Learning to Speak Human: Interview with Flannery O-Connor
Marvin Olasky has constructed a “mock” interview with Flannery O’Connor by using her remarks on “Christian” writing in her book Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
There are many good insights into learning to speak human again. Here is an excerpt:
WORLD: What’s the difference between a Christian novelist and a naturalistic (or materialistic) one?
O’CONNOR: The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn’t mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater.
WORLD: Do you think some Christian writers are willing to do a slapdash portrayal of the natural because they want to emphasize the crucial evangelistic message?
O’CONNOR: Fiction operates through the senses. . . . No reader who doesn’t actually experience, who isn’t made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him.
WORLD: Why do you call lots of religious novels “sorry”?
O’CONNOR: The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns . . . by beginning with Christian principles and finding the life that will illustrate them. . . . The result is another addition to that large body of pious trash for which we have so long been famous.
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today on Learning to Speak Human: Interview with Flannery O-ConnorHere’s a quick excerpt [...]