L.B.: 28:06:42:12

Left Behind, pp. 387-391

"I felt my heart strangely warmed," John Wesley wrote of the moment of his conversion. Something similar is happening to Buck Williams in this passage, but his warmness is far stranger than Wesley's:

Buck did not trust himself to respond with coherence. He still had chills, yet he felt sticky with sweat. What was happening to him? He managed a whisper, "I want to thank you for your time, and for dinner," he said.

I don't know if you do this too, but sometimes when I read a scene -- particularly one with a vivid description of some gesture or facial expression -- I find myself imitating that description.* That response is a kind of test, a way of verifying whether the description is realistic, whether it rings true. With scenes like the one above, I find myself mentally re-enacting them. Try it yourself here. Does Buck's "whisper" make any sense? Rayford gives his hour-long, uninterrupted speech on End Times prophecy. He finally reaches the end and Buck doesn't comment, doesn't say, "Well, that was fascinating/interesting/different," he just whispers -- whispers -- "I want to thank you for your time, and for dinner."

I just can't see that happening.

The authors' task here is not an easy one. Buck is on the verge of an epiphany, of one of those magical, transforming moments when we catch, or almost catch, a glimpse of something transcendent and our heart is "strangely warmed." You don't have to have experienced a religious conversion to appreciate what Wesley meant by that. If you've ever had any such glimpse -- any moment of grace, or clarity, or of the sudden onrush of overwhelming beauty, insight or love then you know what Wesley's talking about. (Kate: "Yikes. It sounds like you've had an epiphany." Angel: "I keep saying that, but nobody's listening.")

Nothing like that seems to be happening here for Buck, who seems to be experiencing flu-like symptoms. The authors want us to interpret this scene as the working of the Holy Spirit through Rayford. It comes across more as the working of salmonella through, perhaps, the chicken.

Buck's spiritual crisis might be easier to understand if the authors ever actually let us hear what it was in Rayford speech that gave him chills. Then again, knowing what we know about the authors and about their decidedly uninspiring prophecy checklist, that might make Buck's spiritual sweatiness harder to understand. Based on the rough outline of Rayford's speech that we are given, he never deals with what you'd think would be the key point: The world is going to end. Soon.

If I were Rayford, I'd have led off with that fact: "How old are you, Williams? 30? You'll never be 38." That would seem like an attention-getter. Rayford should be offering a constant running countdown, like Frank the rabbit in Donnie Darko.

Instead, Rayford tells Buck his whole life story and then babbles about the Two Witnesses in Jerusalem. He knows that the world is going to end in almost exactly seven years -- knows this with certainty, having read it in the Bible, or at least on the back cover of Left Behind -- but he doesn't seem to think this is pertinent information to share with his reporter friend.

Thus when Buck asks Hattie for her take on Rayford's theory, she responds:

"I think Rayford is sincere and thoughtful. Whether he's right, I have no idea. That's all beyond me and very foreign. But I am convinced he believes it."

That's the kind of abstract opinion that you might offer if you'd spent the last hour discussing Rayford's theory of, say, the Tunguska Event. Rayford's presentation seems to invite just such an abstract response because he neglects to include the salient bit about the end of the world. If he had seen fit to mention, when they started dinner, that the world was going to end in 6 years, 357 days and 16 hours, or if he had mentioned when they were finished that the world was going to end in 6 years, 357 days and 14 hours, then "Whether he's right, I have no idea" would have been a mind-bogglingly inadequate response.

The more you consider this, the stranger it seems. Rayford is portrayed throughout this chapter as speaking with a desperate urgency because he knows the clock is ticking. He grows increasingly frustrated that no one else seems to appreciate his urgency, but he steadfastly refuses to fill them in on the whole ticking-clock aspect. Maybe he noticed the looks being exchanged between Buck and his daughter and he decided to withhold this information. After all, you tell two young people that the world is going to end in 6 years and 357 days and they're probably not going to want to take things slow.

"I will get back to you before using any of your quotes," Buck says (possibly still whispering, it's not clear). He says this, apparently, to give Jenkins the opportunity to insert some of his research into the exotic world of professional reporters:

That was nonsense, of course. He had said it only to give himself a reason to reconnect with the pilot. He might have a lot of personal questions about this, but he never allowed people he interviewed to see their quotes in advance. He trusted his tape recorder and his memory, and he had never been accused of misquoting.

Buck looked back at the captain and saw a strange look cross his face. He looked -- what? Disappointed? Yes, then resigned.

Suddenly Buck remembered who he was dealing with. This was an intelligent, educated man. Surely he knew that reporters never checked back with their sources. He probably thought he was getting a journalistic brush-off.

A rookie mistake, Buck, he reprimanded himself. You just underestimated your own source.

Buck was putting his equipment away ...

If you're interviewing someone and you may have further questions later, there's no reason not to say, "I may call you later to follow up." But that wouldn't have allowed Jenkins to show off what he's learned about reportering, or to remind us again about Rayford's Ph.D. from Embry-Riddle. For all of that research, though, Jenkins still seems to think that a reporter's tape recorder is some kind of giant reel-to-reel machine with a detachable microphone -- the sort of "equipment" one would have to "put away" rather than just tucking back into one's jacket pocket. (He refers to it later in this scene as "the machine.")

