The Sci Fi Catholic Yak Module
Well, how's that for coincidence. I'm right in the middle of Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff and there's a scene where the main character encounters a hideous troll. The beast was once a good hearted kid with a slight physical deformity who was driven out of his community by the superstitious. As his heart became filed with bitterness and anger his outward appearance transformed also until he bacame a full-blown troll. This seems to fall right in with what Brendon was saying about symbolism.
This actually works in real life, you know. I can remember some old girlfriends way back when whose beauty quickly diminished the more their interior disposition towards me changed. Or to quote Army of Darkness fop the upteenth time: "You found me beautiful once." "Baby, you got REAL ugly!"
(Joking. JOKING!)
Aye, O'Brian shows the slippery slope that comes from the equating of the beautiful with the good. In Brendon's way, as symbol, with caveats about the difference between appearance and action, it is harmless, but O'Brian is now saying that beautiful characters are "better" in the eyes of God than ugly ones.
And as for teaching children to like beauty, they do that enough on their own. They are quite willing to gang up on those they perceive as "different" and to pay court to "popular" kids (who happen to be beatiful). The trick is to teach them that "beautiful is as beautiful does", and the same goes for ugly.
The trick is to teach them that "beautiful is as beautiful does", and the same goes for ugly.
I'm sure O'Brien would agree with this. Problem is, he won't stop when it's time, so after stating that of course people don't have to be good-looking to be good, he goes on to write that awful thing about the hunchback and the aesthete in which he says that, sincerity being equal, the aesthete's worship is better. Last night I started thinking over just how many biblical passages I might martial to contradict that. I think I could find quite a few.
And I do have to wonder why he chose the word aesthete. Considering what he says here, it is ironic to me that he would name a philosophy that champions beauty above all and disassociates art from morality. Perhaps O'Brien merely means someone who loves beauty, and not a follower of the Aesthetic Movement, but it's another sign he doesn't choose his words carefully.
Next to what he says about Rowling, his words are doubly damning. It amazes me that anyone takes him seriously.
It amazes me that you take him seriously.
The best example of interior beauty I could think of is the movie Passion of the Christ." The torture got so graphic at the scourging scene that I couldn't bare to watch. Yet one thought kept going through my mind as I watched this: This is *God* that underwent so much pain.
As Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft has often remarked, one of the most disconcerting things about the Christian religion is that the most horrific act in history (deicide), brought about it's greatest good (redemption). Want to bet O'brien wouldn't take several of the nastier parts of the Old Testament at face value? I don't think so.
D. G. D. Davidson & community,
Ran across your blog a couple of weeks ago and have enjoyed reading your perspective(s) and analysis ... with some decent writing as a bonus.
At any rate, the steady drip of "Michael O'Brien" references did have me curious, so I read your past posts (at least on this blog) on the topic and I suppose now understand (at least superficially, in that sort of surface-skimming style that passes for true understanding all too often, but will have to do for now on this topic) that "anti-MO'B-ism" is rather foundational to this blog itself.
Hmmm.
As an outsider to the whole affair, could it not be possible to oppose the MO'Bistic notions on fantasy without necessarily spilling over to the person of Michael O'Brien himself?
My own perspective on O'Brien's writing is far more limited - after all I've only read Fr. Elijah, being a complete toad and sucker for anything that might even hope to be thoughtful Catholic fiction - and decidedly mixed.
Having said that, I'm all for more serious Catholics (hopefully containing fewer flaws and far greater skills in themselves than are my own) at least making the attempt to write - even when it has it's own intrinsic limitations, or emanates from an intellectual framework discordant with my own.
Just some initial thoughts ...
As an outsider to the whole affair, could it not be possible to oppose the MO'Bistic notions on fantasy without necessarily spilling over to the person of Michael O'Brien himself?
