An interview with John Common

At the suggestion of another blog I read, I am going to interview myself as an aspiring writer to try to get at some of the knotty questions about who this guy, John Common, is and what is the nature of his quest as a writer.

Me:  In your last blog post, you revealed that you had started a new book, The Former Hero.  Can you tell us a little bit about it?

John Common:  Sure.  It is similar to the movie Magnolia or Crash in that there are 4 or 5 narrative threads and the action develops from one to the other throughout the book.  One of the threads deals with a man who used to be a superhero, but he has lost his super powers, and is in a hospital trying to figure out how to get them back.  Another thread deals with a honest detective in a corrupt police force – a would-be hero against insurmountable forces.  Another is about a woman who could use a hero – her daughter has been abducted.  All of these characters relate to one another in the book.

Me:  Hm.  Sounds complicated.  Are you sure you can pull this off?

JC:  By no means.  And yes, it is quite complicated.

Me:  Well do you have it all mapped out in your mind, have you outlined it to the finish?

JC:  I have a vague idea of how it will end.  But no idea how Im going to get there.  Im making it up as I go.

Me:  You’ve got some kinda balls, Mister.  Who do you think you are, Dostoyevsky?

JC:  I secretly believe that Im writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Me:  Under the…  You have to excuse me.  You’re starting to creep me out.  You’re basically saying that you are special, that your work is…well, let’s just say it…inspired by God.  Should we add it into our Bibles, right after revelation?  Just staple it in there?

JC:  Well it’s got a lot of vulgaries and blasphemies in it, so I dont think the 2011 version of the Council of Carthage would accept it.

Me:  OK, you bring up a good point.  Are you a Christian?

JC:  Yes, if that’s what you want to call it.

Me:  Well what would you call it?

JC:  Im a seeker of the truth.

Me:  What’s wrong with “Christian”?

JC:  A lot of people who might respond to the truth are turned off by the word “Christian.”  So-called Christians have done much to embitter the very world they want to win against themselves.

Me:  You’re a self-righteous prig.  Alright, so what have Christians done, and what gives you the right to judge them all, and separate yourself from 2000 years of tradition?

JC:  We’re straying from the point here. 

Me:  Alright, so whatever you are, you are some variety of believer in Jesus.

JC:  Yes.

Me:  Then why do you use so much bad language in your writing?

JC:  There are several things to say here.  Firstly, as a writer, you have to be free to write a character as he/she really is.  You wouldn’t write a military drama with the soldiers all avoiding vulgar language.  Just because a Christian writer has a character saying vulgar things doesn’t mean that those words are in the writer’s mouth.  They are in the character’s mouth.  This is one of the mysteries of fictional composition – the characters must take on a somewhat independent existence from the author.  You may say that’s impossible because the character comes 100% from the author.  But therein lies the mystery that Christian non-writers frequently dont get.  Though the writer is responsible for every word the character says, the writer gives the character something of an autonomous existence in his mind.  He lets the character go in his imagination.  And if the character uses a blasphemy in the writer’s imagination, the writer’s obligation is to have the character be true to himself, and let the character speak the blasphemy, even if the writer himself would not say such a thing.

Me:  You realize this sounds like nonsense.  If it comes from your imagination, then you have a filthy imagination.  You can’t get around responsibility for the blasphemy – no matter how you slice it, it comes from you.

JC:  I said it was mysterious.  It is very much like the freewill/predestination debate.

Me:  Or maybe you just have blasphemous words in your imagination and you see a way to say them, so you write them in someone else’s mouth and wash your hands of it.

JC:  What sorts of blasphemies are you talking about?

Me:  Im certainly not going to say them. 

JC:  OK, allow me – God damn, Jesus Christ…what else?  Come to think of it, there aren’t that many.

Me:  The word ‘hell’.

JC:  That’s not a blasphemy.  Jesus said ‘hell’ many times.

Me:  OK, but when you say those other things you take the Lord’s name in vain, a violation of the 3rd commandment.

JC:  Paul said “Jesus Christ.”  And Jude tells of Jesus saying to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you.”  Which is basically the same message as “God damn you.”

Me:  Yes, but Paul and Jesus didn’t say it in a flippant way.  Paul spoke with reverence about Jesus.  And Jesus was speaking truthfully about damning Satan.

JC:  I can’t imagine the intent behind the 3rd commandment to be that no one should ever say one of these two thing flippantly – God damn and Jesus Christ.  Sure, you dont want to go around randomly calling down God’s judgment on people or things.  But what about when it’s appropriate?  What if I said, “Get that goddamn pornography out of this house.”  Would you be offended?

Me:  It would shake me up to hear it, but I guess I couldn’t complain.

JC:  That’s because instead of having the 3rd commandment at heart, we actually have a cultural convention at heart, a habit of polite speech.  It’s in our evangelical air.  You just dont say goddamn.  Ever.  But God’s name isn’t even ‘God’.  God is a noun, like “king” or “Mr. President”.  If someone said, “may the King of England throw you in prison,” we may think it was a rather odd saying.  But we wouldn’t be offended that the King’s name was smeared.  The king’s name is not “King”.  And the king himself would have no cause to be offended.

Me:  Ah, but haven’t you called upon his office, his kingship, to serve your private little annoyance?  If you said, “May the King send this stale pizza into eternal prison,” you have summoned his office and his severe judgment against something as trivial as pizza.

JC:  Dont you think the king himself would find such a thing humorous?

Me:  We can’t know what the king might find amusing, and it is safer to err on the side of caution.

JC:  No, it is not safer.  That’s the way the Pharisees lived, by creating a legal code to safely ensure they didn’t cross any lines of the law.  God was not pleased with that.  He is more honored when we use our minds and mouths intentionally.  If a thing like pornography deserves to be damned, then we should say it:  God damn pornography!

Me:  Ok, but what if your character says “Shut your god damn mouth?”  That is clearly summoning God’s office as Almighty God for a trivial matter.

JC:  Not if the words someone spoke truly should be damned by God.  And even if they were trivial, they may be true to the character, and therefore should be said, or run the risk of being false.  And if they are false, they are bad art.  And if they are bad art, they are ugly.  And since God is the author of beauty, it would contrary to the essence of God’s beauty to have a profane character speak in a way that is false to this character.  It would be tantamount to calling good evil and evil good.

Me:  Im going to have to think about this for a while.