On Jesus Fanfic

"It's like Shakespeare, with rayguns and shit....Uh, can I say that on here?" --David Petrie, DVD commentary on Buffy S4, "The Initiative"

The great thing about the Bible is that it's been in the public domain since, like, there's been dirt. So not only can one write fanfiction based on the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, one can also get it published. This puts paid to the usual objection to derivative fiction, namely that it is a waste of a writer's time because it can't be shown forth with the writer's name on it and earn her some bread.

Bible fanfic (in publication and out) has had a long and distinguished history, as has its sister discipline, hagiography, the chronicle of saints. Like most derivative work it ranges the spectrum from orthodox to heterodox, from skilled to shoddy, and this is no less true of today's bumper crop of Bible fanfiction.

So what? you say. Well, what with the advent of some new Jesus movies, like The Gospel of John and The Passion of Christ, as well as my picking up a translation of The Golden Legend, I've just sort of begun to blink and look around. And lo! the vista of Bible fanfiction is vast and glittering with many colors. (I've been dipping into Return of the King the past 24 hours, excuse all odd syntax.)

It's very odd that Bible fanfiction should thrive so much given how easily an author can slip into heterodoxy. This isn't just a question of potential readers being put off by a text's not being quite true to canon; when you're off canon here, you're off The Canon, and I don't understand why more people aren't freaking out about it. But then maybe they are and I don't run in their circles. I was too young to read Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ when the movie came out -- you know, that movie that caused a storm of picketing and shouting about heresy. Apparently the inflammation came primarily from the scene in which Jesus on the cross is thinking, "I could be having sex with Mary Magdalene right now, instead of dying here." And then, of course, the objection spread from that portrayal of Jesus to any portrayal of Jesus that wasn't lifted straight from the Gospels.

But consider the number of stories that found success, or at least a modicum of approval, without adhering strictly to Canon -- Jesus Christ Superstar, for example. Or the Joshua books by Joseph Girzone. Consider one of my favorite books, of which I've never heard anyone speak but myself -- Elizabeth George Speare's The Bronze Bow. They run the whole gamut in terms of modernization, characterization, and basic tenor. They even take doctrinal risks in places. What are we to do with them?

What are we to do with the preponderance of fiction that has been written in the last ten years, dramatizing Bible stories we all knew well -- fiction like that of Francine Rivers or Anita Diamant, or Charles Swindoll? Such authors themselves tend to claim for their work an additional purpose to that of delighting its audience; they wish to provide a springboard for further Bible study, for training in orthodoxy, for inspiration, for guidance. In other words, they wish to do what Sherry L. Reames said of hagiographers, that is provide a story that will gather the community and unite them in imagination -- bare fact being a secondary consideration.

These are deep waters, requiring careful navigation on the part of both writers and readers. On the other hand, humans live on stories, and it would be impossible to stop them casting and recasting truths in colorful detail, intricate filigree, outlandish transplantation. Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien; Kazantzakis, Tim Rice, Mary Doria Russell.

We are the richer, if the more head-spun, for such writing.

What ho!

These things just can't be coincidence.

Found a review of the Wodehouse oeuvre on Resurgere, just after my own Bertie-and-Jeeves reading spree. She also links to Jeeves and Wooster, which looks to be a pretty definitive site on all things Wodehouse. So if you're needing a Wooster fix, just head on over to that neck of the woods!

A definite article

Go visit my sister's latest article at Boundless.org, in which she discusses the vicissitudes of prayer and skin treatment.

Miscellany

My brother's birthday was Monday. He's seventeen. I have a present for him, but I have yet to mail it off.

