Speaker 1: Welcome to the habit podcast conversations with writers about writing.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Rogers your host.
Speaker 2: James K. Smith is a professor of philosophy at Calvin
Speaker 2: College in Michigan and the author of many books including
Speaker 2: designing the kingdom. You are what you love and most
Speaker 2: recently on the road with St. Augustine. His work on St.
Speaker 2: Augustine has been exceedingly helpful to me both as a
Speaker 2: writer and as a human being as you will hear
Speaker 2: in this conversation.
Speaker 3: Jamie Smith thank you so much for being on the
Speaker 3: habit podcast. I really appreciate you making time for us.
Speaker 3: Oh it's great to talk to you.
Speaker 4: You know a Gustin has been such an important part
Speaker 4: of my sort of inner world for four years and
Speaker 4: really your work on St. Augustine has been very important
Speaker 4: for me really giving me the away end to make sense.
Speaker 4: So so thank you for the work you've done in
Speaker 4: imagining the kingdom and I guess it's a desire in
Speaker 4: the kingdom that whole series and in your which you
Speaker 4: love and and now on the road with St. Augustine
Speaker 4: which I which I have been reading I just love
Speaker 4: it I think it's going to be a really important book.
Speaker 5: Oh thanks so much. I feel like. I've been sort
Speaker 5: of writing this book for 20 years because Augustine has
Speaker 5: been with me the whole way so yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean it's just his idea of you know the
Speaker 6: ordered and disordered and reordered loves. Actually it's so helpful
Speaker 6: for thinking about all of human experience for it and
Speaker 6: it certainly has been a big part of the way
Speaker 6: I think about writing and the way I teach writing.
Speaker 3: Fascinating you know because every at every creative writing teacher
Speaker 3: who's ever lived I think you know has said what
Speaker 3: do your characters want. You know I mean at the
Speaker 3: end you understand your character. I mean you might say
Speaker 3: your character is his wants which by the way. That's
Speaker 3: what my character is to as a person is what
Speaker 3: I want. And and I make choices based on what
Speaker 3: I want. And then you know there are consequences and
Speaker 3: then maybe my desires change and you know that just
Speaker 3: I think it's just so helpful in so many ways.
Speaker 7: You know for for for writers to think about.
Speaker 8: I love.
Speaker 9: I love this connection you're making because. Yeah. And it
Speaker 9: also explains then why writing is such a science of
Speaker 9: the soul as it were. I mean it's the art
Speaker 9: that is the science of the soul and why why
Speaker 9: it's why a novel can tell me more about myself
Speaker 9: and can tell us more about humanity than you know
Speaker 9: a newspaper article because in a way the best literature
Speaker 9: is getting at people's hungers desires and is is getting
Speaker 9: at is trying to honor the complexity of that.
Speaker 10: And I think a Gustin it's interesting.
Speaker 11: In fact I'm talking to a friend who teaches at
Speaker 11: the University of Iowa Writers Workshop Garth Greenwell and when
Speaker 11: he teaches writing he teaches Augustine's Confessions and not just
Speaker 11: for memoir but for a kind of writing that is
Speaker 11: attentive to the dynamics of desire the way in which
Speaker 11: our loves are sort of the engine that drives our
Speaker 11: being in the world.
Speaker 9: And I think you're right that Augustine is in that sense.
Speaker 9: I think one of the reasons why Dustin is still
Speaker 9: with us is because he was so prescient in that regard.
Speaker 9: And so it's at once was very very intimate. You
Speaker 9: know you can peer into a soul and yet it
Speaker 9: also helps you to understand others. So yeah no I'm
Speaker 9: encouraged to hear that that's helpful in teaching writing too.
Speaker 9: That's very cool. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Maybe we should back up. I mean I've kind of
Speaker 4: launched in as if everybody listening knows what we're talking
Speaker 4: about as far as ordered and disordered lives and sure
Speaker 4: could you could you sort of give us a quick summary.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 13: So I think probably the aspect of Dustin but most
Speaker 13: captivated me and I'm trained as a philosopher so that
Speaker 13: slightly skews maybe the way I came to Gustin. But
Speaker 13: what struck me was first and foremost that he's he
Speaker 13: looks at who we are as human beings and he
Speaker 13: sees the seat and center of the human person is
Speaker 13: located in the heart by which he doesn't mean just
Speaker 13: this mushy emotionalism. He just means that the the the
Speaker 13: engine room of our loves.
