PART 4: THEME

 

A couple of months ago, I suffered a rude awakening. Every piece of short fiction I’d written in the past year was either on an editor’s desk or en route to one, and I still had plenty of stamps. So I decided to pull six or seven stories from Surprise and Recognition, my MFA thesis from the late 90s, and run them through my Thursday night workshop. With a little bit of tweaking, I thought, I could double my chances in the lottery that is publication. The first story I sent to the group was “Starting Over,” the opening piece from my collection. Instead of the rapturous praise I expected, instead of hearing that with a few choice modifications my backlist stories were ready for the bright lights, the discussion opened with someone asking, “Is this an old story? Because it’s not up to your usual standard.” It was quite a blow.

    Five years is a long time. In five years, a writer’s skill can increase exponentially. His ideas can develop a great deal, too.

    Dave began work on Ezekiel’s Shadow eight years ago and turned in the final draft about the same time I was handing in my thesis. I imagine he has grown as much as I have, if not more so, in the intervening years. For the past two days I’ve offered critical analysis on the structure and craft of Ezekiel’s Shadow, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything in the book that Dave himself wouldn’t have spotted today. In fact, given his position as an editor, I imagine there are things he would focus on that I haven’t observed.

    Now, though, I want to move beyond the technical realm, climbing from the sentence level up to the story level. I’ve titled this section “Theme,” and I intend it to be a consideration of the book’s ideas and how they are evoked.

 

DESERTS REAL AND ARTIFICIAL

 

In the Bible, redemptive history begins in a garden and ends in a city. Ezekiel’s Shadow begins and ends in a desert. The first one is real and the second is artificial. In the prologue, Ian Merchant meditates on the Utah desert where he was baptized and Howard Kepler died. In the final chapter, he and Rebecca throw their Labor Day party in a yard transformed by Ty Caller into a dry desert landscape. These deserts serve as intriguing brackets to a story preoccupied with questions of truth and illusion, artifice and authenticity. At first, the order of the deserts might seem backward. The artists in the story move, post-conversion, from illusion to truth, so you might expect the artificial desert at the beginning of the book and the real one at the end. But Merchant’s conversion is a fait accompli, happening before the action starts. He is already acquainted with the real desert and now, as an artist, has to learn where that reality fits in a world full of artifice.

    That’s why the jackrabbit carries so much weight.

    At the Labor Day party, Ty Caller deploys a host of animals, including a jackrabbit that escapes into the brush. Peter Ray remarks that he hasn’t seen a rabbit like that since “tramping through New Mexico twenty years ago” (p. 383). No sooner has he spoken than a fox pounces on the rabbit and the two animals thrash out of sight. Amid all the pretense and artifice, something real has happened and the stakes are life and death. The juxtaposition of the artificial and the real is the dilemma of every artist, the problem that won’t go away.

    The nature of Katherine Jacoby’s art changes after her conversion. As Pastor Ron, preaching in a church that is without artifice—they meet in a school gym and, “nobody had tried to make it look like anything else” (p. 192)—says of Jacoby: “...she gave her life to the Lord and stopped...these kinds of carvings.... I wonder if it was because she discovered the truth behind the illusions she had been seeing” (p. 365). Jacoby’s earlier work is whimsical; it’s all about fooling the eye. Later, though, she produces Ezekiel, the bony wind chime that serves as focal point for Merchant’s epiphany. She hasn’t abandoned art entirely, but her conversion has changed the nature of her work.

 

THE END OF HORROR

 

Something similar is happening to Ian Merchant. Throughout the book, he struggles to figure out what his newfound faith means to his art. At first, it appears that Merchant’s conversion is the cause of his writer's block, but as the book progresses we find out that the problems started sooner—in fact, the same forces that brought about his conversion seem to have spiked his creativity. The change begins when Merchant confronts the “vicious nihilism” of his latest novel, Hunter. He eulogizes it in spiritual terms: “This book has no soul. It’s cold and brutal and mean.” This despair is unworkable. “I can’t keep going in this direction,” Merchant tells himself. “There’s got to be something more” (p. 225).