Buck was putting his equipment away when he noticed Chloe was crying, tears streaming down her face.

Apparently Chloe also had the chicken.

What was it with these women? Hattie Durham had been weeping when she and the captain had finished talking that afternoon. Now Chloe.

"What was it with these women?" Gender isn't the common variable here. The common variable is Rayford. Spend an hour with this guy and you'll wind up sobbing uncontrollably or shivering through your sweat. Both of these have happened to me just from reading about him.

Buck could identify, at least with Chloe. If she was crying because she had been moved by her father's sincerity and earnestness, it was no surprise. Buck had a lump in his throat, and for the first time since he had lain facedown in fear in Israel during the Russian attack, he wished he had a private place to cry.

Buck assumes he knows why Chloe is upset, so he doesn't bother to ask her if she's OK, or to offer her a handkerchief, or to make any of the other sort of feeble gestures we humans tend to make when we notice that someone sitting next to us has tears streaming down her face.

It's at this point that Buck asks Hattie for her opinion, "off the record."

"Why off the record?" Hattie snapped. "The opinions of a pilot are important but the opinions of a flight attendant aren't?"

No, silly. It's not because you're a flight attendant. Your opinions don't matter because you're a woman -- which is also why the only opportunity you've been given to speak in this chapter is just one more attempt to portray you as thin-skinned and bitchy. That attempt backfires again. Score another point for meta-Hattie.

Rayford was not surprised at Hattie's response, but he was profoundly disappointed with Chloe's. He was convinced she didn't want to embarrass him by saying how off the wall he sounded.

He doesn't even seem to notice that his daughter is sobbing. Yet he's still "convinced" he knows what she's thinking and, based on that assumption, he is "profoundly disappointed" in her. I'm sure that comes across as comforting. What is it with these men?

"Mr. Williams," he said, standing and thrusting out his hand, "it's been a pleasure. The pastor I told you about in Illinois really has a handle on this stuff and knows much more than I do about the Antichrist and all. It might be worth a call if you want to know any more."

So thanks for the interview. Oh, and I almost forgot, the world is going to end in exactly 6 years, 357 days aaaaaand ... 13 hours. 'Bye now.

In these parting words, Rayford summarizes what he considers the key point of his hourlong speech. Here is the core of his message -- of the authors' message -- of his and their version of the "gospel": "The Antichrist and all."** Again, consider how strange this is in the best-selling "Christian novel" of the last two decades. Not, "Jesus and all," or "Jesus' return and all," or even "God's righteous wrath (and our righteous schadenfreude) and all." The Antichrist and all.

The central figure in this message is not Christ, but the Antichrist. It's fair to ask, then, if LaHaye and Jenkins' religion might not be more accurately called "Antichristianity." In their defense, however, we should note that the essential focus of their religion is not to celebrate or serve the Antichrist, but rather to oppose him. That would make their religion something more like "Anti-Antichrist-ianity." To their way of thinking, Anti-Antichristianity is pretty much the same thing as Christianity. That's not unreasonable, if the same semantic logic that makes "not unreasonable" mean the same thing as "reasonable" were to apply here. But opposing Christ's opposite doesn't make you Christian, and the enemy of God's enemy isn't necessarily God's friend.

Here, as usual, Left Behind presents an extreme example of a more widespread problem in American evangelicalism. Evangelicals these days don't stand for anything, they only stand against. And as it turns out, being against unrighteousness and being for righteousness aren't the same thing at all. This isn't merely a problem for evangelicals, either. Consider how rare it is nowadays to hear some say they're "pro-America" without meaning, by that, that they're anti- something (or everything) else.

The foursome moseyed to the lobby.

OK, yes, bonus points for use of the word "mosey."

"I'm going to say my good-nights," Hattie said. "I've got the earlier flight tomorrow." She thanked Rayford for dinner, whispered something to Chloe -- which seemed to get no response -- and thanked Buck for sticking her with the cabfare his hospitality that morning. "I may just call Mr. Carpathia one of these days," she said. ...

Chloe looked as if she wanted to follow Hattie to the elevators and yet wanted to say something to Buck as well. He was shocked when she said, "Give us a minute, will you, Daddy? I'll be right up."

The point of this exchange, for the authors, was to arrange a chance for Buck and Chloe to talk one-on-one. They seem not to have noticed that this put Rayford and Hattie together. Alone together. On a hotel elevator.

Buck and Chloe talk about their mutual admiration for her father:

"Your dad is a pretty impressive guy," he said.

"I know," she said. "Especially lately."

Lately her dad has been forcing her to tag along while he torments his former pseudo-mistress, but that's not what Chloe is referring to. She means she's starting to think her father might be right about "the Antichrist and all." Buck agrees. At this point a good-night kiss is pretty much out of the question. If you're a guy, standing awkwardly outside her door/elevator at the end of an evening together, then you should, as a rule, avoid the following topics: 1) her father; 2) weird religious theories; and especially 3) her father's weird religious theories.