I had a very vivid dream this morning that saturated my whole consciousness and made me uneasy. I was in a plane that was trying to get back to America, and when I looked down and saw we were flying over Jerusalem, I knew we were in big trouble. Sure enough, a heat-seeking missile came after our plane; we managed not to get blown out of the sky, but the pilot came on to say that we couldn't avoid the hijackers any more and had to land. Then compartments opened above our heads and various colored packages spilled into our laps, containing different sorts of sharp tools that could be used as weapons. The directive was that we were to use them to fight the hijackers when they came; their intent was to kill all the Americans as brutally as possible, and we weren't going to give them the satisfaction by being cowards. So then out on the tarmac I took my strange, angular knife and cut and slashed until I was one of three or four Americans left standing. An Israeli woman, a friendly, got hold of me and rushed me off the scene to hide in a shed full of pig droppings. I still had the bloody knife in my hand. The woman kept calling me by some Semitic term -- I struggled to remember it as I waked -- "hamedi", I think it was. I couldn't tell if that was a flattering or friendly thing to be called or not. Eventually I was handed over to friendly officials who took the remaining Americans and put them on a Korean airliner -- a much slimmer and more agile craft, with green wings -- that was changing its flight plan for the U.S. The plane took off...and I woke up.

I went back to sleep and dreamed I was staying in this old house, walking back and forth to an ancient Catholic church to pray Morning and Evening Prayer. I was acting surreptitiously for fear that they would discover I was not a Catholic and bar me from praying there. I wore a rich green cloak and soft gold chemise, and when I looked in the mirror I looked like a queen, though I felt like a fraud. The squirrels were acting strangely when I went outside, not running but clinging to me.

Phew. I haven't had a slew of dreams like that in a long time.

The other night my roommate and I were driving along a back road toward a friend's house, and I saw a mailbox next to a farm lane with a rusty milk can beside it, for decoration. It seemed like a picture of decay for a moment; I wondered what someone from a few generations ago would say about a rusty milk can left next to a mailbox for no purpose whatsoever. Maybe he'd think the world had ended.

I got up this morning and made orange rolls, and that made things seem better.

Update

After a long bout of hard work, I've got my Fanfiction page revamped and updated. I'm now contemplating the faint urge in myself to roll up the sleeves and actually rework the whole website. Phew, just thinking about that kinda work makes me tired.

At any rate, you can now check out my Fanfiction in one place. Well, except for -- and -- Well, just go there.

Hang it all, I say, dash it!

So I had these brilliant plans to blog something extraordinary for each of the twelve days of Christmas. Didn't happen. Then I decided to bite the bullet and post something on Twelfth Night about, strangely enough, Twelfth Night. Clicked "Post" and then Blogger told me it was down for Scheduled Maintenance. Decided there was a silver lining, as my brain had gone on an Unscheduled Maintenance during the course of the post. Sometimes I wonder if I am losing my grip.

All this is by way of saying that I haven't posted much here recently, and what I have had to say went into the Livejournal, primarily because it was all of not very much consequence. Not that I draw a very heavy distinction between what I say there and here.

So anyway I had this plan Tuesday to write something on the subject of Epiphany, but I didn't have one, so no post. And then I got hives, and then last night I got a fever, so not only no post, but no usual cheerful and compromising demeanor in the domestic sphere. In short, I took to my bed and have been there most of the past 24 hours.

On the plus side I had a good job interview yesterday; I got a new bath gel; and I watched "Beer Bad" last night with my friends.

I also, upon consideration, abandoned my reread of Order of the Phoenix to dig out Life With Jeeves, which has the pleasant side effect of infecting one's syntax. Definitely the stuff to give the troops. Absolutely! I mean, one can't be completely miserable with a spot of the old Wooster lexicon in one's jolly old noggin, what? It gives one the comfort, when reflecting upon one's own fever, of saying, "This is a bit thick."

I crack myself up.

Oh, and to add to the list, my fragment Little Rupert story, Many Happy Returns, has been nominated at Barefootawards, a fanfiction awards site devoted to kidfic. Don't know who nominated me or what it's all about, but feel a bit flattered on the whole.

So all in all, it's been a rather blended holiday, don't you know, dash it!

Oh, well, toodle-oo, pip-pip, and all that, what.