The Faithfulness of Omitted Details
Posted in General on Oct 19th, 2007 1 Comment »
One of the reasons I enjoy blogging is that I enjoy writing. More than that, I enjoy wrestling with language to make it do something that elevates discourse and glorifies God. I can relate to Alan Jacobs, author of the Books & Culture Magazine piece Sentences, in which he confessed something of an obsession when it comes to finding the right words to express an idea with the appropriate rhetorical flair. (The problem for us bloggers is that blogging is supposed to be quick, but that’s another story.)
Mr. Jacobs rightly notes that virtue is at stake when wordsmithing:
John Updike was widely reviled, and rightly so I think, for using the collapse of the World Trade Center towers as an opportunity for making beautiful sentences: “Smoke speckled with bits of paper curled into the cloudless sky, and strange inky rivulets ran down the giant structure’s vertically corrugated surface,” he wrote in The New Yorker; one of the towers “fell straight down like an elevator, with a tinkling shiver and a groan of concussion distinct across the mile of air.” Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic offered the most incisive critique of Updike’s approach: “Such writing defeats its representational purpose, because it steals attention away from reality and toward language. It is provoked by nothing so much as its own delicacy. Its precision is a trick: it appears to bring the reader near, but it keeps the reader far. It is in fact a kind of armor: an armor of adjectives and adverbs. The loveliness is invincible.”
Contrast Updike’s approach to depicting the horrific with another writer’s:
And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” (Matthew 27:33-37)
… or this writer…
Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him… (Luke 23:32-35)
One more:
So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. (John 19:16-18)
In Matthew’s account, the crucifixion actually happens after once sentence ends and before the next one begins. You almost get the sense that the evangelists were telling you to look away while the deed was being done. Their descriptions were simple and straightforward, without being clinical. Perhaps this was because their readers surely knew the graphic details of what was being retold. Or perhaps they just understood that the point of telling the horrible story was not to be indulgent.
Having endured the 9/11 spectacle, I think it entirely inappropriate to try to capture the horror of what happened that day in purple prose. It also makes me doubt Mr. Updike’s integrity as a writer, because his writing obscured my view of the grave reality of what happened — something a writer in his position should have respected above all.
This study of contrasts makes me appreciate the evangelists’ minimalism. It lends credibility to the evangelists and the Gospels themselves — they are written with just the sort of direct clarity one would expect from those who really experienced the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.
As a result, Joe Torre will soon be out of a job, unless the madness of King George takes an improbable detour. Mr. Torre has delivered twelve straight seasons of postseason ball: ten division titles, two wild-card berths, six American League pennants, and four World Series rings. For crying out loud, in one of the final Peanuts comics, 
The Enjoyable Team has young guys who come up through the organization and make it big, like Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, and Jorge Posada. It’s got a few guys that other teams give up on, but you take a chance on them anyway — like Paul O’Neill and Scott Brosius (pictured here). Then tack on the veteran superstar who’s never won the championship, Roger Clemens: he just wants to play for a team that can help him bring home the hardware, and he brings his Hall-of-Fame A-game to make it happen. (Of all those guys, only Clemens, and probably Jeter and Rivera, will make it onto a Hall of Fame ballot with any shot of making it in. So we’re not talking about a boatload of superstars here.)
I usually offer food for thought, but this time it’s just food. And a confession: I’m a 