"I just met you and I'm really gonna miss you," Chloe tells him. "If you get through Chicago, you have to call."

Buck has already, somewhat creepily, booked a ticket to Chicago in the seat next to hers on tomorrow's flight. He doesn't tell her about this here, opting instead to up the creepy factor:

"It's a promise," Buck said. "I can't say when, but let's just say sooner than you think."

The clock is ticking.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* I once got caught on the train making faces while reading Bryce Courtenay's desciption, in The Power of One, of Pastor Mulvery's "lightning on/off smile" with his "escape-attempting teeth." To explain myself to the amused couple across the row, I read them the passage and soon they were trying to smile like Pastor Mulvery too. The Power of One is very good, by the way. Skip the movie, read the book -- it's like a South African Huckleberry Finn.

** Makes me wish Sellar and Yeatman were still alive to write The Antichrist and All That, at the end of which history really would come to a .

Comments

[Omorka]

*delurk*

Burgundy: I remember proctoring that prompt! (The directions say the test proctor has to read the prompt out loud.) I think it was the Spring '05 test - at least, that's the batch of juniors I remember talking about what they'd written. At least five of mine said they'd written about drugs.

*relurk*

[Abelardus]

... doing the Electric Slide ...

Except for LB the refrain shall instead be: It's electromagnetism!

[Lila]

burgundy: I did a stint grading the state-mandated 10th grade writing test and had a similar experience. The (terrible) prompt was "write about a holiday you remember", all but guaranteed to produce cookie-cutter stories about Christmas (75%) or Thanksgiving (25%). It was tempting to vastly overrate the few that stood out as distinctive. (One of my co-workers mentioned that the previous year's prompt, "Write about something that turned out better than you had expected", produced a much more varied and interesting crop of essays.)

[Dahne]

I don't know if you do this too, but sometimes when I read a scene -- particularly one with a vivid description of some gesture or facial expression -- I find myself imitating that description.

I tend to do that when writing. If I have someone sitting in a certain way, or such, I'll try to do it to make sure it's plausible. This once lead to the following train of thought: "Hmm, does blood really spurt? I could grab a knife and jab it into my arm and see what-- wait, no, that's a bad idea."

[Yossarian]

Is it even possible for four people to collectively mosey?

Line dancing.

Now I have a mental image of them doing the Electric Slide out the door of a posh restaurant.

Hey, the LB musical is still on the table...

[Hob]

No, I don't think she had the chicken. It was the fish. Definitely the fish.

"It starts with a slight fever and dryness of the throat. When the virus penetrates the red blood cells, the victim becomes dizzy, begins to experience an itchy rash, then the poison goes to work on the central nervous system, severe muscle spasms followed by the inevitable drooling. At this point the entire digestive system collapses, accompanied by uncontrollable flatulence. Until finally the poor bastard is reduced to a quivering wasted piece of jelly."

[Dash]

OK, you folks need to not put temptation in the way of us weaker brethren and sistren. mcc and Vermic, I'm looking at you. You too, Ian, for the (unintentional) proposal that Hattie needs a solo in this one and for "I don't need no stinkin' epiphany"; she's got the final chorus, because she deserves it. But I couldn't make "I don't need no stinkin' epiphany" fit the meter. Not that anything else particularly does, but. . .

mcc: Line dancing.
Vermic: The four characters side by side, with their dancin' boots on and their thumbs tucked into their jeans. There is no reason these characters would be moseying at this point, but that's what makes it so great. One minute they're sitting at a table, weeping about the Antichrist, then suddenly they're all doing the Boot Scootin' Boogie in the restaurant lobby.
Ian: I pictured Hattie moseying along wearing a poncho, sombrero and bandoleers of ammunition, muttering "I don't need no stinking epiphany" to herself, swigging rotgut from a hip flask all the while.

You probably need to listen to the original or this won't make any sense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6So6eHn5uY&feature=related . Original lyrics here: http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/brooks-and-dunn/boot-scootin-boogie-4860.html

I'll just add that there are some problems with the meter and the rhyme has some irregularities, such as the fact that the last line of each verse ends with Boot Scootin' Boogie, and using the same final phrase on each line of this doesn't work, so I--oh, the hell with it!

With apologies to Brooks and Dunn:

Chloe, Hattie, Buck, and Rayford:

Down in the city, near the Radisson sign
Well there’s a KFC the Cap’n likes just fine
It’s the joint he heads to when he’s ready for some mighty fine dinin’.
They got chicken, slaw, and a place to talk.
Ray’s got a theory, so listen up and stop your whinin’.

We got a situation, bunch of folks have gone away.
And everybody’s scared and don’t know what to say.
Were they picked up by aliens, or did they go to hell or to heaven?
Where should we go? Who’s the one guy who would know?
Let’s ask Cap’n Steele, ‘cause, hey, he drives a 747.

