Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 23

Public baptism and the end of the book

Welcome to the detailed (and spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:

The final section - not so much denouement as epilogue - is Luther's narration of his baptism. It's performed by his father, of course, and more or less everyone in the novel attends (including his ex-wife and his daughter). It is, Luther acknowledges, something of a formality: a public announcement of a loyalty already given. And in the course of the ceremony, Luther makes his long-overdue apology to Clarissa, knowing as he does that it will not make everything right between them. And then he is baptized, just in time for the sun to come over the mountains and end the story with a bright and shining moment.

This, again, basically works for me. I had a few minor quibbles... mainly that Luther spends a bit more effort than necessary thinking through the social implications of Clarissa showing up with their daughter, but without her new boyfriend; that seems so obviously the right way to handle the situation that I can't believe that Luther actually had to think it through. But, A) that may just be me, and B) it's pretty minor.

There's apparently some question (in the comments on an earlier post) about whether it's believable for Luther to be baptized by his father. The minister, after all, is the same man whom Luther has blamed for ruining his childhood and exposing him to an empty, holier-than-thou version of Christianity. (It's also possible that Reverent Martin is responsible for his son's lycanthropy. The book never explicitly says so, but it seems like a very reasonable inference.) As a reader, though, this gave me no trouble at all. For one thing, Luther has come to realize that however badly Reverend Martin expressed it, the minister does love his son. For another, Reverend Martin was right about the cure for lycanthropy - so, again, whatever he may have done wrong, Luther has now seen that he actually did have a legitimate point. Mainly, though, there's a very strong implication that having been forgiven himself, Luther is now able to offer forgiveness to others; and even as a non-Christian, that works fine for me.

And that's it for the deconstruction. I hope you've enjoyed reading it. I've enjoyed writing it, but more than that I've enjoyed the comments and discussions, so thanks again to Matt Mikalatos for pitching in to talk about his perspective, intentions, and experiences in writing Night of the Living Dead Christian. (Well, and even more thanks for putting up with this! That may seem like a normal, sensible reaction to you, but I've seen an awful lot of authors melt down in the face of much briefer critiques than this...) As a reminder, Matt is also the author of Imaginary Jesus - I haven't read that one (yet) but the Kindle edition is currently free with Amazon Prime... (Nudge, nudge.)

2 comments:

  1. Michael,

    My thought on Luther's obsession about what was happening with his ex-wife in the final scene was that (in my experience) someone in the midst of a marriage breaking up doesn't necessarily see things from an intellectual point of view, and that something like Clarissa showing up could send him into questioning whether she wanted to get back together or not, which clearly she does not. Although, in real life, thoughts like that would flash by in an instant and obviously it's hard to show that in fiction, so it may have over-emphasized what was happening there.

    Anyway, thanks for the review. It was a real pleasure. Thanks for taking the time and the effort to write such a detailed account of your thoughts and reactions. You have officially written more words than anyone but my editor about this book, I think.

    I'll be coming to find you before the next book comes out. I want to hear all these things before it goes to print, so I can fix a few things next time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. My thought on Luther's obsession about what was happening with his ex-wife in the final scene was that (in my experience) someone in the midst of a marriage breaking up doesn't necessarily see things from an intellectual point of view...

    Yeah, I can see that. It was a pretty minor quibble, and it's one of those things where... How to explain this? ...I was a really weird kid. I didn't think about things the way everyone else did, I didn't react to things the way everyone else did, and there were an awful lot of things - social things, people things - that just didn't make sense to me. I've gotten better about it over the years, as I've learned how to read social situations and how to meet social expectations, but it takes effort for me in a way that it doesn't seem to for most people. So it's entirely possible that my "Dude, why would you even notice that?" reaction is colored by the fact that in Luther's situation, it probably never even occur to me that my ex-wife could bring her new boyfriend; I'd expect to see her and my daughter, because that's how I know them, and that would be all there was to it.

    I'll be coming to find you before the next book comes out. I want to hear all these things before it goes to print, so I can fix a few things next time!

    Ha! Bring it on! (Actually, it sounds like fun. So please do.)

    ReplyDelete

Feel free to leave comments; it lets me know that people are actually reading my blog. Interesting tangents and topic drift just add flavor. Linking to your own stuff is fine, as long as it's at least loosely relevant. Be civil, and have fun!