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For
years, the many novels, stories, poems and essays of Walter
Wangerin, Jr. have spanned the breadth of human experience.
As the passage of years guides a person from childhood to
adulthood and the passage of centuries guides a people from
one set of beliefs to another, his stories return us to
our beginnings and allow us to see where our passages began.
All of Mr. Wangerin's
novels are set in a time and place constructed within the
author's imagination. In some stories, such as The Book
of the Dun Cow (1978) and The Book of Sorrows (1985),
that world is entirely imagined. In others, such as The
Crying For A Vision (1994), The Book of God (1996)
and Paul: A Novel (2000), the world about which he
writes once existed, but has been recreated from the distant
past in the author's imagination. Yet the characters who
live in these worlds, real or imagined, past or present,
face choices that modern readers would recognize. All of
his novels allow readers to dwell in a world far different
from their own, populated with characters that are not so
different from themselves.
I recently visited
Mr. Wangerin on the campus of Valparaiso University, where
he is a Professor of English. I arrived on the campus just
as the clouds were clearing after an early summer thunderstorm.
The campus was quiet, the students having gone home for
the year. There were a few people in Huegli Hall, where
the author's maintains his office.
I asked a student if
she had seen Mr. Wangerin. She said she had and that he
had just stepped away for a moment. Her tone was that of
someone talking not about a well known author and professor,
but about someone she knew.
Mr. Wangerin met me
outside his office. He is a tall, thin man in his fifties
with a small beard and a deeply lined face. He smiled, shook
my hand warmly and introduced himself simply as “Walt.”
“From the third
grade on, [there was never a time when] I did not write,”
began Mr. Wangerin. “It was the most natural thing
for me to do. When my brothers and sisters were playing
sports, I read and began to write. And in those days, I
just assumed that was the normal step you took. You liked
something and you did it. I loved to read, I loved stories
and novels, so I wrote them.
“I think we are
shapen toward various endeavors,” he continued. “Some
people turn them into hobbies and some people turn them
into professions, but there need be no strong reason for
it. [You say to yourself] ‘this is the thing that gives
me pleasure. This is the thing I like to do, this is the
thing I can do.’
“I teach creative
writing and one of the things I find that distinguishes
my students is what they desire. Those who desire to have
written are probably not going to become writers. They may
learn the craft, but to them the craft is a means to an
end. And so it takes a powerful desire to arrive at that
end in order to accomplish means that don’t necessarily
give you pleasure.
“The other students
are those who like to be writing. Not to have written, but
to be writing. They like the challenge of developing the
story, the sentence, every problem they encounter. This
is where I place myself. Every literary problem I encounter
is, for me, the delight of potential creativity. The first
thing you [do] when you are writing a novel [is to] realize
that you’ve [come to] a point where two contraries
have to be acknowledged and embraced at once and you say,
‘How can you do this?’ Maybe you’re obeying
the form of the novel as well as the direction of the story.
That’s a delightful problem to me. That’s a delightful
problem. I must be become more than I am when these two
things remain contraries.”
In Paul: A Novel,
the contraries arose from the setting of the novel in ancient
Rome and its modern presentation. That novel tells the story
of St. Paul's life and the history of the early church.
Each chapter is told from the point of view of a different
character. The technique of changing points of view within
a novel is a familiar one to modern readers. It would have
been less familiar to the people who lived the story Mr.
Wangerin tells. But by using this technique, he tells a
very old story in a way that modern audience would readily
embrace and resolves the inherently contrary relationship
between the ancient story and the modern reader.
“The points of
view were a preliminary problem, as a matter of fact,”
says Mr. Wangerin. “I had to make that choice before
I wrote, when I was framing the book. When [you] know that
a novel requires a certain direction or a certain revelation,
at the same time history doesn’t provide it, or history
even seems contrary to it, you might say, ‘Well, I’ll
throw this over, I won’t go this way at all.’
That’s the easier and the foolish way. On the other
hand, [you can also] say ‘Now I have contraries. What
leap can I as a writer make to find myself in a whole new
position?’
“That’s the
joy of creating in the moment, which is why I write. I’m
glad to be done with something, partly because you get tired
and its hard work and so forth. And you truly want other
people to read [your work]. On the other hand, right now,
as we’re talking, I’m revising a novel for publication
that I wrote last year. And I love to get up in the morning
and revise that thing. I’m in a rush only insofar as
I have a deadline by which [the publisher] needs the manuscript.
But it was a story I loved and that was solid when I finished,
and now I’m finding all the threads.
