March 8, 2010 4:13 pm
I just came across a review (written in May of last year) of ‘One Bright Star to Guide Them’ a short story which continues to be my favorite of anything I have written.
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/magazines/fsf-2009-04.html
There is such a thing as knowing too much about an author, and unfortunately I’ve read a bit too much about Wright’s current beliefs on-line to avoid reading them into this story. The story suffers because of it, in part because it convinces me that Wright meant the theme literally rather than ironically. I should be the target audience for this story: I enjoyed its inspirations, and I like the plot of rediscovered power and determination. But there are too many Capital Letters of Great Significance, a few bits of ham-handed religion, a key decision that I thought was entirely inappropriate and wrong in the context of the story, and a conclusion that’s simply too easy and devoid of emotional depth. Someone who knows less about Wright’s personal beliefs may like it much better, but it just bugged me.
My comment: It is bad form to comment on reviews. An author who does it looks silly. The story must speak for itself or not at all. In this case, however, it is not my story, but my personal beliefs that are being criticized, and the story is merely catching some reflected shrapnel.
I must compliment the reviewer here for being objective enough to notice and warn the reader that it was his own outside knowledge of me which had colored his view of the story. Few, far too few, reviewers are this kind and conscientious.
Would that the reviewer had known just a little more of me, he might have enjoyed the story more. Because it was not written by someone with my current beliefs. If anything, quite the opposite. That story was written years and years before my conversion, back when I was a ferocious and evangelical atheist, and if I have managed so successfully to mimic the art of Susan Cooper or C.S. Lewis or my hated enemies the Xtians as to annoy the reviewer, this is not a bug, it is a feature.
I am not sure to which scene the "pure celebration of blind faith" comment refers. There is, as there is an every children’s fairytale, a scene near the end where the protagonist is asked to do something according to the arbitrary rules of the Perilous Realm, which he does not see the reason for. I have never heard this called "blind faith" before. Usually that term is reserved for Christianity, and not used against fairies.
The main theme of the story is respect for someone who stands firm when the world wants him to conform to a falsehood. Christians talk this way, but, then again, so do Stoics, Communists, Objectivists, and every other non-Conformist in the world. I did not think any reader would actually assume Thomas was going insane, when he had solid evidence (a talking black cat and a magic key that opens any lock) physically present on his person.
There is no Christian allegory in that story (aside from those analogies, I suppose, that could be drawn to any fairy story). ‘One Bright Star to Guide Them’ was a story, written by a Stoic, fundamentally about Stoicism, which is the proposition that a virtuous life is one lived in preparation for death. To be a Stoic is to sacrifice childish, if correct, passions, and replace them with adult reasoning.
The sword you must break and reforge for yourself is Reason; that is why the young take on faith what they later must shatter with skepticism and remake for themselves, painfully, to make the sword their own. The helpful animal that must be slain is the Passions, the instincts, the animal nature, which, even if helpful in use, once sacrificed, returns in a superior form, as a conscience, or as a super-ego. The wee animal even says that it must be slain lest it grow ungovernable and turn on the protagonist. The end of the story, as with almost all fairy tales, is the turning of the seasons, as the child-hero of his own story becomes the Wise Old Man of someone else’s story.
I feared the symbolism was a little heavy-handed. I see that (for this reviewer, at least) it was not.
I would have left a helpful comment to that effect on the website, but there was no obvious place to leave it.
This is the seventh or eighth time ( I have lost track ) of someone reader a Christian message into something non-Christian or even openly anti-Christian that I wrote, but which, because I innocently answered in a public forum some unprovoked questions about my personal and private beliefs (or, to use the technical term, The Truth) have provoked the reader’s suspicions as to an ulterior message.
I am disappointed that the reviewer found the ending to be without emotional depth. This I cannot blame on the reviewer’s admitted bias. I blame it on my lack of craftsmanship: I had hoped to catch on paper the ending I had in my imagination, where my protagonist steps through the magic door and strides the heavens of midnight along the dangerous and comet-haunted path of the milk-white way, his feet bedewed with stars, finding that other and greater tale of which his tale is but a part. I had seen it in my mind as a fanfare of the gods, the silver roar of immortal trumpets, and, for my hero, I saw it as the long overdue coming of age for a man who had not yet put aside childish things, waiting for something not less magical than youth, but more.
Let me hasten to add that I compliment this reviewer not only on his honesty, but his kindness. I am grateful that anyone reads my works, and finds them worthy to comment on.
I say this not from any sense of false modesty, but true gratitude.
When I was young, my dream was to be a science fiction writer. To capture a dream is as difficult as binding the Wolf of Twilight: you need a chain woven of women’s beards and fish’s breath, the roots of mountains and the sinews of a bear, and two other impossible things to capture it: and ingratitude, taking for granted the idea that someone will read what you write, snaps the impossible chain which even the Wolf cannot sever, because it kills the dream.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
