Relief Writers Network

A friend recently passed on a question to me posed by her own teenage daughter, something to the effect of, "Why do short story characters have to be so annoying?"

Now, as an English major and editor of children's books, I'm not willing to say that's all they are--annoying. But to a great degree, I do think it's true. Below are a few thoughts that came to mind when I attempted to answer this question for myself and my friend:

Even though I love literature and poetry, I would have to echo your daughter's frustration with the literary landscape of the past century or two. In fact, I read very few short stories and poetry for adults altogether because of the tedious obsession of Modern and contemporary authors with death and loss. I say for adults because I have found the children's book market to be filled with some very rich, thoughtful and energetic poetry and short stories covering a broad range of topics. I know not everyone gets jazzed about Dr. Suess, but there is a sense in which I think literature for children today really does far exceed literature for adults. Writers are still able to take much more of the reality of God's design for granted.

However, children's literature has its limits, and I think someone like Flannery O'Conner or Dostoevsky show the immensely greater opportunities for profoundity that exist in adult literature today. You may remember that I wrote an essay a while back arguing that death is the central theme of Modern and Post-modern poetry. As Robert Pinsky said in an interview with NPR once, "Poetry is in a constant state of funeral." As I have thought about that in relation to the question about short story characters, I think there is a deep human understanding that death is not at all normal, but rather a horrible breach in the moral fabric of life. I say moral, because I think people naturally feel it is wrong in some ultimate, objective sense. At least, I do--and did before I was a Christian. I remember how I felt as a child reading Anne Frank's diary for the first time, and how unfair it all seemed. And what loving parent would leave their child in a room with a steak knife, much less a loaded 9mm? So, I think there is a moral outrage at death, and suffering in general, as well as a feeling of horror at it. I think the unsaved authors of our time are searching in their writing for a way to cover themselves, to take the sting out of death and suffering and the loss of meaning in their lives by making it beautiful. Or even rubbing salt in the wound. You know those people who suffer so much mental anguish that they begin cutting themselves? For them, it is a relief to only have to feel physical pain. Somehow I think that is what writing has become for people of my generation: a cutting. Or at least I think it was for me to some degree before I was saved.

I think also the moral outrage comes from the fact that the answers, the solutions to the difficulties of life that they have been given by our culture, by their well-meaning moms and dads ("Always look on the bright side of life" and "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger") doesn't go all the way down....doesn't seep down into their rotting flesh and revive it the way only God's grace can do. I read a blog on the Relief site about Christian authors who won't let their characters curse. While I don't think every author has the ability or calling to write about really horrible sin, I think the most gifted and wisest Christian author has the obligation to show us how God's grace and love can stretch all the way down to the gates of hell. I don't mean to say that is all he can do; but I think perhaps it is his highest calling.

I keep thinking about Christ's words "My God, My God, why have Thou forsaken me?" Is that not a God who has met the horror of the poor woman in The Yellow Room?

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