    Now this is a realization worthy of Francis Schaeffer, whose line of despair Merchant seems to have sunk beneath. The hopelessness of his own art has set him on the path to hope, which eventually takes him to Howard Kepler and the cross. Merchant connects his own change of heart with Katherine Jacoby’s explicitly:

 

“Do you remember Rebecca’s talk about Katherine Jacoby how at one point she stopped painting trompe l’oeil sculptures completely? I understand that. For so long she saw the world as this illusion, this dream-of-a giant kind of thing. Then she became a Christian, and her perspective changed. Suddenly, illusion didn’t matter anymore. She fought through that and ended up having to dedicate her life to something new....

        “For a long time....I saw the world in terms of horror and grief. It sounds bad, and I guess it was, but it’s the truth. I followed it to the very end— Hunter took my vision as far as I could take it. And when I got there I found out I was very wrong. My answer, my vision, had been wrong. For Katherine there was something more than illusion. For me there was something more than horror. I now know that I can’t return” (p. 255).

 

This isn’t a repudiation of the horror genre per se. It’s the repudiation of a nihilistic perspective on life. Later, Merchant makes this clear when he gives his testimony to the writing group. This is another example of eschewing artifice in favor of authenticity. Peter Ray re-classifies Merchant’s memoir as a testimony and insists that the proper mode of testimony is oral: “The written word is okay for this sort of thing but, really, you’ve got to hear somebody tell his story out loud....Anybody can make words on a page sound pretty, but it’s a whole different matter talking from your heart” (p. 309). So Merchant tells his story, only to have the skeptical Kevin Contrade pepper him with questions, culminating in this: “How can the image of a man dying and suffering be beautiful?” Merchant’s answer opens up the heart of the book:

 

    “[Kepler] said, ‘This image is beautiful because it means the end of horror....Horror isn’t anything but the fear of death, the fear of the unknown. Jesus’ death buries both of these. Death is overcome and everything is made known.’”

        [....]

        Kevin protested. “There’s still horror in the world, Ian.”

        “Not quite. There’s still pain. There’s still suffering. There’s even still death. But through Jesus there doesn’t need to be any more terror. I believed that way back in December, believed that there was something stronger and bigger than the tales I could write. Now I simply knew what to call it: God’s mercy and Jesus’ death” (p. 313).

 

Why do I call this the book’s heart? Because it is the reality all the symbolism points to. A man whose middle name is Ezekiel has led Merchant into the desert to experience the new life figured in the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of dry bones—a setting echoed by Katherine Jacoby’s wind chime and Ty Caller’s transformation of the yard into a “festive desert mesa.” In that desert, death has lost its sting and the fractured images of death are stirred into motion by a wind from God. The cross brings an end to horror because God’s love casts out fear.

    From a theological standpoint, this is all well and good, but it has implications for art that need to be addressed. Merchant’s testimony is encouraged by Peter Ray in the hope that it will accomplish an evangelistic end: he wants Kevin Contrade to hear it and be convinced. The shift from written memoir (by implication, artifice) to spoken testimony (from the heart) calls into question not just the sincerity of fiction but of writing in general. Earlier in the book, Merchant’s decision to abandon fiction is linked to a crisis of confidence:

 

Howard’s death and the other explanations about his writer’s block had just been excuses. This was real; he no longer believed in heroes. He wasn’t sure why yet, but Ian knew that his days of writing fiction were over (p. 111).

 

This disbelief in heroes is echoed soon after when Contrade and Jaret Chapman get into an argument about “whether a character’s actions should be portrayed as truly altruistic and whether altruism existed at all, anywhere” (p. 125). All of this seems to point to the possibility that the conventions of drama do not correspond to the real world, that there is something dishonest about inventing heroes and having them overcome evil with good. Again, the illusions of art are weighed against truth and found wanting.

    If I were going to sum up the theme of Ezekiel’s Shadow in a phrase, it would be, “the end of horror.” Merchant’s conversion marks the end of horror in more ways than one. He can no longer believe in it, and he can no longer exploit it in his art. As important as his testimony is, I find it interesting to note that everything he recounts has taken place prior to the beginning of the book’s action. Perhaps there are lessons for Merchant to learn during the course of the action, but every significant event that will teach him has already happened by the time we meet the man, stymied at his desk on page 9. The events of his testimony are more fragmentary than mysterious to the reader, who has picked up hints throughout the book. It makes me wonder what might change in terms of theme if a book like Ezekiel’s Shadow began with Merchant’s feverish re-reading of Hunter.

