š I realize the title to this post is misleading on two levels. First Mark hasn’t beguiled anyone that I know of, and second he isn’t the sole author of the novel Beguiled.
The latter, however, is on point. As part of the CFBA blog tour for Beguiled, co-authored by Mark and Deeanne Gist, I offer the following guest post by J. Mark Bertrand. Tomorrow I plan a review of Beguiled, an ARC of which I received for free from Bethany House Publishers.
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Films About the Wheat Harvest?
- by J. Mark Bertrand
I didnāt realize until it was pointed out to me that I sound like a broken record, always intoning the same quotation. In my defense, Iām often asked the same question, namely, āHow can you justify what youāre writing as Christian fiction?ā Short answer: I donāt even try. In the same way I donāt try to justify it as crime fiction, or even good fiction. All I can say is itās my fiction, a reflection of the world as I see it.
The long answer involves the aforementioned quote. Claude Chabrol, the French film director, was asked by Robert Ebert back in the 1970s how as a communist he could justify the kind of movies he made. āI am a Communist, certainly,ā Chabrol replied, ābut that doesnāt mean I have to make films about the wheat harvest.ā
A FALSE ASSUMPTION
The reason I cite this response so often is that it underscores a false assumption behind the question — i.e., that an artistās ideology ought to dictate the kind of work he does and whatever meaning it might convey. How could a Communist sleep at night knowing a particular film, perhaps the only one of his movies a certain viewer might ever see, didnāt include a persuasive pitch for collective farming and the redistribution of wealth? His only chance to convert a movie-going capitalist and he blew it!
A novelistās perspective doesnāt have to function as a pair of blinders or a pigeonhole. Think of it instead as an influence. People are influenced by their politics, by past experience, by religious and philosophical convictions, and these influences combine to form an interesting (or at any rate, unique) way of seeing things. When a Communist puts pen to paper, heās not representing a monolithic movement; heās revealing himself. The same is true for any ideologue, including the Christian.
Naturally, there are people who believe by definition that Communist art should be about dialectical materialism and Christian art should be about the gospel. āRedemption,ā broadly speaking, is the term often used. Paradoxically, these totalizing narratives are straightjacketed into narrowly-focused niche products that canāt speak to the whole of existence, or at least shouldnāt.
NO IMPLICIT GUARANTEE
I can respect the position, but I donāt happen to share it. As a writer, I prefer to take on the world at large, the big messy scope of reality, pursuing it subjectively and (I hope) convincingly wherever it leads. Iām confident enough in my ideas not to think they need special coddling, and have a high enough view of my readers to realize that while my work might entertain and engage them, even influence them, itās hardly capable of scrubbing away their own conception of life and inserting my own.
So when I write, Iām speaking for myself, for better or worse. Iām a Christian, and in my less humble moments (which are all too common) I prefer to think of myself as more influenced by that theological tradition than many people whoād own the label of āChristian novelistā with less ambiguity. My books come with no implicit guarantee that theyāll match up to anyone elseās notion of what they should be. For better or worse, the worldview they embody is my own.
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J. Mark Bertrandās novel Beguiled, co-authored with Deeanne Gist, is in stores now. His crime novel Back on Murder, the first in a series featuring Houston homicide detective Roland March, releases this summer. More information at BackOnMurder.com and on Markās new blog CrimeGenre.com