fiction). I quickly found I did not like just any science fiction or fantasy. There were some I did not like at all. Many years later I would realize the novels I enjoyed were, in some manner, what I would now call “art.” Literary art. Fiction that “rediscovers, generation by generation, what is necessary to humanness.” (John Gardner, On Moral Fiction). Storytelling that wrestles with ideas—large or small—which life presents to us. I do not mean narratives which moralize or preach. I would not call those “art” (though they may be artistic in some ways). This is because they only use fiction to teach a moral lesson—a narrative is the vehicle. Literary art offers a story which stands on its own, but a story has a more profound level that invites the reader to consider a human experience, condition, or philosophy. It might be suffering or love. It might be a moral conundrum. It might address the meaning of sacrifice or hardship. It might question perseverance or present scenarios where justice for some people results in injustice for others. It might ask what equality means in a particular set of circumstances. The list may be endless.

The traditional view is that true art is moral: it seeks to improve life, not debase it. It seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us. I do not deny that art, like criticism, may legitimately celebrate the trifling. It may joke, or mock, or while away the time. But trivial art has no meaning or value except in the shadow of more serious art, the kind of art that beats back the monsters and, if you will, makes the world safe for triviality. That art which tends toward destruction, the art of nihilists, cynics, and merdistes, is not properly art at all. Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. It is a tragic game, for those who have the wit to take it seriously, because our side must lose; a comic game—or so a troll might say—because only a clown with sawdust brains would take our side and eagerly join in.

John Gardner, On Moral Fiction

Such literary works do not need to supply the answers. In fact, people grow by having to wrestle with issues or face concepts on their own. Literature offers a prompt, some prodding, and philosophic or moral dilemmas.

Once discovered that I liked literature with those characteristics, it was only natural for me to begin reading the classics. Later, it led me to contemporary bestsellers and award winners. This affected my writing: I began to explore other styles and genres. (Lest my nose appears too high in the air, I did not dislike fiction for entertainment. I read Marvel Comics; I read many modern works that were only for escape and enjoyment. They serve a different, but valid, function than literary art.)

As an adult, my life and education led me into academia. This meant more reading and writing, but in the form of nonfiction. Again, my mentors saw my interest in the written word. I became an editor for journals and publishers. I continued my own writing, but now it was almost all academic and non-academic nonfiction. I still wrote a little fiction on occasion and kept reading literary works (at a slower rate of speed), but the demands of writing, editing, and teaching left little time.

However, my love of fiction refused to be relegated to a second-class citizen. As a professor, I discovered early on that most people learn best through stories rather than pronouncement. I began to use that idea in my teaching and writing.

A few years ago, with fiction yapping and nipping at my heels, I began exploring again in earnest. I started a steady schedule of reading fiction—working through Pulitzer Prize, Nebula Award, and Hugo Award-winning novels. They rekindled my interest in story-telling as a way of wrestling with the issues of life.

Just as it did for that young boy, reading of fiction led me back into writing fiction more often. Working on my first serious novel (To and Fro Upon the Earth), I found myself excited to tell a story rather than to declare. To show rather than teach; to create rather than dissemble.

I find meaning in addressing issues of the human condition and hope in the possibility that it can lead my readers to struggle with those issues in their own manner.

After To and Fro Upon the Earth was published, I began working on a historical fiction manuscript that I had begun over ten years ago. It was published as Onesimus: A Novel of Christianity in the Roman Empire. I am now working on final edits of a book of short stories and a third novel. (I do still write a good bit of nonfiction).

A small seed planted by a teacher so many years ago has grown into a career in writing and freelance editing. This is how life works, isn’t it? We plant seeds, nurture, and trim the lives of others, often without knowing, or unaware we are doing so. And others do the same for us. We experience periods of drought, of fertility, and fallowness. It all weaves a pattern that guides (or pushes) along the path of our lives.

Even the mere act of recognizing and acknowledging the threads of our life can lead to more growth. In that way, we also become part of the weaving of our own story, together with the threads of others, just as we have contributed to their tapestries.

Shared creativity on the loom of life is what gives literary fiction its power.