Rayford (solo):

Yeah, hey waiter, come back later, here’s a sawbuck, keep the water comin’.
Rapture, antichrist, UN won’t play nice, gonna be a bad spell.
PMDs, RTCs--everybody else is goin' to hell.

The waiter (solo):

The girls leave as Rayford goes on and on and on
But Buck’s start’s a-sweatin’ from that smooth baritone.
And back in the ladies’ room it’s hotter than the fourth of July.
Listen to Rayford talkin’ to Buck, the waiter’s askin’ what the f-heck?
It’s the patented LaJenkins it’s-too-late-you’re-goin’-to-hell theory.

Hattie, in poncho, sombrero, and bandoliers of ammunition (solo)

Yeah, heel, jerk, what a twerp, come on Rayford, let’s cut all the crap now
“Disappeared,” “left here,” how often do we have to hear your theory?
Don’t need damn epiphany ‘cause I ain’t pinin’ for no goddam phony

[pepperjackcandy]

I know that if I found myself spending my Fridays talking about fucking Left Behind I'd be twitching and drooling on the floor in a fit of combined disbelief and apoplectic rage.

I don't know how to break this to you, DP, but you *are* spending Friday talking about Left Behind.

[burgundy]

Omorka, it was indeed the spring of '05. Although oddly enough, I don't remember any drug essays. It must have been some sort of weird random hiccup.

Lila, we got a pretty good number of creative and/or moving essays. The prompt was cheesy, but it could have been a lot worse (like the holiday one). I think one reason we had a lot of the PARALYZED FOR LIFE ones is that the kids thought they'd get extra credit for echoing back the kinds of moralistic crap they'd been getting from authority figures. "I will write about the evils of alcohol and drug use, so they will know I am mature and responsible!" I think we had a tally going at one point... paraplegic/quadriplegic/football player/cheerleader/etc. A lot of the essays were presented as true stories or personal narratives, and one of the other scorers commented that if this was representative of what really happened at Texas high schools, you wouldn't be able to have any schools more than one storey high.

Fraser, I used to read the Sweet Valley High books obsessively. There was the one where a girl rode a motorcycle without a helmet, and was (of course) in a crash, and had a major personality change, until she hit her head again, which restored her to normal. Or the girl who was in a plane crash and had a spinal injury, and it looked like she was PARALYZED FOR LIFE, but the doctors couldn't find anything wrong, and then her friends figured out it was psychosomatic because her boyfriend was cheating on her and this was a way to hold onto him, so they had a kid fake drowning so she'd jump in and save him and get past her mental block. The finer points of neurology were not really a major emphasis in these books. (Speaking of neurology, it both fascinates and appalls me that I remember those details after all these years.)

[Dylan]

Does Buck's "whisper" make any sense? Rayford gives his hour-long, uninterrupted speech on End Times prophecy. He finally reaches the end and Buck doesn't comment, doesn't say, "Well, that was fascinating/interesting/different," he just whispers -- whispers -- "I want to thank you for your time, and for dinner."

The problem I keep running into in visualizing this is that he's way too articulate to be so shocked that he's forced to whisper. If you've just heard something so amazing and unbelievable that you can only manage a whisper, you're not going to get out a sentence thanking a person for two separate things without a pause in the middle. I'm not even sure you're going to care about the dinner part, unless it really was a fancy restaurant.

Surely a normal person would respond something more like this:

Buck did not trust himself to respond with coherence. He still had chills, yet he felt sticky with sweat. What was happening to him? He managed a whisper, "I want," and stopped. The implications of Rayford's theory weighted so heavily on his mind that it was hard to verbalize what he wanted to convey to the man.

"I want to thank you," he said, hesitating on each word. Unsure of how to qualify his thankfulness any further without launching into a speech, he simply added, "for your time."

[Jenny Islander]

I rarely watch broadcast television anymore, but sometimes, when I'm waiting for something else to happen (i.e. wife to get home so we can go out, microwave to finish zapping leftovers, etc.) I'll turn on one of the Christian channels but leave the sound off.

It's an interesting experience because it completely deflates these guys. If you had doubts about whether or not Rick Warren is a blithering idiot they will be swept away once you watch him standing at a podium and gesturing in total silence. Suddenly you realize how completely affected it all is--the whole-arm movements, the bullet-point-indicating gestures. He may be a master of salemanship but he is not keyed into the secrets of a good life or the identity of the creator.

Oliver Sachs tells a story about his work in a ward for stroke victims. Some had aphasia, but could read body language and expressions; others had lost the ability to read body language and expressions (sort of like late-onset Asperger's?), but could still understand speech.

So one afternoon, the ambulatory patients gathered in the TV room to watch a certain President's* State of the Union address. The ones who couldn't read body language anymore listened solemnly. The aphasic patients laughed uproariously; one of them managed to communicate that he thought he was watching a comedy act.

Makes me wonder if an aphasic person could find a new career as a baloney detector.

*What, you think I'm going to name the guy? Nooooooo way, not this little black duck. Anyway, this story says nothing about his character, only abou the relationship between the content of that year's State of the Union address and what he actually believed to be true.

