Theo of Golden - Reflections (1)

 

Authorial Intent

A week or two ago I mentioned Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi. I am now reading it aloud to Vickie and it is not only working its magic upon her, but my own enjoyment increases with each page. There is something about reading aloud, and I think particularly reading aloud to another person. Tears, laughter, amazement, irony, character; it is like a 3-D viewer or movie. Plus, in my case, rereading gives me the added pleasure of seeing connections I didn’t see before and more deeply appreciating the author’s masterful tapestry. O yes, and reading to another person allows the reader to see and experience and share the wonder of the book, in this case Theo, with a friend, a spouse, a brother, or a sister.

One of my friends mentioned that at 399 pages it is a long book (I have my copy on Kindle). I love a journey. Beyond that, the story moves quickly and Mr. Levi is an artist who draws the reader into the story, the people, and the town of Golden. I can visualize myself sitting on a bench by the fountain, having a coffee and pastry, watching Theo engrossed in conversation on another bench, with a wrapped flat package across his thighs. 

I want to share some reflections on Theo of Golden, but, at least for now, I’m going to share them in such a way as not to give certain elements of the story away, for the spell of discovery permeates the book and I don’t want to deprive anyone of it, at least for now. 

Before I begin, I want to mention how I read this book. I covered this in my reflections on C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, but I think I should touch on it again, perhaps especially because, unlike Mr. Lewis, Mr. Levi is still very much alive and I wish him a long, fruitful, and joyous life. There is a tension in this subject, as there ought to be, I don’t purpose to relieve the tension, when we dissipate tension we lose energy. 

I begin with a statement intended to create attention and tension, “I don’t care what Allen Levi’s intent was when he wrote Theo of Golden.” In other words, I don’t care about authorial intent, at least as it is commonly understood. 

C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Tolkien, and others maintained that a creator’s work should speak for itself, should stand on its own, be judged on its own. They scoffed at the obsession that authorial intent was critical to interpreting a text, as they did with other forms of textual criticism. 

For example, based on textual methodology employed by “scholars” in their time and in ours, Lewis could not have been the author of the Narniad, Miracles, The Discarded Image, Till We Have Faces, Mere Christianity, An Experiment in Criticism, and Out of the Silent Planet. He might have been the author of one or two of these, but he could not have been the author of them all because their genres are so different and their vocabularies so diverse. 

Tolkien wondered at the attempt of critics to read autobiographical and political statements into The Lord of the Rings. Sayers had no patience with people who wanted details of her personal life so they could better understand her writings, nor did she suffer those who did not understand the difference between her mystery writing, her plays, her theological writing, and her academic writing.

There are times when the work is greater than its creator. There is, I think, only one exception to this, and that is with the True and Living God, He is always above His work, yet He remains in His work, and we see Him through His work – whatever that might mean. For those of us created in His image, we don’t know about our work, we create what we create by His grace. I suppose the best we can say is that whatever we create flows from jars of clay, fractured in many ways, some flaws obvious, some not so obvious. The Maker’s mark is what matters.  

Lewis, Sayers, and others have insisted, “Let the work speak for itself. Judge the work not the creator, the author, the artist.”

Authors don’t always know what they write, though sometimes they’d better know, such as lawyers and judges and medical people, and this reminds us that we had better know what genre we are writing within and what genre we are reading – though there are times, and I think Theo is one of these, that we may not exactly know what genre is touching us. (Theo has led me to use the term, sacramental writing.) And yes, if you receive a letter from an attorney or physician you had better be sure you know the author’s intent!

Creative writing, and I think this encompasses more than we are aware of, has a life of its own well after it leaves the author’s hands. It has been said that Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church has a soul. I agree with this description, and thankful I am since it is 8 volumes. Bruce Catton’s 3 volume Army of the Potomac is written in such a sympathetic and poetic voice that after 50 some years I still enjoy its passages and often play them in my head. This is to say that we can experience creative writing in both fiction and nonfiction. Apart from technical and legal (maybe?) and medical writing, it is probably fair to say that there is fiction in nonfiction and nonfiction in fiction – but of course those are not genres as much as broad categories that are primarily useful in organizing libraries. 

The reason I don’t care about Mr. Levi’s intent in writing Theo of Golden, or in why he developed the characters, connections, and challenges, is that I want to experience the story directly, I want the story to capture me, to draw me into it, and to let me participate in it. Yes, it has already done this, but it continues to do so and I don’t want to lose the charm, the challenge, the magic or the mystery. 

Perhaps at some point I will watch or listen or read what Allen Levi says about writing Theo, but not now.

On the other hand, I do care about his intent! I care about whether I can trust Mr. Levi, but once I’ve established that I can trust him I move on from there, I leave the question of intent behind. I very much trust Allen Levi…and so now I can dispense with intent. 

I’ll try to explain. A few years ago there was a bestseller on Christian and non-Christian book lists, it was number 1 and people were raving about it. I was pastoring at the time, and for not the first time I read a book because “everyone” else was reading it. It did not take me long into the book to realize that I could not trust the author or his story, I realized he had an agenda that was inimical to the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. The story used Christian words and symbols and purported to portray God, but it was a spider’s web of deceit coated with honey, poisoned cotton candy. 

Not for the first time did I disappoint parishioners and colleagues by not going along with popular thinking.

I can enjoy and savor Theo because I trust both Theo and Allen.