“I was just talking
to a friend of mine who read Faulkner’s As I Lay
Dying. I was talking about Faulkner’s ability
to subtlely repeat certain words always in clusters around
characters. One of my delights is to discover in a revision
that I had used a particular kind of tone or pattern or
image for a particular character. And now in a rewrite,
to clean up the false ones, to allow only that single, attaching
image to remain and at the same time develop it. That’s
why I write. It’s the delight of a sweet sentence sweetly
written. To delight in these things and make a good thing
better.”
The act of creating
a “sentence sweetly written” and meeting the challenges
of constructing a novel serve Mr. Wangerin’s role as
a storyteller. He has at times been referred to as a "storyteller,"
as opposed to a "writer" or a "novelist,"
perhaps because of the “Old World” approach to
storytelling that he takes in such works as The Book
of the Dun Cow. That book is an allegory in which a
group of barnyard animals, led by a proud rooster named
Chanticleer find themselves locked in a battle for their
survival with a creature from Medieval folklore known as
the Wyrm.
“I think works
like The Book of the Dun Cow are ‘Old World’
insofar as I imagine an oral tradition,” Mr. Wangerin
said. “I always hear the language I use when I write.
I always assume that it could be delivered out loud. So
I thought of Chanticleer and that whole presentation as
something that a storyteller would literally tell out loud
to someone.
“On the other
hand, since I chose in The Book of the Dun Cow to
use mythological figures as the enemy and barnyard figures
as the children of God, it behooved me to research that
time and that place. [At the time,] I had just done all
the course work for a PhD in Medieval Literature, so I was
very much aware of the signs and colors and all those things
at work.
“[Likewise] with
Paul I had to seriously research the Roman Empire
and his time and the kind of life he led. So much of the
imagery comes from there.
“I wrote a novel
about the Lakota Indians called Crying for a Vision and
there’d be none of that old world stuff in that novel.
It hones to an American Indian legend. And right now, the
novel I’m talking to you about is on Saint Julian the
Hospitaller, for which there is much ‘old world’
[material]. In that sense, it's ‘old world’ insofar
as I choose, insofar as I find context for it.”
Whatever that context
may be, whether it is an imagined world, an ancient civilization
or a traditional culture, there is a common thread in all
of Mr. Wangerin's work. All of his stories, both fiction
and non fiction, depict people facing the worlds in which
they live, finding what is right and good and furthering
it. And even if those worlds are far removed from the that
of the reader, they nevertheless are familiar, precisely
because the people who inhabit them are familiar.
“That, I think,
if I do well, exists in everything I do,” says Mr.
Wangerin. “That all the [themes of the novels come
through] and the oral tradition remains context. It becomes
a medium by which we communicate a time, but the medium
may change. [It may be] Indians, [it may be] beast fables
but what I always hope I’m getting at, some way or
another, is the very human, the gestures of human beings.”
Even though he writes
for the joy of the creative process, he is, as is any writer,
a communicator, a transmitter of the "gestures of human
beings." As a pastor in the Lutheran Church, his role
as a communicator is crucial.
To that end, Mr. Wangerin
has written extensively on religious issues. Just as storytelling
has always been an important part of the Christian liturgy,
writing plays a large role in Mr. Wangerin’s ministry.
“On the one hand,
as a pastor I write things and as a writer I write things,”
Mr. Wangerin said, on the relationship between his work
as a writer and his ministry. “As a pastor writing
things, the purpose is to communicate a particular spiritual
truth. Or, as a pastor preaching, the purpose becomes to
facilitate a human being’s experience of spiritual
truth.
“As a writer,
however, I want to tell a ripping good story. I want to
tell a story very well, and with that come the clusters
of truths and faithful things. But there are two completely
different purposes and motives involved. So, for example,
[in the case of Paul], I think it would diminish
the book if a faithful person picked it up and said ‘what
does this teach me about the faith? What am I going learn
here?’
“Number one, it
would diminish it because they come with an intellectual
bent and not the open, willing, experiential bent. Number
two, I think one of the failings of Western Christianity
is that it fears the experience and reduces it to a mental
gymnastic or to a pious response. So all my life as a writer
the Christianity creeps in, not because I’m selling
Christianity but because I believe that a writer will always
write the deepest tenets, the deepest axioms by which the
writer makes sense of existence. And that’s a level
of faith, no matter what, even if its unorthodox, even if
its unacknowledged, even if it’s a half-known name.
Every writer who can write something coherent has internal
axioms by which to make a coherence out of human experience.
