John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 201: “Sanity in a writer is merely this: However stupid he may be in his private life, he never cheats in writing. He never forgets that his audience is, at least ideally, as noble, generous, and tolerant as he is himself (or more …
Author Archives: JMH
This Is How Biblical Intertextuality Works, Too
John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 192–93: “It is this quality of the novel, its built-in need to return and repeat, that forms the physical basis of the novel’s chief glory, its resonant close. . . . What rings and resounds at the end of a novel is not …
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85 Year Old Rafts Across the Atlantic
From MSNBC: PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten — An 85-year-old British sailor who dreamed of crossing the Atlantic on a raft as a young boy has completed the journey in 66 days with three friends. …. The raft, named “An-Tiki” after Thor Heyerdahl’s famous Kon-Tiki raft, was loaded with food including oranges, avocados, potatoes, cabbages and a pumpkin. …
The Turn to Jerusalem
On Sunday, April 3, it was my privilege to preach Mark 8 at Kenwood Baptist Church, “The Turn to Jerusalem.” To this point in Mark Jesus has been ministering in Jerusalem (Mark 1–7), but after Peter’s confession here in Mark 8, he sets his face toward Jerusalem and teaches his disciples what it means to …
Errors and Defects in Authors of Fiction
John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, discussing “Common Errors” authors make: “Diction problems are usually symptomatic of defects in the character or education of the writer” (101). “Let us now turn to three faults far graver than mere clumsiness–not faults of technique but faults of soul: sentimentality, frigidity, and …
Releasing Today: Tim Challies’ “The Next Story”
Tim Challies can be counted on to shoot straight. His book reviews are valuable precisely because he’s not afraid to say that a book is terrible, and as he refuses to beat around the bush, he evaluates from a perspective of sound theology and biblical wisdom, loving discretion and insightful discernment. Tim’s first book, in …
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P52: The Oldest Manuscript of the New Testament
Interesting video featuring Dirk Jongkind of Tyndale House: HT: JT
Is Fiction Christian? The English Language, Too?
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers: “English, like most languages, is covertly male chauvinist. It is also, as the novelist Harold Brodkey points out, covertly Christian. Nearly all our most resonant words and images carry a trace of Neoplatonic Christianity. Even so innocent a word as ‘friend’ has overtones. …
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Volume 2 in the Chiveis Trilogy by Bryan Litfin, The Gift
Last fall at ETS I picked up Bryan Litfin’s first novel, The Sword. I loved it, and interviewed Bryan on it here. At that point he was just finishing the second novel, The Gift, and he asked me about endorsing it. I enthusiastically received the PDF, and here’s what I said in my endorsement: I …
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What Is God’s Glory?
Thomas R. Schreiner defines the glory of God in his essay in For the Fame of God’s Name as follows: “I would define the glory of God as the beauty, majesty, and greatness of who he is; therefore, in all he does, whether in salvation or in judgment, the greatness of his being is demonstrated.” …
We Pre-Ordered ‘The Monster In the Hollows’, Did You?
If you haven’t already done so, high thee to the Rabbit Room to reserve for thyself a signed copy of what promises to be a beautiful and funny, inspiring and exciting, surprising and hope-building narrative of no little silly seriousness. Here’s the description: The Monster in the Hollows Sneakery. Betrayal. And the Deadly Secret of …
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Is There Truth in Fiction?
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 79: Fiction seeks out truth. Granted, it seeks a poetic kind of truth, universals not easily translatable into moral codes. But part of our interest as we read is in learning how the world works; how the conflicts we share with the writer …
Are Your Doubts Consistent?
My friend Greg Sykes sent me this quote from Tim Keller in response to some of the comments on “Why I Believe the Bible“: “The only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternate belief under each of your doubts and then to ask yourself what reason you have for believing it. …
Trevin Wax Interviews Mitch Chase
Head on over to Kingdom People for this interview with Mitch Chase on his book The Gospel Is for Christians. Endorsements for the book: “Mitch Chase joins a growing group of leaders on mission to help the church rediscover the truth that the gospel isn’t just the power of God to save us; it’s the …
Authors of Fiction Exercise Meticulous Sovereign Control
“As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, on every other other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so in fiction every element has an effect on every other, so that to change a …
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Why I Believe the Bible
A friend of mine–I’m not sure he shares my views–asked me why I believe that the Bible is God’s revelation. Having typed up my answer, I decided to post it here as well: I grew up with believing parents, and we went to believing churches. Unfortunately, the Bible was held up as authoritative more than …
Ghandi Was a Good Person?
Somebody knows this? For certain? See this article, which begins like this: “Joseph Lelyveld has written a generally admiring book about Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet ‘Great Soul’ also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a …
What Makes Fiction Interesting?
“. . . nothing can be made to be of interest to the reader that was not first of vital concern to the writer. . . we care about what we know and might possibly lose (or have already lost), dislike that which threatens what we care about, and feel indifferent toward that which has …
Review of Beale, We Become What We Worship
G. K. Beale. We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2008. 341 pp. $26.00. Paper. Published in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 14.4 (2010): 121–22. G. K. Beale is well known for significant contributions to biblical scholarship in general and biblical theology in particular. His commentary on Revelation, …
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What Is the Value of Fiction?
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 31: “. . . the value of great fiction . . . is not just that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it broadens our knowledge of people and places, but also that it helps us to …