speaking of faith. the novelist as god.

It’s the great sweep of time that allows us to make sense of our lives and the lives of people.

I subscribed to American Public Media’s newsletter “Speaking of Faith” several months ago, but never got around to reading or listening to any of it until tonight. After a few minutes I started taking notes like this:

(Novelists) know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

Interesting interview with Pulitzer Prize nominee, the captivating Mary Doria Russell. Plus, she talks about Steve Martin. And Flynn will tell you what’s up with that.

There’s no ignoring the ‘faith-cenetric’ aspect of the piece but it’s more about the novelist playing the role of God, as as a creator of peoples and worlds.

5 Responses to “speaking of faith. the novelist as god.”

1. Kristy says:

   30 January, 2009 at 16:50

   Thanks for the podcast download.

   It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

   I don’t think that could be more true.
2. michaelpanda says:

   4 February, 2009 at 12:55

   i really like the picture in the post above this (with you and your mother in the flannel shirts).

   and because i am, sadly, more a visual person than a literary person at times (or rather, i should say, i wish i were smart enough to understand some of the deeper novels out there, but alas, i am not ), I shall comment and say that I really, really like the photo of the giant table and chair in this post…. it’s like the opposite of my obsession (and it is, admittedly, a strange obsession, but one that is readily satiated in Japan) with tiny furniture. crazy.
3. Buffy says:

   5 February, 2009 at 16:37

   Enough with the self deprecating. Everyone knows you’re brilliant, Panda.

   I know too exactly what you mean about the photo. I have files and files full of photos of just the sort.
4. Ben says:

   5 February, 2009 at 21:04

   Coo, Hampstead Heath no less! I used to live just around the corner from where that exhibit once stood. Memories of disproportionately sized far away things…
5. JP says:

   7 February, 2009 at 6:52

   Didn’t God cast A & E out because they ate from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (such a delicious name for a tree, don’t you think?)? And what did the tree grant them? The knowledge that God had. If you believe this kind of gobbeldygook (which, much as I admire it, I don’t…I am a deist…I really believe God is in all things and I seem to see Him regularly), doesn’t that mean that all of us descendants are, in fact, Gods? Hence…my daughter from my first marriage tells me tonight she is engaged. At 19. Our creations disobey…they live!