And I’m a Christian, so [mine] appear that way.
“But I must say
that sometimes it makes me uncomfortable when a non-Christian
[reads my work seeking] a Christian truth here and a Christian
there, bringing in all of his or her prejudices with regard
to religious issues.
“It likewise disturbs
me when a Christian comes and seeks only truths. In both
cases we have someone who is unwilling to obey the art.
And I seek those who are willing not only to suspend disbelief,
but to believe with this book for a while. So that is always
my first thought. Let the story stand as the story is. Let
the reader approach the story without presumptions.
“And yet many,
many readers come to me [and ask], ‘What is your theme?
What are your messages?’ I want to say, ‘I love
the story so much that I want to make it as powerful as
I can and as particularly accurate as I can and as invitatory
as I can so that another one might also love and experience
the story. Isn’t that enough?’ And I think it
is, especially if that story makes simple what is very complex."
There are times, however,
when writing can be an act of faith. The Book of God,
one of Mr. Wangerin's most successful works, recasts
the stories of the Bible into the form of a modern novel.
“On the other
hand," Mr. Wangerin continued, "there are times
when I say, ‘Now faith will be the issue here.’
With The Book of God, since my whole profession trained
me in various approaches to the scriptures, and I have the
languages, the Hebrew and the Greek and so forth, I did
consciously say to myself at some point ‘Let now my
writing be a handmaid to my faith.’ So as I went about
designing and thinking about The Book of God itself,
I meant for it to be an expression of faith. And that’s
what was in my mind when I went to publishers and I said
I’d like to do this kind of a book. And so that’s
the contrary to everything I said previously.”
“[With The
Book Of God] I really wanted to re-present that story
and to show that there is a single narrative thread that
goes from Abraham to the covenant of Jesus Christ. Paul,
on the other hand, actually came about because my publisher
said, ‘The Book of God' has done well. Now,
Walt, you should write a novel about the early church.’
“And I said to
him, ‘This is impossible. What you’re asking for
is so diffuse that there’s no focus to it.’ You
can do a history of the early church, but you’ve got
to focus on something. But then he actually came down to
my house and often with an idea like that, it will sink
in and I’ll be thinking about it without being aware
of it. When he came to visit me about this, I had started
thinking, not [about] the early church, but [about how]
I could write a novel on one figure and let the chips fall
around that figure as best they might. And so I thought
of Paul because I don’t think there’s any figure
in all of Holy Scripture where we get closer to the actual
personality than with Paul. Because we actually have Paul’s
words. I get letters from my mother and by her words I know
her mood. And it can be very, very subtle. So I thought
of Paul for that reason and also because there was a wonderful
arc to his life. And, when they said yes, I went into a
whole new method of research. Besides using Paul’s
writings, I wanted to look very closely at the Roman Empire.
“One of the reasons
why [I told the story through many different perspectives]
was that [when you are writing about the early church] you’re
simply going to come out with contradictions. And these
are not contradictions you solve. They exist in the scripture.
They exist in the New Testament. You have an attitude like
James’, which is represented in the Gospel of Matthew,
that is a highly legalistic. It’s in Matthew that Jesus
says ‘Not one jot nor two of the law shall pass away.
You think I came to abolish the law? No, I came to establish
the law.’ This is not the way in which Paul is talking
when he says that those who abide by the law are hurting
themselves. And so rather than putting an authorial voice,
a single unified voice into that book, which would require
that voice taking sides, immediately I said, ‘I’m
going to set myself free. I’m going to tell the truth
of the New Testament much more easily if its many voices.
So James can say what James says and argue furiously for
it even as Paul says what he says.’
“In the last ten
or fifteen years, there’s been some really good social
scholarship on how people lived in those days. So then I
really did have to research the early church, how they worshipped,
how they most likely worshipped and so forth. So with Paul,
although I delighted at times to place things in there which
I think another person might pluck up, chew and be nourished
by, nevertheless were put in the story frame itself only
[as the research suggested they might actually have been
there].
“My thought was
not to give Paul a platform from which he could persuade
everyone that what he said in “Galatians” was
true, but rather, to find a reality that might have fetched
up a “Galatians” exactly as it was. So, you could
say, ‘Of course someone would write like that.’
“That’s a
lot to say to that question about why I wrote Paul.
But I wrote it because my publisher said ‘Why don’t
you?’”
Much of the power of
such works as The Book of God and Paul: A Novel
comes from the context in which a reader experiences them.
In a sense, the reader must place him or herself, for a
while, into the world of the novel in order to fully experience
it.
