A Stay Against Confusion : Essays on Faith and Fiction

Rating:
Summary: Best left Unsaid.
Review: A radio interview with an up and coming singer was broadcast recently and I was listening carefully as the DJ formulated an idea as to the subject matter of a particular song on the debutantes album. After rambling on for a minute or so the DJ asked if his synopsis of the song was correct and turned for approval to the singer who must have smiled while replying "yeah, sure, sounds good to me." The singer resisted the urge, despite the fact that he wrote the song, to impose his meaning on the listeners and thereby rob them of their own interpretation.

Unfortunately Ron Hansen in his latest book didn't have the self control of the young singer and so we have "A Stay Against Confusion", his attempt to reveal the motivation and the meaning behind his books. Doing so has led to an inevitable anti-climax, as though in drawing back the curtain Hansen has revealed, not the source of mystery or imagination, but a bald little man with a projector.

Explaining his own books robs them of their impact, robs the reader of the joy of allowing their imagination to fill in the dots, form their own opinions and be allowed to experience the books through their own frame of reference. Hansen intrudes into our enjoyment with his own intentions and hammers a stake into to the ground as if to say thus far and no further in the meaning of this book. And now in reading them we are like a dog tethered to the stake, snapped back to reality, whenever we are tempted to stray into our own imagination. The stories, like the ones he talks about in the bible ironically enough, lived. They didnt need elucidation, ennunciation or explanantion. Like his novels, they still dont.

Rating:
Summary: Almost Great
Review: I bought this book based on its subtitle (Essays on Faith and Fiction) and on my appreciation for Ron Hansen as a faith-filled writer. I expected it to be more about the integration of faith and fiction, and I loved the sections dedicated to that topic. As an author myself, I feel a kinship with Hansen in that I too write fiction from a faith perspective. I felt a little bit cheated by the chapters on Hansen's family members, but moved deeply by the story of the murdered Jesuits in El Salvador. That's why I rate this book "almost great." I don't fault the author but rather my own expectation that it would be something more than it was. All in all, I'm happy to have the book in my library, and much of it is highlighted in yellow.

Rating:
Summary: I loved this book
Review: I found these essays fascinating, both for Hansen's general insights concerning the relationship between religious faith and writing, as well as for an opportunity to read about the background behind such wonderful novels as Mariette in Ecstasy and Atticus. Hansen is known as a stylist, a writer of beautiful prose, but he is also, apparently, a fine weaver of essays and ideas. I loved this book.

Rating:
Summary: Out of the closet
Review: It is a perilous business for any artist to too fully explain himself or his work, to let the cat out of the bag so to speak, and in this collection of thoughtful, knowing, deeply felt essays, author Hansen falls prey to the impulse. In effect, he announces to the world his preference to be pigeonholed: I wish, he says in so many well-chosen words, to be considered a Catholic writer (and an acolyte of the wrongheaded, overrated John Gardner). So be it. While recognizing his shortcomings as a novelist, shortcomings that stem from a narrowness of sensibility rather than any lack of technical skill--Hansen is nothing if not an enormously gifted technician--I long have considered myself a serious fan of his fiction. "Desperadoes" and "The Assassination of Jesse James" are destined to become classics of American Western literature, "Nebraska" is frankly brilliant, and "Mariette in Ecstasy" so incandescently, quietly beautiful, it quickens the soul. (His last two novels did not work for me; my own shortcomings perhaps.) Now comes this collection of essays, and it is less to their execution, than their conception that I find myself objecting. The regrettable truth is, the religious estate in literature has long since been irreparably broken. It was dashed, Humpty Dumpty-like, well over 100 years ago, first by Ernest Renan, then by Matthew Arnold, and however critical to Hansen personally, he is writing here about issues that, in terms of art, not only are utterly irrelevant, but have been repeatedly written to death. So Ron Hansen is a man of faith in a largely faithless world, a faith he considers critical to the creation of his fiction. I do not need to know this--I regret that I now do--anymore than I need to know to which brand of underwear he is partial. Could it be that lack of belief cleanses the mind, loss of faith the soul, and that out of the chaos bred of despair arises creativity? Apparently not for Ron Hansen, who insists upon subscribing to the Art-as-crutch-and-consolation & dam-against-the-deluge school. It is a crippling aesthetic, he is the poorer for having surrendered to it (as are we, his readers), and it explains much about why his work suffers from an absence of those darker qualities (for how recognize the light save in opposition to its counterpart) that make for truly transcendant fiction. Well, perhaps only agnostics ought write about faith; at least they might purport to know whereof they speak. "A Stay Against Confusion" gets it precisely backwards. Art ought not be used to circle the wagons against faithlessness or shut the door upon disorder. It ought be used to convert water into wine. It ought unfasten the stays, invite the outside in (in all its untidy blasphemy)and wrench from confusion the beauty that reposes at its heart. The only moral fiction is that which couches its morality not in terms of right and wrong, good or bad, light or dark, saint or sinner, but which aspires beyond such puny, HUMAN categories, towards a fiction of poetic beauty.