Speaker 8: And so what really defines me and what motivates me
Speaker 8: and moves me and what kind of governs my my
Speaker 8: being is what I love. But so everybody to be
Speaker 8: human is to love. You can't not love hated Gus.
Speaker 8: That first paragraph in the confessions where he says you
Speaker 8: have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless
Speaker 8: until they rest in you. So every creature by virtue
Speaker 8: of being made in God's image is longing for something
Speaker 8: is looking for something is chasing after something and that
Speaker 8: that's really on the register of love.
Speaker 14: But then a Gustin says that doesn't mean that we
Speaker 14: all love the same things. Nor does it mean that
Speaker 14: we love what we ought. Right. There's a kind of
Speaker 14: design claim here that humanity is made to love and
Speaker 14: it's ultimately made to love the one who made them
Speaker 14: to love God who who welcomes them. The effect of
Speaker 14: sin and brokenness and and tragedy in our lives is
Speaker 14: not that we stop loving something it's that we now
Speaker 14: our love gets disordered it gets misdirected it's it's aimed.
Speaker 14: The aim is crooked and bent and now we're chasing
Speaker 14: created things instead of the Create tour hoping those created
Speaker 14: things could satisfy an infinite hunger.
Speaker 8: So now now we're looking for love in all the
Speaker 8: wrong places where we're we're chasing after facets of the
Speaker 8: creation glomming onto them grasping them as if they could
Speaker 8: be everything to us. And when we do that they
Speaker 8: sort of slip through our fingers they become nothing and
Speaker 8: we're still hungry. So that's our art. We can't not love.
Speaker 8: But our loves can be disordered.
Speaker 9: And really redemption redemption is finding the right target for
Speaker 9: our love. You know remembering what we were who we
Speaker 9: were made for.
Speaker 6: Yeah. It seems like every story you read is that
Speaker 6: story right. It's it's people getting into one kind of
Speaker 6: trouble or another because of some disordered love and sometimes
Speaker 6: usually it's their own sometimes it's somebody else's that causes
Speaker 6: heartache for them. And then in the end that resolution
Speaker 6: is some sort of correction.
Speaker 3: Yes yes of their lives.
Speaker 10: And it's a correction on the right. It's a correction
Speaker 10: or it's a restoration. It's a healing on the order
Speaker 10: of their loves. And it's not just you know what
Speaker 10: they believe about the world or what they think about
Speaker 10: the world. Right it's it's it's it's it's cooking along
Speaker 10: under the radar of all those kinds of things in
Speaker 10: some ways. Why do you say that again you said
Speaker 10: it's not that they would you just say that they
Speaker 10: don't do so it's not that what happens is I
Speaker 10: think the dynamic is it's not always a matter of
Speaker 10: how I'm thinking about the world or what I believe
Speaker 10: about the world. That's really the source of my problem.
Speaker 8: You know I might say you know you could have
Speaker 8: a character and it looks like oh well their problem
Speaker 8: is they believe the wrong thing or they have the
Speaker 8: wrong ideas but in fact usually that's just a symptom
Speaker 8: and a manifestation that they want the wrong things in them.
Speaker 9: And so a resolution for a character is not always
Speaker 9: like figuring something out. It's it's actually sort of finding
Speaker 9: what they were made for and finding the end of
Speaker 9: their loves in that regard.
Speaker 10: I mean interestingly I think that's exactly the trajectory of
Speaker 10: Augustine's own story and the confessions is that in a
Speaker 10: way it looks for a long time like his problem
Speaker 10: is this intellectual puzzle he has to solve. How should
Speaker 10: I think about God and what's the truth. But what's
Speaker 10: interesting is by the time you get to book seven
Speaker 10: of the confessions in a way he has resolved all
Speaker 10: those intellectual problems he knows. He actually sort of knows
Speaker 10: what the truth is. But he would still admit he's
Speaker 10: not who he's supposed to be. He still is characterized
Speaker 10: by anxiety and fragmentation and it's not until he actually
Speaker 10: gives himself over on the order of his loves that
Speaker 10: he really finds kind of wholeness and resolution for himself.