[JessicaR]

"In my imagination "the machine" is an Edison style phonograph which records sound on a rotating wax cylinder."
- actually a steampunk LB would be kinda awesome. And it would make sense to have an overcomplicated patched together theology "My word! Surely my calculations can't be correct! For if they are the electronite levels in geo-phsyisphere will drop so low that a mass of vanishings will occur! Surely it can't be the equation written about in the acient Folio Holius, warning of a coming chaos carbonstone firescope!

"Also, much as I like Robb's Super-Meta-Hattie, I pictured Hattie moseying along wearing a poncho, sombrero and bandoleers of ammunition, muttering "I don't need no stinking epiphany" to herself, swigging rotgut from a hip flask all the while."
-and this is related to the above, as I see her as a Firefly character which defintely had the touch of steampunk about it. A lonely outpost planet, she makes her living as a hired gun. Having fled from one of the main, wealthiest planets. Dressed in black except for bright purple and red scarf knotted around her fine hair.

[Dahne]

*applauds JessicaR's technobabble*

Curses, now I want to write a steampunk Revelation story. Eight-headed dragon with the feet of a bear, meet clockwork zeppelin barrage!

[Praline]

@MikhailBorg, way up: Have you noticed how rarely anyone in these books actually listens to what someone else is saying, without swiftly being distracted by their own thoughts? ... All of these characters run around in their own little ego-centric shield buffer, as if no one else on Earth truly exists.

A famous critic, whose name I can't remember and would thank anyone for reminding me of, once remarked that it's a quality of bad writing, not that the characters don't live, but that they don't live with each other. That rather than reacting to each others' behaviour, they read each others' minds through the medium of the author.

That might explain why Buck is having such a meltdown after Ray has bored everyone with no mention of the ticking clock: Buck's reacting to what the author knows Ray knows, rather than to what Ray has actually told Buck.

[Praline]

... under such circumstances, of course, an ephiphany isn't possible. You have an epiphany by realising something you didn't know before, by having been blind but now seeing. These characters are all blind to each other, but perceive things through author-ESP. In those conditions, nothing can surprise them particularly: they've never been truly blind to the revelation. The author always knew it, so the characters always knew it, in a way.

[Rosina]

Lila: I did a stint grading the state-mandated 10th grade writing test and had a similar experience. The (terrible) prompt was "write about a holiday you remember", all but guaranteed to produce cookie-cutter stories about Christmas (75%) or Thanksgiving (25%). It was tempting to vastly overrate the few that stood out as distinctive.

Was the question set by someone from Britain? Because although "What I did on my holidays" is a very hackneyed topic for an essay in primary school, the answers would not usually involve Christmas, and it would provide much greater variety. It took me a few moments to work out why they weren't all about Summer Camp and trips to Disneyland.

[Lila]

Rosina, it probably wasn't phrased exactly like that. It may have been "favorite holiday memories" or something.

[Lila]

Oops, I forgot to add that the Georgia equivalent to your hackneyed topic would be "what I did on my summer vacation." "Holidays" isn't used of the summer break.

[Dorothy]

Hmmm.... I wonder, did we (USians) ever refer to summer break as summer holiday? Holiday comes from "Holy Day". Is this yet another symptom of secularization?

[Rosina]

Oops, I forgot to add that the Georgia equivalent to your hackneyed topic would be "what I did on my summer vacation." "Holidays" isn't used of the summer break.

That is why in the UK "Favourite holiday memories" or whatever would call for memories of beaches, or zoo trips, or ski-ing - the first thing that springs to mind is the fortnight away, and for children the long breaks from school (so "We're all going on a Summer Holiday", rather than a summer vacation). Limiting the answers to Holy Days (and favourite memories at that) will have to produce a series of cloying little essays.

[Dash]

Get me rewrite! I posted too soon. I need to leave poetry alone. On the plus side, I hadn't realized how complicated that song was.

Second (and final) try:

Down in the city, near the Radisson sign
Well there’s a KFC the Cap’n likes just fine
It’s the joint he heads to when he’s ready for some mighty fine dinin’.
They got chicken, slaw, you can take it slow.
It’s where all the Left Behind folk go, to do the Epiphany Boogie.

We got a situation, bunch of folks have gone away.
And everybody’s scared and don’t know what to say.
Were they picked up by aliens, or did they go to hell or to heaven?
Where should we go? Who’s the one guy who would know?
Let’s ask Cap’n Steele, ‘cause, hey, he drives a 747.

Yeah, hey waiter, come back later, here’s a sawbuck, keep the water comin’.
Rapture, antichrist, UN won’t play nice, we’re all getting one divine noogie.
PMDs, RTCs, we’re havin’ our epiphanies, let’s boogie!

The girls leave as Rayford goes on and on and on
But Buck’s start’s a-sweatin’ from that smooth baritone.
And back in the ladies’ room it’s hotter than the fourth of July.
Listen to Rayford talkin’ to Buck, the waiter’s askin’ what the f-heck?
It’s the patented LaJenkins Left Behind Epiphany Boogie.