    According to John Gardner, “fiction goes after understanding by capturing, through imitation, ‘the ineluctable modality of the world’—that is, characters who subtly embody values and who test them, with clear but inexpressible results, in action.”

    Many ideas and values are conjured in Ezekiel’s Shadow. Does Christian conversion preclude the possibility of writing fiction—or at least, of writing certain kinds? Does it give an artist unique insight into the nature of reality? Does it transform his understanding of dramas possibilities and limitations? These are the questions the novel raises, but it doesn’t always arrive at answers through the test of action. Flipping back through the book, I have a hard time tracing the progression of Merchant’s interior struggle. He tells me he has given up fiction. He tells me he is wrestling with this or that attempt at narrative. But as a reader I do not feel like a part of that action; its results are reported to me after the fact by Merchant. As a result, Ezekiel’s Shadow raises many of the same questions Dave pursues today at Faith in Fiction, but without giving readers a way to enter the ring. We see examples of artists in aesthetic jeopardy—Kepler, Jacoby, Merchant himself—without going through it ourselves. Part of this, I think, stems from the fact that so much of the relevant action has already happened by the time the story begins.

 

IS THE FIX IN?

 

In my introduction, I mentioned Nathan Van Engen’s article “Cathedral Reality: What is ‘Christian’ Creative Writing?” in Mars Hill Review. One of Van Engen’s criticisms of Ezekiel’s Shadow was that, as in all CBA fiction, he knew “the fix” was in from the beginning. All the loose threads that arose, no matter how menacing, would be tied in a neat, pleasant (and theologically orthodox) bow by the end of the book. As I read Ezekiel’s Shadow, I kept this critique in mind. Is it true?

    Yes and no.

    Yes, by the end of the book, Ian Merchant is reconciled to the implications of his conversion. He delivers a clear, conventional statement of faith, and his wife joins him in baptism, to boot. The stalking, which at one point went so far as to hint at supernatural overtones, turns out never to have been much of a threat. Trout and the dog Cain, the two injured parties, recover beautifully. The stalker even redeems himself with a bit of heroism in the finale.

    But to be honest, the outcome is determined as much by the story Dave chose to tell as the conventions of the CBA. If a Christian sits down at the keyboard to tell the story of how a horror novelist’s conversion changes the nature of his life’s work, results like the one we find in Ezekiel’s Shadow are reasonable to expect. Merchant’s actions are credible. His choices make sense within the context of the story’s reality.

    The two things that open Ezekiel’s Shadow up to criticism on this front are the stalking plot and the prevalence of Christian imagery. If there is anything in the book that has the potential to go off the rails and start making havoc for the happy ending, it’s the stalking, which is downright creepy at the start. As the stalking loses menace and is finally undercut by Louis Kael’s confession, that possibility subsides only to resurface at the end of the book. When Merchant finds his wife trapped in the basement, alone with the stalker, its seems as if something bad might happen after all. But with a word from Rebecca—“Louis set him up, Ian”—the scene drops its tragic overtones and delivers a comic image: the cross adapted for use as a battering ram.

    The stalking plot is the aspect of Ezekiel’s Shadow I have the most misgivings about. When I first discovered Faith in Fiction, I checked out Dave’s books online. I remembered one of the Amazon reviewers says, “...it starts to slow down in the middle and the ending is unsatisfying. Basically, it seems like Mr. Long just got tired of writing the book and decided to end it.” Since I had just the opposite experience—the book really gets going for me at the mid-point—I went back to this review to see if I missed something. Here’s how the reviewer qualifies his statement: “If you're looking for a great suspense novel, there are certainly many suspenseful pages in here—but don't look for a satisfactory payoff on all of it. If you're looking for a good story about a man's wrestling with his faith in view of his old life, you've found it here.” Ezekiel’s Shadow tries to be both of these stories, which is an ambitious project. For me, the suspense plot takes away from the artist/conversion story, perhaps because (as the Amazon reviewer suggests) it isn’t carried through, or perhaps because the themes tied up in the parallel plot intrigue me more.

     Ezekiel’s Shadow is packed with biblical imagery, and this more than the happy ending contributes, in my view, to the sense that the story is over-determined. A Christian reader steeped in biblical literature knows right away the significance of the name Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones. To refresh your memory, here’s the Old Testament passage:

 

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord (Ezekiel 37: 1-6, ESV).