Speaker 10: And I think that's important.
Speaker 3: And even that prayer Lord might be chaste but not
Speaker 3: yet it is. I know in my head what I
Speaker 3: need to be but my heart's not there yet.
Speaker 12: Yeah yeah exactly.
Speaker 8: And he knew I think that this is the difference
Speaker 8: between different kinds of stories too I think the heart
Speaker 8: of what would be an Augustinian story is the heart
Speaker 8: I need is itself always going to be a gift
Speaker 8: it's gonna be like what talking called you know the
Speaker 8: you catastrophe it's going to be something that's that's given
Speaker 8: to me.
Speaker 10: And if there's an act I need to undertake it's
Speaker 10: an act of surrender it's an act of opening myself
Speaker 10: up of receiving which of course is a deep offense
Speaker 10: to my pride who wants to be able to say
Speaker 10: I've figured it out I achieved that I accomplished it
Speaker 10: yeah yeah yeah that's that's great as as you the
Speaker 10: this these longings send us on journeys right.
Speaker 4: I mean the central metaphor of your of your latest
Speaker 4: book is yes on the road was in August. It's
Speaker 4: this this moving through time and space in search of
Speaker 4: something and not just your time and space is also
Speaker 4: a mental. A metaphor journey. And I'm sure you've heard
Speaker 4: the the the old saying there are only two kinds
Speaker 4: of stories. A stranger comes to town or a person
Speaker 4: takes a trip and I have not heard them.
Speaker 15: That's that's certainly good.
Speaker 6: And I thought about that as I was reading through
Speaker 6: your book on the road with Dana Gustin. Yes. This
Speaker 6: is why this is why that's where that saying comes from. Yeah.
Speaker 6: We're on journeys because we don't know because we well
Speaker 6: because we're because there's a there's space between where we
Speaker 6: are and what we want.
Speaker 16: Yes. Yes. So there's that there's a sense in which
Speaker 16: to say that human beings are lovers first and foremost. Right.
Speaker 16: That we want that we long almost built into that
Speaker 16: is a picture of.
Speaker 12: There is an out there that I'm after and that
Speaker 12: I'm said.
Speaker 10: So humans who are lovers are also chasers.
Speaker 17: And so it's almost by the very nature it propels
Speaker 17: you elsewhere. And so I think that's part of it.
Speaker 17: I also think I mean I think it's a really
Speaker 17: interesting question because there's something about the journey to which
Speaker 17: this locates me and maybe that's also what happens when
Speaker 17: the stranger comes to me.
Speaker 8: There's a kind of dislocation where now I have to
Speaker 8: confront something about myself like in the journey maybe the
Speaker 8: comforts of home drop away and now I have to
Speaker 8: see something in myself or I'm encountering others who are
Speaker 8: a mirror for me that I never had at home.
Speaker 5: And I think that explains the why pilgrimage is so
Speaker 5: crucial to the spiritual life in a way.
Speaker 7: Yeah that that that disorientation that that I mean this
Speaker 7: is where a story comes from. Yeah. Right. Right.
Speaker 6: And I think I've said this in this podcast before
Speaker 6: you know it. Florida is such a rich source of
Speaker 6: story because people are always running into each other who
Speaker 6: don't normally run into each other hand also the natural
Speaker 6: they find themselves in the swamp and you know the
Speaker 6: swamp itself is a place where the water meets the
Speaker 6: land and this kind of animal meets and that's kind
Speaker 6: of its it's that yes I've got yeah I've got
Speaker 6: to Florida thing but but the.
Speaker 12: No that's okay. You know Lauren Groff trajectory. That's right.
Speaker 12: Have you ever thought of it that way.
Speaker 18: I mean for Dustin too I think. And not just
Speaker 18: for Dustin but I think Dustin gets this. I think
Speaker 18: he he thinks this is part of the human condition
Speaker 18: that we are in a way all looking for another country.
Speaker 18: We are all exiles. We are all strangers in the
Speaker 18: land now. That's partly because we made ourselves strangers. But
Speaker 18: he he thinks there's too mean to try too big
Speaker 18: theological world words but he thinks there's this eschatological aspect
Speaker 18: that everybody is is looking for this kingdom to come.