Yeah, heel, jerk, what a twerp, come on Rayford, let’s cut all the crap now
“Disappeared,” “left here,” how often do we have to hear your theory?
I ain’t pinin’ for no phony, I don’t need no damn Epiphany Boogie.

[inge]

twig: So how to write something like an ephiphany? [...]
How to do it if you're a pulp writer, and not a rare and gifted poet?

Check how others have done it, mesh the two most useful and file off the serial numbers. [G]

[inge]

burgundy, I think one reason we had a lot of the PARALYZED FOR LIFE ones is that the kids thought they'd get extra credit for echoing back the kinds of moralistic crap they'd been getting from authority figures.

I doubt it's even about the extra credit. It's just basic writing to the audience. Those moralistic crap stories are what kids are used to getting from adults, so that's what they give back, expecting it to suit adults' world a lot better than anything original they might come up with. Also, those standard moralistic stories are easy to write.

In other words, basic hackwork.

Of course, it's also a safety feature: Work that is outside the audience's expections might upset them, and you do not want to do that when the audience is known to get nasty on the artist if they dislike the work.

[Chris]

"Left Behind" is the story of five billion people suffering the consequences of not listening to the authors before it was too late.

[bulbul]

Man, forget about these guys making me ashamed to be a Christian, they're making me ashamed for writing.
And not writing books, stories or screenplays, but writing as an act of putting words on paper. Every shopping list makes me want to take a shower.

[bulbul]

Dorothy,

Holiday comes from "Holy Day". Is this yet another symptom of secularization?
No. It's just another symptom of linguistic change.

[Dorothy]

bulbul: Heh. Thanks.

That earlier post was written by my evil twin. She is very Anti-Secular, but not very Logical. And she gets up earlier than I do.

[hapax]

Re: how to write an epiphany

I have several characters undergoing epiphany in my current writing project, but I get to cheat -- the epiphany they have is that they actually are characters in a story, being moved along by the whims of the author, so the easiest way to show it is to have them break the fourth wall. The characters who don't know what is going on do find them to be somewhat bizarre, ranting crazily to unseen forces, and acting in apparantly random fashions in an effort to thwart the narrative imperative.

Which would be exactly how one SHOULD act in the LB-verse, in my opinion. "If he says right, go up. If he says up, stand still. He'll try to make you believe that the game is already over. But it's not. You don't have to play his game."

[bulbul]

Dorothy,
That earlier post was written by my evil twin. She is very Anti-Secular, but not very Logical. And she gets up earlier than I do.
I fully understand. I have an evil twin too. His name is Loki, he gets up at 6am, messes up my apartment, wastes all my money on booze and drugs and hides all the notes I made the previous night. When I finally wake up at 11am, I find that I'm left with a mess, an empty account, zero things to say and a hangover.

[Spalanzani]

I'm not sure where this fits into any of this, but having just seen the movie-adaptation of Sweeney Todd , all this talk of epiphanies reminds me of the song "Epiphany" from that show. For Sweeney, his epiphany is when he turns from murdering purely out of revenge or self-defense and becomes a veritable homicidal maniac. I kind of wish the same sort of thing would happen to Buck; at least then he could go from an unintentionaly unpleasent character to an unintentionly unpleasent one.

[Spalanzani]

Praline: "A famous critic, whose name I can't remember and would thank anyone for reminding me of, once remarked that it's a quality of bad writing, not that the characters don't live, but that they don't live with each other. That rather than reacting to each others' behaviour, they read each others' minds through the medium of the author."

You know, a lot of bad internet writing is like that too: people writing responses not to what others have actually said but to what they just know the other person is really thinking. Of course, in the real world this sort of telepathy is far from infallible, which is how a lot of flame wars start.

[Kelly]

Buck had a lump in his throat, and for the first time since he had lain facedown in fear in Israel during the Russian attack, he wished he had a private place to cry.

And yet again, we have another example of the characters forgetting that all of the world's children plus a large number of adults have vanished off the face of the earth. I guess that's not enough to make Manly Buck cry, though.

Here, as usual, Left Behind presents an extreme example of a more widespread problem in American evangelicalism. Evangelicals these days don't stand for anything, they only stand against.

The last time I needed to find a new church, I made it a habit of collecting literature in the narthex or whatever served as a lobby or greeting area. If the majority of it was "Stand against" or "Stop" X, but nothing was for anything, the church got crossed off my list. It was rather disheartening how many churches got crossed off the list this way.

[Monkay]

the epiphany they have is that they actually are characters in a story, being moved along by the whims of the author -hapax
What did they believe before the epiphany?

[jamoche]

Jurisfiction Rage Counselling Meeting for Left Behind:

"I don't see why I have to be here. I don't see why I even have to be in this book. My part could be played by any new-minted generic! I took this snivelling twit out of the story for half an hour during that idiot's big reveal, and nobody even noticed!" Hattie was on her feet now, gesticulating wildly.

Chloe looked around blankly. "Am I supposed to cry here? I've lost my notes."

