Contemporary Novels and Religion, Plus Harper Lee

In the middle of all my duct tape revel (with more to come!), I want to shift into a literary gear.

God in Fiction
Maybe contemporary novels can’t adequately deal with God because we live in a society that is mixed on the issue. What I mean is this: just as there is an obvious fervor for religion, there is also the opposing side which doesn’t want to touch the religion issue. How would it be possible for a novel to perfectly capture mankind’s take on religion right now when there is such disparity? A conflicted portrayal of Christian themes in fiction simply is an accurate reflection of the conflicted American psyche which can’t reconcile a timeless God to our twenty-first century secular culture.

In a wonderful blog post on the subject, British writer Theo Hobson points to the novel’s failure to cover contemporary religion as an indicator of the contemporary novel’s limitations. He essentially feels that we’ve outgrown the novel.

What gets even more interesting is that he goes on to argue that today’s novels are admittedly secular, which explains why they can’t deal adequately with the God topic:

“The novel has become a very limited thing, painfully haunted by its old claim to total vision. It cannot address one of the most important issues of our time, the clash between religion and secularism, for it knows itself to be an expression of the latter.”

What a call for quality Christian fiction!

Oprah Truly Is a World Mover
We couldn’t have a literary moment without a spot on Southern Lit. The Washington Post announced Monday that O magazine will publish a Harper Lee letter in July’s summer reading issue. This is huge because as I’ve mentioned before, the semi-reclusive (yet wildly famous) Lee has published little more than her famous To Kill a Mockingbird tour de force. Whatever the letter contains will be sure to capture much attention. I enjoyed this preview shared in the article:

“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."
–Harper Lee

Beautiful.