    

Howard Kepler’s middle name, the subject matter of his artwork and the place of his death are all to be found in that passage. Katherine Jacoby’s signature work consists of bones and wind and bears the prophet’s name, too. This powerful vision of God causing life where they was death, flesh where there was bare bone, a commonplace of the pulpit, casts the shadow in which Ezekiel’s Shadow rests.

    It’s too easy.

    A Christian reader gets it immediately. He knows where all this imagery is going to lead, and if there were any doubt the message is reinforced constantly, culminating in the grand set-piece where Ty Caller transforms the Merchants’ yard into desert—a choice, by the way, that is difficult to understand given Merchant’s vivid horror at the circumstances of Kepler’s death. The abundance of imagery is neat and thorough, but that makes it predictable and unchallenging, too.

    An audience unfamiliar with these images might not pick up on the early hints in Ezekiel’s Shadow, and I imagine there are some readers who would be comforted by their familiarity. The book would be better served, though, by a subtler, more complicated use of Christian symbols. For example, when Merchant “baptizes” Kyle Turner with the garden hose, nothing but the placement of the scene in the middle of other discussions of water and baptism tips the reader off that there is a deeper layer to consider. The restraint of that scene is admirable, and if it had been applied in a broader way to the prophets, deserts and dry bones that appear in the book, the result would be a less determined outcome.

 

CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW VS. A CHRISTIAN'S WORLDVIEW

 

In a sense, my concern about the use of Christian imagery in Ezekiel’s Shadow comes down to this: it is generically Christian when I want it to be idiosyncratically Christian. The desert, the dry bones, the wind and even the water are all applied in ways that Christians, generally speaking, will recognize and agree with. Merchant uses them as any Christian would and learns from them what every Christian should. This is writing from a Christian worldview, but not a particular Christian's worldview. What the imagery in Ezekiel’s Shadow needs is particularization. In fiction we desire what would, in theological terms, be inadmissable: private interpretation. First, there should be room in the narrative for Merchant to make of these things what he will—in fairness, there is, but perhaps there should be more—and secondly, there should be room for the reader to make something of it, too. No one reading Ezekiel’s Shadow will come to the wrong conclusion about what the story signifies. But maybe they should.

    Having said all this, though, I want to step back and say how much I as a Christian reader appreciate the fact that Ezekiel’s Shadow appropriates such important—and, to be honest, such difficult—imagery. The prophecy itself is packed with aesthetic and rhetorical force, and a narrative centered on an artist's conversion and subsequent struggle to give life to the dead bones of his own creation is a good place to invoke it. I admire how central the prophecy to his story. One of the criticisms that is sometimes made of CBA fiction, rightly or wrongly, is that the conversions are unearned and tacked on, and that they're tangential to the entertainment-value of the "real" plot. Ezekiel’s Shadow isn't perfect, but it escapes condemnation on any of those grounds. Here, the conversion is central to the premise and the genre plot is incidental. Here, a real effort is made to ground both Ian and Rebecca Merchant's conversions in reality. Their church experiences are credible and specific, too. We know what sort of church they attend, its denomination and worship style, and we also know how infrequently they attend it. Interestingly, there are a number of characters in the story, like Kevin Contrade and the Oakleys, who are portrayed sympathetically and exposed to the Gospel, but remain unbelievers (or at least, non-evangelicals).

    What this means is that Ezekiel’s Shadow reflects many of the interests and issues we associate with Dave's work at Faith in Fiction today. It raises questions about the relationship of faith and art that are similar to those he pursues now and manages to avoid many of the tired conventions he would like to see avoided in Christian fiction. What I'm curious to know is whether, a few years on, Dave likes the way he approaches and answers the questions, and whether the thematic shape of the book would be different if he were writing it today?

 

YOU TAKE IT FROM HERE

 

this analysis is part of a larger discussion, and you should be a part of it. First, make sure you're reading Dave Long's parallel commentaries. For each entry here, there is a counterpoint from the author offering insight into his motivation and ideas that will help you apply the discussion to your own work. Also, if you haven't already, be sure to visit the new CRITICAL ANALYSIS section of the Faith in Fiction Forum and get involved in the conversation about Ezekiel’s Shadow and Christian fiction there.