Giants, Saints and Friends: Models for Life and Writing

"Have I told you how much I admire you? How much I thirst to know more and imitate your writing, your life, your way of seeing the world? Did you know that when I read you, you help me see deep into my heart and draw out beautiful things there? Do you know how much I long to leave a legacy like you, in my own God-gifted way?"

Emerging from my writing and books for a breath of air, I have been musing lately about my favorite authors, those who have inspired my own writing in some way. I will list the top few:

• ROBERT FROST (since I was a child, I’ve treasured his poetry and it has grown with me)

• DANTE ALIGHIERI

• OWEN WISTER (notably, in his novel The Virginian)

• WILLA CATHER (notably, in My Antonia)

• FLANNERY O’CONNER

• T.S. ELIOT

• ST. FRANCIS DE SALES (patron saint of writers)
  

• P.G. WODEHOUSE (his novels taste like candy after a long, hard day)

How does my writing somehow reflect the light these literary giants have shed on me? I’ve been trying to figure that out and appreciate what it is that they inspire in my own writing and personal life. I have a few ideas, certainly not an all-inclusive list, but a few musings, which for now will serve as a candle in the dark.

Robert Frost is my beloved, New England nature poet. Frost is a model for me through his nature poetry, and I see his style reflected in my own writing. He is a nature poet though only in so far as nature is a way to contemplate human character and feelings. In other words, the natural world becomes a window into human nature for Frost. Consider, for example, his poem “Tree at My Window” in which he compares “outer weather" with the "inner weather” of the heart. My first blog entry titled “Stopping by a House on a Sunny Afternoon” was emblematic of his “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Moreover, when I write about nature, it is in order to help me understand the human heart and the nature of the soul.

Dante Alighieri reigns high on my list of inspirational authors – the best writer who ever lived. Through his use of Christian allegory and numerous metaphors and similes, Dante is able to leap even a step further than Frost, from human nature to the mystery of God. Not only making nature a window into the heart of man and woman, Dante also sees in the physical world of arts and sciences evidence of supernatural things. Dante uses the physical, natural world to explain supernatural mysteries and reveal divine truth. Dante grasps fully the meaning of a “sacramental world.” He also saw and sought to reconcile the religious myths of Greek antiquity with the truth of Christianity. I see myself striving to achieve the same end in my writing as Dante: seeking to discover and share the divine truths that this sacramental world points to.

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third,” wrote the poet T.S. Eliot. Eliot, like the best writers, wrote with a sense of urgency and prophesy about the times. I see Eliot as embodying the poet-prophet, which I relate with in my own personal writing mission. His masterwork poem The Waste Land is filled with a substantial amount of quotes from The Divine Comedy, which reiterate Eliot’s admiration for Dante, a poet-prophet himself. Eliot was both American born (in St. Louis, Missouri) and English raised (attending Harvard and Oxford). Eliot reminds me of the prophetic call that summons every writer.

Owen Wister wrote my favorite novel of adventure, love, the human character, evil, good, romance and a person becoming a conqueror over himself - what does that mean? To understand being a conqueror over oneself, consider Virgil’s words to Dante after he has ascended the mountain of purgatory and stands in the earthly paradise. After Dante has mastered his vices by practicing virtues, Virgil tells him, “I crown and miter you over yourself” (Purgatorio Canto XXVII).The main character, the Virginian, in Wister’s novel accomplishes a similar personal achievement at the end of that novel. His testing in manhood, which makes up the plot of the book, might be compared to Dante’s testing in the journey of The Divine Comedy. Called on to action by the beauty of the woman he loves, he is tested and tried and becomes a worthy man, master over himself. Like Dante, he experiences an "earthly paradise" and communion with the one he loves in the end. For the Virginian, that earthly paradise is a honeymoon on a mountain island, lush with woodland beauty.

Like Frost and Willa Cather in her novel My Antonia, Wister gives the natural world a significant role in the novel. The Wild West almost has its own character and personhood, capable of affecting change in the human characters who pass through it. Wister shows how the wilderness is man’s teacher. I agree and find nature to be an excellent teacher. I credit Wister with the parts and pieces of good writing: plot, character development, dialogue, action, suspense and description.

Finally, last but not least, Flannery O’Conner is a truly remarkable woman writer, a fearless warrior of words, who was in the world but not of the world. A misfit bound for heaven. The sheer boldness of her fictional stories and her use of what she called “large and startling figures” amazes me. She is my favorite woman writer, more so in her principles and personal life than in her created works (I admit, I find it hard to read her fiction and easier to read her essays). I don’t begin to compare my writing style with hers, nor would I say we have similar personalities. I find her beautifully strange and wonderfully different!