That's certainly fair. I am not here to accuse O'Brien of being a bad person, only of writing bad things about fantasy literature, which many Catholics do take seriously. That's why I want to oppose them. But you're entirely right that my snidery is in danger of getting in the way of that, and it's possible I'm being uncharitable.
Actually one can accuse O'Brien of encouraging laziness in writers.
Making vilains ugly and good guys beautiful is the equivalent of hanging a big sign from their necks "villain" or "hero", thus dispensing the writer of doing any charaterization.
I was taught ages ago that the essence of "good writing" is "show, don't tell", that is show the character is good or bad, or in-between, by showing his actions and thought processes, not just tell the audience what or he is.
But when we use the physical aspect, or the membership in a certain group (such as dragons) to determine what a character is, then, we are being lazy, and laziness is a very big sin in writers, since it makes them boring.
Actually one can accuse O'Brien of encouraging laziness in writers.
I don't think he encourages laziness exactly. What he does do is set down rules that he expects fantasists to follow, rules that appear to have no basis in anything other than O'Brien's preference. What's more, he seems to change the rules depending on what writer's he's criticizing, as is evident in his criticisms of Rowling. I think fantasists deserve better treatment than that.
I don't want to pick on him too much, and I don't want to make personal attacks, but of all the Christians who have attacked Rowling, he is in North America probably the primary Catholic writer, and he has some literary and artistic cred of his own.
For those reasons, a small fry like me criticizing O'Brien is not as unfair as, say, some of the well-known Catholic apologists who spend too much time criticizing Jack Chick (incidentally, some more heavyweight Protestants have noticed Catholics' fondness for knocking Chick around, and they're not impressed). Nonetheless, my attempts at humor are sometimes flat or too sarcastic, so taking to heart the comments made here, I will remember to be more straightforward and dignified when I address O'Brien's writing in the future. If the fantasists he attacks deserve better, I suppose he does, too.
And in regard to my comment about people taking him seriously, I apologize: Xena is quite right. I do take him seriously. He is influential enough, I see him as a serious threat to the Catholic imagination and, by extension, Catholic evangelism and catechesis. I certainly do not call him a heretic or a bad man, but I believe views like his, over time, lead others to heresy, lukewarmness, and apostasy. This isn't just about defending my favorite paperbacks.
Alright, I've admitted before, I haven't read O'Brien. But this has been bugging me all day so I've been browsing through the sections of A Landscape with Dragons available on Google books.
If I understand right, by his reckoning, any story in which a dragon is portrayed as a good character is morally dangerous? Huh? (Boy, I bet Stasheff, whose book I'm just finishing up, would be very surprised at that idea. Parts of Her Majesty's Wizard border on Catholic evangelization, yet one of its main characters is a very good dragon.) Is he saying any form Satan has ever been portrayed in is so corrupt and identified with evil that it can never be used as a literary device representing good? That's a pretty broad stroke.
If I understand right, by his reckoning, any story in which a dragon is portrayed as a good character is morally dangerous?
I think you've captured it. It was actually me who encouraged the Deej to make this site largely focus on O'Brien. Just because I like to burn villages, hoard gold, and kidnap virgins doesn't mean I'm a symbol of evil or should be treated like a second-class citizen.
"Broad strokes" are the problem behind a lot of books like O'Brien's. The problem is taking a symbol and insisting it represents the same thing forever and always, no matter the context.
I bet Stasheff would be surprised. My first (unpublished and unpublishable) novel bordered on Evangelical evangelization, and featured as its central character a very good dragon. My target audience was a specific eight-year-old girl, and I fretted a good deal about whether the sexuality and violence were too explicit, but it never even occurred to me that someone might object to my friendly dragons.
By the way, the eight-year-old girl liked it but said I should cut out all the lengthy scenic descriptions.
My own next reading task when I'm finished with my current book, I see, is to sit down with A Landscape with Dragons and give it the reading it deserves, so I'm better equipped to discuss O'Brien's ideas well.
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