Hattie glared at her. "In what universe did anyone think you'd be convincing as a Stanford student?"

Chloe burst into tears. Rayford gave her a puzzled look. "Is that my cue?" He fumbled around a bit, then said, "Oh, yes. 'I have a theory about the disappearances that will change your life, would you like to hear it?'"

"NO!" shouted Hattie and Miss Havisham as one. They shared a look that said how did I end up with these idiots?

Rayford, undeterred, had continued to move his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Typical," said Miss Havisham. "That's what happens when hack writers set up scenes they don't have the talent to execute. 'Show, don't tell' is a law for a reason." Rayford carried on, oblivious. She turned to Hattie. "I know exactly how you feel. Stick it out, and I'll put in a word for you. I could use a new apprentice."

[JessicaR]

Okay I've finally gotten my act together to contribute to Right Behind, behold Cookie Monster http://exharpazo.blogspot.com/

[hapax]

jamoche, that is brilliant! Meta-Hattie definitely belongs in Jurisfiction.

Monkey, most of the characters believed, just like we do, that they were totally autonomous beings with independent free will. I defer any commentary as to whether my characters situation is in anyway analogous to the human condition until such time as I actually finish writing the darn thing.

[Praline]

I think another reason why this is flat description of an epiphany is that the book is totally anti-gnostic. As long as you toe the line, your faith can be lip-deep; consider what a bastard Ray is, saved or not. This isn't faith that touches the heart. You believe what you're told, say it back, make that verbal commitment, and you're Saved. The experience doesn't matter; what matters is the act of profession.

The real way to write an epiphany? I've never written one myself. But if I was going to, this would be the baseline assumption:

You cannot write an epiphany in a single scene

Not unless you're going to do blinding, struck-down-on-the-road-to-Damascus, supernatural vision. In which case, there are probably two routes: either elegantly simple - 'And in that moment, Paul heard the voice of God' - or else getting imaginative with language, trying to use beautiful enough imagery that it gives the reader some sense of imaginative loveliness, which could act as some sort of bridge to the loveliness of God. And if you're going to do that, you've got to be able to throw language like lightning bolts - which is a lot to ask of any writer, never mind writers who are basically more interested in producing tracts than literature.

But in a novel, especially a thriller, it's too hard. You need more than one scene. If you don't have the strength to make language strike open a character's heart at a single blow, you need to have it open gradually. Little moments. Realisations of your own moral limits. Witnessing acts of virtue and feeling some sense of inspiration at them. A sense of discontent at the material world. Horror at the sight of suffering and longing for some divine justice. A nameless yearning for something wonderful. Reflections on the moral teachings, which you will have heard of, fundie assmuptions notwithstanding. Seeing something in other believers, something that draws you. In short, a lot of sweeping the hearth and laying the kindling so that finally when the spark touches, the fire can light. If you've done that, your epiphany scene can be quite simple, in its way: just a moment when everything comes together.

Left Behind is dealing with a lot of damp kindling. Their characters, Rayford in particular (Buck is just thick) are more or less stony ground, in the parable of the sower terms; their hearts are so hard that no good teachings can really improve them. All they do is add 'divine commandment' to their list of reasons to feel smug about themselves. As a result, it's pretty much impossible for them to do an epiphany scenes. Epiphanies are emotional, and apart from irritation, their characters don't have feelings.

[hapax]

In short, a lot of sweeping the hearth and laying the kindling so that finally when the spark touches, the fire can light ... Left Behind is dealing with a lot of damp kindling.

Speaking of "beautiful enough imagery that it gives the reader some sense of imaginative loveliness"...

[Monkay]

most of the characters believed, just like we do, that they were totally autonomous beings with independent free will - hapax
Thanks hapax, that's what I was fishing for :-)

[realityfighter]

Regarding what Baeraad said waaay upthread about defective epiphanies: you aren't the only one who has them. I had a bit of a negative epiphany when I discovered Slacktivist, so maybe they aren't so defective after all. :)

[Abelardus]

Praline, that's an essay, or darn close! You've managed to encapsulate, in beautiful language no less, the essentials required for an epiphany scene.

[Praline]

In all truthfulness, the image of laying kindling to catch fire is originally out of Antonia White's Frost in May, but thank you! The actual image is:

For weeks she had been preparing herself, laying stick on stick and coal on coal, and now, at the supreme moment, she had not caught fire.

Really good book, though a kind of spiritual horror story.

[damnedyankee]

Well, at least they didn't order the special.

[Karen]

Praline, let me add to the praise for your essay. It's beautiful and almost an antidote to L & J.

On a far different level, I keep hearing Rayford play this scene like William Shatner in Terror at 20,000 feet. He's the only person who knows they're all gonna die, and he can't make anyone believe him. Actually, that's not an unreasonable attitude given the circumstances and one that should have been apparent to Jenkins when he wrote this. Of course, that would make Rayford look something less than perfect, which can't ever happen, even when imperfect really is the natural response.