If O’Conner were officially recognized by the Church as a saint in heaven, she would be receiving many requests from me for her intercession! I find in O’Conner a writer who I can admire spiritually, and since my writing is often spiritual in nature, it’s important to me to have a spiritual role model in the writing vocation. While St. Francis de Sales is a wonderful patron of writers, he remains a man, while O’Conner is a woman. I feel so challenged by her rigorous spiritual and prayer life, her acceptance of suffering, her dedication to writing, her trust in God, her dry sense of humor, her passionate defense of the Faith and her love for the Church. If O’Conner embodies a motto it is: “Live simply. Write extravagantly.” However, I’m afraid that if I had met her in person before reading about her, I probably would have mistakenly judged that I didn’t like her and been a bit taken aback when she greeted me at the door in her down-to-earth, vernacular “Howdy!”

These are the giants and saints, my friends, who lead the way before me.

The Man in the Beaver Hat

“Better than robbing a bank!” said the man in the beaver hat, half-kidding, half-serious, standing over the stranger he was talking to in the second floor of the library. He gave the stranger sitting down an over-friendly jab on the shoulder and continued, “I go by the Bible’s principles. If a man can’t trust another man, then what good is all this,” he waved his hand at the law books the man was reading. “Then how are we going to ever get out of Iraq and end this war.”

I was in the library, working on my writing assignments, but now the beaver man attracted all my curiosity. He had found sanctuary, like me, in the literature section with the likes of Stephen King, Faulkner, Hemingway, Twain and O’Conner – the American literary greats. The beaver man wore tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a rough cotton shirt. His eyes were hollowed out in the valleys of his face. He arrived at my table with a square black case, a large overstuffed white envelope, and his calculator, ready to fulfill his duty to the government and fill out his tax forms. I subtly observed him.

Before he opened up his case, I noticed a black and white sticker and on it “9-11” and “war.” He wore a pin on his shirt with the reverse colors, black letters that spelled “Committ” on a white background, a slogan or word I had never heard before. It seemed like some kind of rallying statement. How long had he had it? How long had he been wearing pins and stickers, carrying signs and preaching peace?

What ensued were grunts and sighs. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he blurted out loud. After a while, he rose up suddenly and walked to the window, his eyes searching beyond the confines of politics and money boxes. I related with his yearning to find deeper meaning – is this all there is? Then he disappeared around the aisles of American fiction, only to suddenly reappear later, like some figure of the past who was still searching to find his place in the story, or his piece in the peace. Where was the peace he had been rallying for all his life?

One look at his papers sprawled out all over the table put him at unrest again. Taxes had no appeal to him now. That is why he turned to the man at the next table over, the white bearded man in a grey shirt and black sock hat. The man in the beaver hat drew curiously over, the beaver tail hanging behind his head. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he began, “Are you studying government? You’re not a lawyer, are you?”

The man answered no and murmured that he was studying to complete some kind of suit or law cases. From the tidbits I gathered he was studying for a degree in a new job. The more they chatted, the more amiable the man in the beaver hat became. Finally, he gave the stranger a friendly pat in admiration and wished him luck. “Better than robbing a bank!” he said and advised, “Don’t expect to make anything the first six months.”

I sat there and mused, my mind turning completely different matters than before. Where is the answer for peace? Is it in robbing the bank so we have financial “security”? Is it in our power-hungry careers? Is it in bigger government that provides for us after we have given our freedoms away? Is it in robbery or well-earned corporate successes, progressivism, consumerism or market increases? If so, then why are there growing divisions, rivalry, putting your fellow man down, national insecurities, and global wars? Yes, the more we reach for, the less we have. The more our arms grab and cling to, the less freedom we possess. The man in the beaver hat was right, “If a man can’t trust another man, then what good is all of this?”

I recalled his height, but how he slouched over at the shoulders, as if carrying the weight of a generation of fighters: Vietnam protesters, revolutionaries, tree-huggers and hippies. How many causes had he joined? Were they won or lost? And did it matter? Does any of it matter?

When all of this fades away and we are left, stripped of everything…a trumpet will thunder …“man and woman he created them…” and we will remember it all begins and ends with him and her and God. This is how it began and this is how it will end: ourselves accountable before the God who created us.

The greatest interior peace comes from doing the will of God in our lives. As Dante so famously penned in Paradiso, “In His will is our peace.”

Trust within loving relationships will yield peace. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, said “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” To belong to each other is to depend on one another, to hold ourselves responsible for each other’s well being, to be faithful in our promises, to be trustworthy. The family is the most basic cultivating ground for peace. Peace between couples equals peace in families, equals peace between neighbors, equals peace within cities, equals peace between states, countries, and nations. Mother Teresa, in calling us to cultivate peace in the world begins from home base, “I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?”

To all who read this, and to the man in the beaver hat, I hope that you may find and know the peace that you seek.