A few months ago, I was in a literary conversation about Christian literature, especially Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Dostoyevsky, and it occurred to me that while Tolkien, and to a lesser extent Lewis, have many emulators today (fantasy is a thriving genre), Im not aware of anyone whos trying to emulate Dostoyevsky by writing fiction that is at once richly, profoundly Christian, and agonizingly relevant to the social issues of our own times. It led me to think about what novels Dostoyevsky would write if he were alive today, and what I hit on was an old religious action-adventure novel Ive long dreamed of writing, *The Godfather* (no relation to the famous movie), about a man who goes on a quest to find his godson in the middle of a Third World civil war. Ive written five chapters, but the first four are so bleak in their depiction of modern urban amorality that I hesitate to let people read them without the redemptive themes that begin to enter the story thereafter. (Michael, the godfather, is initially a rather *lapsed* Christian.) Chapter 5 is where the novel starts to get edifying, so I can warmly recommend that people read it. Might be of interest to Chad Husby, Rachel Lu, Brett Swearingen, Seth VW, Nathan Williams, ... well, a lot of people actually. Merina Smith. Brooke Larsen perhaps. Feedback is welcome (including negative: Im thick-skinned; and responses from presumptively hostile readers like, say, Nathan Powell or Thomas ONeill might be among the most interesting).
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 01:27:46 +0000
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