Rating:
Summary: Writer and Writing Become "Sacrament"
Review: It was a happy fault. I tend to buy too many books at the mega-stores, and during a recent visit to Nebraska I saw Ron Hansen's newest book right near the door as I walked in. To be honest, it was the cover that first attracted my eye. To be even more honest, it was the writing that caused me to stay up half the night. I could not stop until I had read the whole book in one sitting. "A Stay Against Confusion" is a marvelous collection of essays from a talented and insightful author. I cannot think of another contemporary writer who so thoroughly combines a talent for his craft with the kind of "Catholic Imagination" that informed the work of people like Georges Bernanos, Flannery O'Connor and Grahame Green. But don't worry - this is NOT a collection of essays designed just for Roman Catholics! Hansen has a 'sacramental' world view - he is in touch with the mystery that shimmers just below the surface of things, and his writing helps us to encounter that. I found myself looking at the world differently after I read this book. His essay on the movie "Babette's Feast" gave me new language to describe a film that I have always loved. His essay on the Jesuit martyrs of Central America challenged my comfortable lifestyle, and drew me into the reality of suffering. The several essays on the craft and vocation of writing reveal some of the inner workings of a creative mind - a mind at once deeply rooted in the here-and-now, but at the smae time open to mysteries bigger than our categories. His concluding essay on the Eucharist will speak to believers and non believers alike. Again, this is not a "spirituality book" designed for a selective audience. This collection of essays touches on a broad variety of topics: the craft of writing; film; teaching; family; sacraments; faith. It is a stellar example of what "Catholic" writing should be: a marvelous combination of faith and reason, seriousness and humor, mystery and logic, humility and certainty. Whatever your background, I think you will find food for the mind AND the soul in this fine collection of thoughtful essays.

Rating:
Summary: Hansen's Looking For Clues
Review: Ron Hansen shows his cards in "A Stay Against Confusion." He reveals himself to be a passionately spiritual writer; this world is not the only one that exists in his fiction. I greatly enjoyed his westerns, "Desperadoes" and "Jesse James", without really getting the underlying archetypal structure in them (Hansen says his treatment of "the dirty little coward" Robert Ford is a consideration of the Judas story.) But in "Marriette in Ecstasy" and the unforgettable historical novel "Hitler's Niece", Hansen wrote about the extremes of good and evil in an unmistakably religious way. But his novels aren't heavy-handed, "faith-promoting" tracts; they are alive and as necessarily ambiguous and multifaceted as the best fiction is.

This collection of essays explores Hansen's thinking about faith and fiction. He is a Catholic of the Vatican II variety, but this isn't an obstacle for people of other traditions to get him. He's a terrific writer. His prose is as sharp and clear as a diamond and he's a gifted storyteller. Indeed, in "What Stories Are And Why We Read Them" he insists that fiction musn't be didactic (as a lot of religious-based fiction is.) You can't beat readers over the head; they have to be carefully led into caring *what happens next.* (This concern over reader accessibility also sets him apart from many contemporary writers.) In "Faith and Fiction" he describes how we use stories in order to figure out the world, to deduce principles that we can live by. A story can be the vehicle for the Holy Spirit to touch our lives; an occasion for grace. In "The Wizard" he remembers the late, rambunctious novelist and critic John Gardner, who was a mentor, and tries to put him into perspective (warts and all.) In "Stigmata", perhaps the most fascinating essay in the book, he looks at what made him write his novel about a stigmatic ("Mariette") and if there are really such holy people in this fallen world. He masterfully explicates Leo Tolstoy's "Master and Man", Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry, and the film based on Isak Dinesen's story "Babette's Feast."

In his book "Hitler's Niece" (about the dictator who was an apostate Catholic who hated Christianity) and his other novels and short stories Hansen creates a fictional world that is quiveringly alive with the possibilities of good and evil. Where eternal destinies and the fate of the world hang on the decisions of individuals. Where free will *matters*. "A Stay Against Confusion" is an excellent introduction to this world.

Rating:
Summary: Well crafted rather than brilliant
Review: This collection of essays shares no "common thread" although the promise of the subtitle "Essays on Faith and Fiction" is present in a few of the essay while the more accurate "Essays on Faith OR Fiction" applies to the entire collection.

On the "faith" side his meditation on "Anima Christi" is a solid sample of devotional literature. While is is comfortably safe, it encourages creative thinking regarding the meaning of the prayer. It encourages engagement rather than mere repetition.

Also on the "faith" side is his meditation on the Eucharist. While this essay provides amusing, interesting autobiographical information and evokes an earlier (pre-Vatican II) age of American Catholicism, it fails to establish any separate identity - one can read several similar essays by other authors and the essay will simple dissolve into the familiar.

Similarly, historical pieces such as "Hearing the Cry of the Poor: The Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador" and "The Pilgrim: Saint Ignatius of Loyola" are competent but non-distictive historical essays.

On the "fiction" side "The Wizard: Remembering John Gardner," "Babette's Feast" and "Affliction and Grace: Religious Experience in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins" are solid, thought-provoking analyses. But again there is no scream demanding a rereading.

In "The Story of Cain" where Hansen explores the story in Genesis and his relationship with his twin brother, Hansen finally achieves the promise of the subtitle. Life, Holy Scripture and faith are merged into a cohesive whole and the cohesion attracts the reader's attention.

Finally, the three initial essays, "Writing as Sacrament", "Faith and Fiction" and "What Stories Are and Why We Read Them" are solid though undistinctive mediations on faith and fiction. For fans of Hansen, they provide insight into authorial intent/world-view while acknowledging that art, including literature, takes on a life of its own.