Finally, may I vent a little on other bad writing? I'm watching "Before the Dinosaurs" on Discovery. The narrator refers to the stones reptiles swallowed to help their digestion as "gastroPODS" instead of "gastroliths." GRRRRRR

[cjmr's husband]

New restaurant across from my office bills itself as a "Gastropub". I've nothing against escargot, but ewww....

[Elphaba]

Hooray! Someone else thought of Sweeney Todd too (my favorite musical of all time, screen-name notwithstanding). I think all LB epiphanies ought be sung bombastically! Here's another vote in favor of LB the musical.

On Stoopid High School Essays -
I remember an academic decathlon competition in which I was required to write a reflective essay (meaning - use an autobiographical account to lead the reader to some profound conclusion on life, the universe, or whatever) on GENETIC FINGERPRINTING. That was the prompt, seriously. Write about your personal experiences of genetic fingerprinting and how they changed your feelings about life, the universe, or whatever. I managed to win the only way possible: by making stoopid shit up.

I also remember having to take the SAT II twice because on the first essay portion I gave an unconventional answer to "who do you admire most" (meaning I didn't pick my Mom or Jesus) and got a "you're a bad kid" score, but then the second time I gave a conventional answer (about being proud to represent my country on a trip to Japan - barf!) that was total bs and got me a great score.

Kelly -
That's an excellent standard for choosing a church. Unfortunately, in my church it can be more subtle than "stop X" - for example, we have a series running right now called "Saving Jesus," which is cheeky-sounding and all but seems to be about saving Jesus from those other kinds of Christians (eeew, those scaaary Biblical literalists!) by listening to a bunch of theologians talk and nodding our heads in self-satisfied agreement. I keep pointing out that perhaps it would be more Christian to work on "saving Jesus" (whatever that means) from ourselves, and that sitting around feeling smug and superior does nothing to save anyone at all. Don't get me wrong, I love my church and they are more pro- than anti- stuff, but sometimes the culture war seems to take us over and turn us all into arrogant defensive blowhards. Then again, the whole series is worth it just to hear things like "Saving Jesus today at noon in the Guild Hall!" I was the only one who laughed.

I'm curious how Jesus might respond to Rayford's speechification on His behalf. It would be an interesting thing to read a version of LB from the perspective of an extremely irritated already-returned Jesus. "Forgive them, father, for they are far too sure that they know what they do."

Meta-Hattie: The Second Coming!

[Tyro]

What I don't quite understand is how the authors could blow this. Ok, I do understand-- the characters aren't really grappling with the end times. The characters are acting as L&J think that people act now.

Buck shouldn't have spent the last 8 days not globe-trotting in international intrigue and meeting up with the rising anti-Christ and getting a choice promotion. In the aftermath of The Event™, he should have locked himself in his apartment, unable to eat, unable to sleep, and grappling with the fact that he was never going to see his nieces, nephews, children of close friends, and RTC friends and family members ever again. Buck, by all accounts, should have spent the last several chapters asking "why? why?" By the time Rayford gives his spiel, the book should be pointing out that for Buck, for the first time in the last week, things suddenly make sense.

But none of that has happened. And why should it have? To L&J, Buck is just like any other unsaved person they see on the street: going about his business and moving along with his life. That's why the "epiphany" seems so out of place... why should Buck be caring about Rayford's explanation of the Event now? Neither Buck, nor anyone else, seems to have cared much before, except as a matter of some idle speculation, so why should he have chills go up his back when Rayford reads off his end-times cue-cards?

[hapax]

Neither Buck, nor anyone else, seems to have cared much before, except as a matter of some idle speculation, so why should he have chills go up his back when Rayford reads off his end-times cue-cards?

Well, yeah, but nobody had managed to tie in before the riveting spectacle of the Trip-Fall-And-Die Guys. Lots of people had tried to account for the sudden disappearance of billions of humans, including all the world's children, but explaining a couple of falling prats in Jerusalem? Now THAT's chilling!

[Zorya]

In the aftermath of The Event™, he should have locked himself in his apartment, unable to eat, unable to sleep, and grappling with the fact that he was never going to see his nieces, nephews, children of close friends, and RTC friends and family members ever again.

Now that sort of story development would have made this a book worth reading. I don't know how well it would have been received by L & J's intended audience, though.

[Ryan]

Great, now you people have me thinking I'm suffering from heart attacks, diabetic shock, AND food poisoning.

A Buffy ref and an Angel ref in the same post!

And I wouldn't know because I've never seen either.

Because although "What I did on my holidays" is a very hackneyed topic for an essay in primary school, the answers would not usually involve Christmas, and it would provide much greater variety. It took me a few moments to work out why they weren't all about Summer Camp and trips to Disneyland.

My family goes to Disney World in summer and at Christmas, so those would get combined a lot.

Wait. That was... pleasant. Is this some New Scott, or did someone finally tie down our Classic Scott and forcibly medicate him?

Well, you see, there's the Anti-Evangelical side of Scott, and there's the Anti-Liberal side of Scott. Only the Anti-Evangelical side can be civil here because people agree with him. The Anti-Liberal side is stuck in "You fools, they're all out to get us!" mode on this blog.