IVP - Strangely Dim

Confessions of a Wild Tongue

As a writer, I've been accused more than once of being "elliptical." In my defense, though, I think that particular accusation has always come from the same person. Her less elliptical friend chose to describe me with the less charitable label "nuanced nincompoop"--which I suppose is pretty much the same thing.

To be honest, I think I write in an elliptical fashion--that is, I swirl around and around a theme like other things that swirl around and around in the process of completing their work--because that's how I think. I look at any number of problems like some sort of daisy chain of Gordian knots, and I'm enough of a failed Boy Scout that I can't bring myself to take a knife and cut through to the solution; I must untangle these morasses and thus untether myself.

Beyond my own issues, there's a cultural bias toward oversimplification that it's appropriate to resist. As Brian McLaren writes in the foreword to Neil Livingstone's Picturing the Gospel, "the habit of 'boiling things down' or 'putting things in a nutshell' . . . makes certain things clear and accessible, but it can obscure and distort other things." Life, I feel entirely justified in saying, is irreducibly complex, and quite frankly is getting only more so, so to treat it as simple is to be dangerously simplistic.

But there's what goes on in my head, and there's what comes out of my mouth. I went to lunch with my pastor yesterday in an attempt to give some of my inner perplexity some air, and as I listened to myself articulating the complexity of relationships and missions I see in play at our church, I found myself thinking, I sound like an idiot. And then there's the article I wrote about how Batman as a character has oscillated back and forth between serious and silly to match the vicissitudes of American culture; the one bit of reader response I got was "You make no sense."

So as a writer I face this challenge of acknowledging and authentically representing the complexity and nuance present to the human condition, even to celebrate it in artful expression, without wallowing in--and miring my readers in--nincompoopery and ellipticalness.

A friend at IVP reminded me this week that the curmudgeonly godfathers of English style and grammar, William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, have come across this particular Gordian knot and took a pretty effective whack at it:

There are occasions when obscurity serves a literary yearning, if not a literary purpose. . . . Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue we can say, "Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!" . . . "Be cagey plainly! Be elliptical in a straightforward fashion!"

Well sure, when you put it that way. E. B. White made a talking spider into an icon of maternal comfort in Charlotte's Web and a talking rodent into an icon of adolescent self-discovery in Stuart Little, so I guess he knows how to pull off the impossible. But as for me and my writing, I fear we will continue to, umm, serve a literary yearning.

Editors Are People Too

Karen Sloan, author of Flirting with Monasticism, came through Chicago this past week to take part in the Wheaton Theology Conference, this year discussing ancient-future Christian theology--just the sort of place where monasticism is actively flirted with.

Because of the apocalyptic weather systems we've been experiencing lately, Karen's flight to Chicago was delayed, so she missed the scintillating conversation that takes place every Wednesday afternoon when our editorial department gets together to eat popcorn and catch up. There's nothing quite like the anthropological experience of sitting with editors in our natural habitat, chewing with our mouths open so we can talk with our mouths full. I know it's a meager substitute, incidentally, but starting this week you can have a similar virtual experience at any one of our three new editorial blogs: Behind the Books, Addenda & Errata, and our fearless leader's recurring diatribe, Andy Unedited. Seriously, it's like an editorial smorgasbord around here.

But I digress. Karen was able to make it over here Thursday instead. For her trouble she got an up-close and personal view of my office, which is a total disaster area because I lack the common courtesy to clean up for my guests. She also got to meet some of her e-mail correspondents face to face, and she had lunch with a scintillating colleague of mine. From there she went to the conference, and from there she came to a play I was in, where she saw me dressed in a tunic and heard me singing poorly about my--make that Peter's--denial of Jesus.

I think by now it's well-established that I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself in front of virtually anyone, but while I've had authors sing to me, this was the first time I've sung to an author. Fortunately, her book already came out, so for the time being at least, she's stuck with me for an editor.

I mention all of this not only as a public thanks to Karen for her visit but as a way of communicating (read that "confessing") that editors are human. We do weird stuff--but that's not because we're editors, it's because we're human. We get anxious about what other people think of us--but that's not because we're editors, it's because we're human. My authors have learned that firsthand; it's part of the demystifying process of getting published.

One of the nice things about working for a publisher such as InterVarsity Press is that we learn while we're working--about God, about ourselves. In my case, I learned the following from David Benner as he wrote The Gift of Being Yourself:

People who are afraid to look deeply at themselves will of course be equally afraid to look deeply at God. For such persons, ideas about God provide a substitute for direct experience of God. . . . Paradoxically, we come to know God best not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God and then looking at ourselves--then looking at God, and then again looking at ourselves.

I learned a lot--about God, about myself--from Karen Sloan too, and I'm learning as I go from the other authors floating around this place these days. Yep, editors are people too, and people, I think it's fair to say, need one another.

The Importance of Is

As a proofreader, I am easily and often offended. Spelling, punctuation and capitalization mistakes are everywhere: flyers, ads, signs, billboards. Billboards especially get me. There's nothing like being stuck in traffic and being confronted by a larger-than-life capitalization error to really generate anger.

A few weekends ago I went to a movie with my cousin to relax and be entertained. I was comfortably settled into my seat, anticipating the start of the movie, when it happened again: the (also larger-than-life) movie screen lit up with the headline "Silence is Golden(R)." Aaaaahhhhhhhh! I should have asked for my money back. I mean really. I'm just not sure I can give my money to a company that doesn't know that if you're going to capitalize the G you have to cap the I! Or that doesn't run their headlines by a proofer before they register them and flash them onto movie screens all over the country.

I've noticed it's often the is that gets demoted to lowercase in titles. I think it's assumed that, since it's only two letters, it must not be that important. Funny, because we never forget to cap I by itself. And if you think about it, is is a pretty important verb (case in point). Crucial, I'd say. "She drives fast" is very different from "She is fast." "That movie looks good" often does not turn into "That movie is good." Water that looks clean can be very different from water that is clean. We should give is its proper respect.

The is gets much more significant when it comes to faith. I have to admit that, having had a relationship with Christ since I was a young child, there are some stories, phrases, words I have a hard time grasping the significance of simply because I've heard them my whole life. But is is not one of them. In fact, the is is why I love Easter so much, why Easter never fails to inspire awe and wonder in me. When I think about the pain and suffering Christ experienced before his death, and the guilt and sorrow and confusion and despair the disciples and other close friends and family must have experienced at Jesus' death, and then when I try to imagine resurrection morning, when the women went to the tomb and found it empty--I can't not feel wonder. The sheer impossibility and joy and juxtaposition of death--Jesus was dead--and life--Jesus is alive--strike me deeply. And the fact that Christ really is the only one those two statements can be made about over two thousand years after he walked on earth deepens my faith.

That's the significance of is. On that first resurrection day and today, Jesus is alive, bringing life from death all over the place. It's a headline, really: Jesus Is Alive.

And the Is makes all the difference.

Counting Rabbits

Lisa got me with "Rabbit" today. That means that so far, for 2007, the rabbit tally is

Lisa: 2
Dave: 1

Just to compound my shame, Jenn with two nns hit me with a rabbit by e-mail. Boy, was that messy. But really, there's no excuse for my losing our little competition this month. April 1 is April Fools' Day, and what's more foolish than a race to say such a random word? Besides that, I'm virtually surrounded by rabbits--hollow ones made of milk chocolate, chocolate ones filled with peanut butter, plush ones made by the folks that brought us Beanie Babies and live ones that are already chewing up my backyard. Nope--it was mine to lose this month, and that's precisely what I did. Pity me. And congratulate Lisa. And Jenn with two nns.