Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.
– Attributed to Samuel Goldwyn

On its face, a very Philistine thing to say. And yet, after finishing two novels with agendas recently, I’m more than a bit sympathetic. To be sure, every piece of art has a message, intentionally or not; but I have found that if you start with the message, and then craft the art to fit, the result is usually not great art. (Vide “Left Behind,” so ably and extensively skewered by Fred Clark at Slacktivist.)

There was a small buzz awhile ago about The Shack by William P. Young. I got on the library waiting list behind, as I recall, over 200 people and patiently waited my turn, which came this week.

Now I have some admiration for any author brave enough to cast God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit incarnate as characters in a novel. I wouldn’t want to write that dialogue, though, and I’m not sure Young should have. The whole thing felt forced and phony, and Young’s inexperience as a writer showed through every telegraphed plot-punch.

Which is not to say that I disliked Young’s message: the idea that God values relationships and love over the Law and retributional justice is absolutely A-OK with me. But the novel just can’t pass the “show, don’t tell” test.

Sadly, I have to say the same about Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. But Stephenson is such a tremendously skilled writer that it has to be intentional. Nearly every character in this 900-page novel is as flat as Kansas, and stupendous events like “future of the planet is at stake” fights in space (I hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler) read like comic book pages. (Edited to add: OK, a comic book crossed with a physics textbook.) What is Stephenson up to here?

I imagine that it has something to do with his apotheosis of the intellectual, and the obvious value he places on formal logic and rule-driven dialogue. Emotions are allowed if observed and described at arm’s length, as factors in an equation. But this leaves the characters strangely bloodless and motiveless, and ultimately, it left me stranded on the surface of the novel. I nearly abandoned it several times, but my J-ness kept driving me until I finished it. I’m not sorry that I did, but unless I am granted some kind of epiphany about something I missed, I won’t be in a hurry to read it again.