From the time we are
children, we put ourselves into the context of stories that
we experience. In Mr. Wangerin’s essay, “The Writing
of Branta and Other Affections,” he argues against
critics and parents who consider Maurice Sendak’s Where
The Wild Things Are too frightening for children. In
his view, this book and others like it do not engender fear,
but rather give a “habitation and a name to fears the
child already experienced, but amorphously, perplexedly.”
(Wangerin, 41) The story, in this case, provides a path
of sorts to lead the child to an understanding of that which
he or she fears.
When I first read this
essay, I was reminded of something I observed a few years
ago at a bookstore holding an event to celebrate the books
of Maurice Sendak. There were readings from his work, games,
and most importantly, an actor dressed as one of the creatures
from Where The Wild Things Are. Where some of the
children enjoyed the creature, others were so frightened
that their parents had to take them out of the store.
“What was absent
there was the companion,” said Mr. Wangerin. “Most
often the child looks at a book with a parent or a reader,
and that reader is a companion. The second companion is
the little boy in the book. [In that case,] the child listening
has choices. And I believe this to be absolutely true about
children’s literature, that is the child will enter
the story insofar as he or she is prepared. When they’re
ready to go all the way and look at it and feel it, then
they’ll go. But when the thing is not in a story, you’re
right. When there are no companions, when you’re the
little boy or the little girl and there are no choices anymore,
it’ll terrify you.”
There has always been
a clear distinction between the ways in which books are
written for and marketed to children and adults. But it
must also be remembered that Mr. Wangerin’s first book,
The Book of the Dun Cow, was published for both children
and adults. Simon and Schuster saw children as the target
audience whereas Harper and Row marketed the book to adults.
The book was not rewritten or edited to suit either audience.
It was simply marketed differently to the different audiences.
So the question of
how children and adults relate to stories is perhaps more
complex than it may first appear. Isaac Bashevis Singer
took up this idea in an essay entitled “Are Children
the Ultimate Literary Critics?,” wherein he argued
that children are best suited to judge a story because they
come to it without preconceptions or prejudice. He goes
on to argue that children are concerned with “eternal
questions” of theology, philosophy and justice.
“Who made the
earth, the sky, people, animals?” wrote Singer. “Children
think about and ponder such matters as justice, the purpose
of life, the why of suffering…They are bewildered and
frightened by death. They cannot accept the fact that the
strong rule the weak.” (Singer, 562)
“I think it’s
a bit idealistic,” said Mr. Wangerin, responding to
Singer’s argument. “On the other hand, I think
that when someone writes [for children] with that in mind,
children can respond to it. And I do think that what he
touches upon is there in children’s souls. But not
quite to the level that he’s suggesting.
“For example,
I do think that justice is in a child’s soul. And I
think the desire to see that justice is done is there. But
it is not a dispassionate, detached justice. It’s a
very attached and personal justice.
“And so, in fairy
tales, children are not troubled at the end [when the characters
die]. Bruno Bettelheim suggests, and I agree with him, that
children realize the distinction between fantasy and reality.
As you were saying at the beginning, fantasy in the story
Where the Wild Things Are works, whereas the monster
outside of the story doesn’t work. Because that’s
not fantasy anymore. Its in their reality.
“[Also,] this
is their sense of justice. That is, that those who are evil
should be punished equal to their evil. Therefore I think
[Singer] is right. At the same time, he’s granting
them a sort of altruistic attitude which I think they have
to grow up to find.”
“In The Uses
of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim said, and this I do
agree with, children’s questions have this kind of
a depth,” Mr. Wangerin continued. “Yes, they are
very much aware of death, yes they are very much aware of
evil. When they are hurt, they expect someone else to be
hurt in return. Fairness.
“On the other
hand, I think children are aware, even more than adults
are, that evil is in them. They know that they get very
exercised with hatred toward their siblings or against the
little baby that just came into the house. Bettelheim suggests
that children recognize this in themselves. They recognize
the fear of abandonment, they recognize the fear of solitude,
they recognize the evil in themselves and thereby recognize
an evil in the world.
“They seek in
story some kind of frame for these things and a passage
through these things through story. Whether or not we can
say they ask the highest philosophical questions [as Singer
suggests, is debatable.] Its not impossible for [a child’s]
thought to go that way, but I’m not sure their thought
is spontaneous that way. [A child will ask] ‘Where
does the sky come from? Where does the world come from?’
