I don’t typically read LDS Fiction. A lot of it just doesn’t appeal much to me. Those few books that do draw my attention are often either, in my estimation, much too preachy, superficial, and emotionally manipulative on the one hand or on the other veer off into apostasy in order to be edgy, artistic, intellectual, and morally nuanced. Blech.
However, contrary to my usual interests, last month I picked up a newly released book by David J. West entitled Heroes of the Fallen. I had run across West’s blog a few months earlier, and I had been following his posts. I knew that he was an aspiring LDS author, but I hadn’t followed his blog closely enough to realize that he had a book about to be published. When he announced it’s release, I was intrigued by what I had already gathered from his blog. So I headed over to the local bookstore where he was doing a book signing and purchased an author-signed copy. I finished Heroes of the Fallen in about a week.
The book is set in the ancient America of the Book of Mormon, around 320 or so years A.D. This setting is both a benefit and a challenge for the author. West benefits from a pre-existing setting, complete with unusual names and places, a history, language, political system, and religious beliefs. My favorite fantasy writers, like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Lloyd Alexander, drew upon the histories, myths, and legends of the ancient civilizations with which they were familiar, borrowing names, plots, archetypes, and themes in order to lend weight and coherence to their works. In some ways, Heroes of the Fallen benefits similarly from the Book of Mormon. By adapting and extrapolating from the Book of Mormon, West is able to concentrate on filling in the details and bringing to life a fully-realized, exotic, ancient civilization without having to invent it whole-cloth.
On this Christmas Eve, I quote from J. R. R. Tolkien’s marvelous essay on Faerie Stories:
…I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe.
The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic1, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends with joy. It has pre-eminently the inner consistency of reality. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath….
But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused
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1. The Art is here in the story itself rather than in the telling; for the Author of the story was not the evangelists.
Also, please read my previous entry on The Christmas Tree .
For me, one of the most enduring characters in literature and film is the mountebank. From the disguised Volpone in Ben Jonson’s play of the same name, to Danny Kaye in the 1949 film adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector General, selling Yokov’s Miracle Elixer, there is some kind of archetype in these quacksalvers and their nostrums that touches our collective experience.
About three years ago I read a fascinating book written by the famed illusionist, Harry Houdini, entitled The Miracle Mongers. In this intriguing exposé, Mr. Houdini takes his readers on an eye opening journey through the tricks, both physical and psychological, that have been employed throughout the ages by those who peddle aparent miracles.
Show Me the Risk!
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/murdock/murdock200510190831.asp
I am disturbed and angered by an article today in the National Review Online by Kathryn Lopez entitled Defining Life Down . The article discusses improvements in the ability to detect Down Syndrome in unborn babies during the first trimester of pregnancy and how parents are increasingly using that information to justify killing their unborn children with Down Syndrome.
As a child I was a stubborn learner and spent my second grade year of elementary school in a resource reading group. There were only three of us in the class. One was a sweet, innocent girl with Down Syndrome. I appreciate having been able to interact with this wonderful person as a peer.
I also had a cousin who, though she did not have Down Syndrome, was born with severe mental disabilities. Her problems were, in many ways, more severe than Down Syndrome. Some of my fondest Christmas-time memories are of arriving at my uncle’s home to visit with my cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents. This special cousin was always seated in her favorite rocking chair in the front room, holding her Barbie doll, rocking back and forth, often singing and laughing, and greeting visitors. She passed away some years later, but she left an important mark and a treasured memory.
To think that people are destroying special people like my classmate and my cousin is sickening!
In the Poetic Edda1 there is a section entitled Hávamál2 (Sayings of the High One). Hávamál is a collection of guidelines for wise living attributed to the Norse God Odin. I am reminded of the following verses:
70.
Betra er lifðum
og sællifðum.
Ey getur kvikur kú.
Eld sá eg upp brenna
auðgum manni fyrir,
en úti var dauður fyr durum.
71.
Haltur ríður hrossi,
hjörð rekur handarvanur,
daufur vegur og dugir.
Blindur er betri
en brenndur sé:
Nýtur manngi nás.
—————————————————
70.
It is better to live,
even to live miserably;
a living man
can always get a cow.
I saw fire consume
the rich man’s property,
and death stood without his door.
71.
The halt can ride on horseback,
the one-handed drive cattle;
the deaf fight and be useful:
to be blind is better
than to be burnt:
no ones gets good from a corpse.
I know that I am an insufferable lover of the archaic and ancient, but I can’t help but feel that their understanding about life was superior to our own muddled, post-modern mess. I pray that we will repent as a society.
It is a shame that the wonderful book that is Flatland is primarily appreciated by mathematicians and physicists and virtually unknown among those who read and study literature. In addition to its interesting mathematical insights, Flatland is an ingenious socio political satire, an amazing treatment of the issues of faith and reason, a brilliant examination of prophets and revelation and how our limitations make it nearly impossible for us to comprehend things that are, nevertheless, true. It also is a discussion of the nature of God and upon what merits he is worshiped. Flatland accomplishes all of this in a fascinating fictional narrative of less than one hundred pages.