"But here’s
a curious thing: They don’t ask it as scientists. They
ask it in relation to themselves. That’s the distinction
here. Scripture answers the question the way a child asks
it. The sky, the firmament is placed there by God so all
the wild things, that thundering, cataclysmic water is kept
away from you, oh my child, so that you may have a space
in which to live. ‘What is the sky?’ means ‘What
is the relationship?’. And the Old Testament suggests
it was God who put it there for your sake. And that's the
beauty of that for the child. So I’m standing here
between Singer and Bettelheim.”
If children come to
a story seeking a framework that enables them to understand
their own reality, can the same be said for adults? When
a person acquires the maturity and experience to ask the
deepest philosophical questions, does his or her approach
to and need for stories differ from that of children?
“The same thing
happens to adults when they release themselves into a good
work of fiction as into a play as into an opera as into
a good piece of music,” says Mr. Wangerin. “The
principle holds, I think. It holds less, however in adults
if they become so attentive to the mechanics of the world
around them, if they diminish truth to proposition, as many
adults do. In this case they are less and less alert to
the experience and the rhythms of truth in fiction. And
we do that to ourselves, the world does that to us. I had
a remarkable education in the Lutheran Church in the Missouri
Synod system. It was, in the true sense of the word ‘Liberal
Arts.’ On the other hand, my whole education was meant
to make me an analytic being. To analyze for truth. To measure
it. To demand proofs at a certain rational level. [And this
diminishes] the both metaphor experience and my willingness
to deliver myself into the hands of a powerful artist.
“The distinction
I make is [between our own society and more traditional
cultures], such as in Africa. They don’t take a thing
apart to understand it. We do. Whether it’s a clock
or a philosophy, we compartmentalize. Rather than do that
[people in traditional societies] dance with it. They stand
in relationship to it. They move with it. That’s what
the child is capable of doing. That’s what we knead,
or school, out of ourselves. If the adult can keep that,
then the story is the same for the adult.
“[Another factor
for the adult] is need. The more self sufficient an adult
feels him or herself to be the less capable they are of
rejoicing in a work of fiction or being blown back and forth
by its winds.
“Put it this way.
If they’re self sufficient, they would be rifling the
story for something they could use. It would be utilitarian.
They wouldn’t read fiction much. It would bore them.
But yes, on the other hand, when someone is not self sufficient,
it doesn’t necessarily mean that they come with a need.
It’s that they truly live in a sort of communal atmosphere.
“This is why literature
and storytelling were so good in cultures past. And the
[reason why the] storytelling we hunger for doesn’t
exist in this particular culture is that we live [for the]
individual. Western Society says that the wholeness of the
human is the individual human. Previous societies have always
said the wholeness is the family. The wholeness is the tribe.
The wholeness is the community. This is another reason why
its harder for the childlike response to a story to remain
in the adult. But if the adult, and I suggest often women
more than men, truly live in a sense of community, then
they are more likely to listen to a story and be moved by
it like a child, or to deliver themselves unto it completely
because they’re willing for another voice to become
their own voice. They’re willing for the moves another
person makes to become their own moves.
“But, you know,
if I’m the chairman of some industry, a CEO, or even
if I run my own business and I’m very confident [in
myself], I’m not going to listen to [others.] A child
must be a part of others. A child allows other voices to
become his voice or her voice.
“And those who
live in community do, too. I think that’s one of the
reasons why, as terrible as the motives or the cause was,
people working on a chain gang and people working in harmony
together, forced or not, sing together. And they really
do listen to one another. And they’re much more willing
to hear the preacher preach. And they’re much more
willing to say, ‘tell me a story.’ “
In many ways, all literature
is a response to the words, “Tell me a story.”
Mr. Wangerin writes for the joy of creativity, but that
joy is not meant to stop with him. Rather, it is meant to
be passed to his audience, whether that audience is a congregation
seeking spiritual truth or a reader seeking out a good novel.
As our conversation brought out, human beings seek out stories
that define them both as individuals and as a part something
larger. Because in stories, we can find the things that
unite us. Stories can lead adults and children, men and
women, people inside and outside of a community to see the
world with the same eyes for a while. And in doing so, stories
can tell us much about our world, ourselves and each other. 
Works
Cited
Singer, Isaac Bashevis, “Are
Children The Ultimate Literary Critics?,” A Day
of Pleasure And Other Stories For Children, Galahad
Books, 1962, re-released 1992
Wangerin, Walter Jr., "The
Writing of Branta And Other Affections," Swallowing
The Golden Stone, Augsburg Fortress Books, 2001
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