Speaker 10: So some version of that.
Speaker 11: And so because we are all oriented to some end
Speaker 11: like that we're looking for another country like Abraham.
Speaker 17: Everybody's on this track. And and the situation of Ragsdale
Speaker 17: also names something about the human condition.
Speaker 10: And then the question is can you be an exile
Speaker 10: who also knows where home is. And I think there's
Speaker 10: a lot of rich possibilities for narrative arcs in between
Speaker 10: those two things.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah. You use the term out there a little
Speaker 7: while ago and I think that's you know one thing
Speaker 7: that's that's distinctive.
Speaker 6: We we're used to the idea of pursuing our desires
Speaker 6: to pursue to to you know every Disney movie starts
Speaker 6: with the I want song right. You know that you
Speaker 6: know I want this reason in the movie into and
Speaker 6: an insight that I've run run into throughout your work
Speaker 6: and some of this is from from Charles Williams and
Speaker 6: Simmons from Augustine and but the idea that we don't
Speaker 6: get to we don't get to invent what's gonna make
Speaker 6: us happy we don't get to. We don't get to
Speaker 6: invent them. Speaking of the last words we'll get you
Speaker 6: and then our own tea here and here.
Speaker 19: And so the idea of something out there somebody it's
Speaker 19: not I don't look inside to know what I need.
Speaker 19: Who I am. But rather I look to something beyond me.
Speaker 19: I think that's a really important insight for a right
Speaker 19: or not. I mean not just for characters in a
Speaker 19: story but but for a writer to realize my work
Speaker 19: is not just a map of my inner world but
Speaker 19: rather I am I'm giving an account of what I've
Speaker 19: seen in the world a world that I didn't make.
Speaker 16: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I wonder if that helps explain
Speaker 16: though to why maybe so many many contemporary stories don't
Speaker 16: have this purchase on us because I do think we
Speaker 16: live in a cultural moment where people do imagine they
Speaker 16: can make up their own kilos.
Speaker 20: They imagine that they can make up their own good
Speaker 20: and then that makes for a terrible story because the
Speaker 20: world just sort of bends to your will and you
Speaker 20: try to.
Speaker 10: I mean it's just fantasy in the worst sense of
Speaker 10: the word right. Like it's it and it's not true.
Speaker 11: Whereas yeah for August and for the kinds of stories
Speaker 11: I think for the human condition it's actually about how
Speaker 11: do I find the way I fit into the world.
Speaker 11: I didn't make how do I find a way to
Speaker 11: fit and make sense of myself into a world that's
Speaker 11: given that yes given in the sense that I've run
Speaker 11: into it.
Speaker 20: But also given in the sense that it's gifted hits
Speaker 20: it's created it's given to me and I think that
Speaker 20: actually just makes for much more interesting literature much more
Speaker 20: interesting narrative though and this is where in some ways
Speaker 20: it's almost hard to read Gustin from modernity because as
Speaker 20: you said we've kind of inherited this this assumption that
Speaker 20: the world is what's in our heads and what we
Speaker 20: make of it whereas interestingly for Dustin even when a
Speaker 20: gust and turned inward and he starts trying to plumb
Speaker 20: the depths of his own conscience consciousness.
Speaker 13: Augustine so he uses this metaphor of a cave and
Speaker 13: he says when you turn me into myself and I
Speaker 13: start trying to plumb the depths of my own soul
Speaker 13: it's like I reach this cavern whose bottom I can
Speaker 13: never sound. And there's almost a kind of infinity within me.
Speaker 11: And then you hear the echoes of God reverberating from
Speaker 11: the bottom of it.
Speaker 20: So either for Dustin interiority is so different than modern interior.
Speaker 9: No it's it has it in infinity about it because
Speaker 9: it's the soul that's made in God's image. And I
Speaker 9: do think so. I'm a huge fan of you know
Speaker 9: 19th century French literature and in many ways I still
Speaker 9: think they understood that. I think a lot of flow
Speaker 9: better understood. Despite all his sort of proto modernism I
Speaker 9: think he understood that we are always more than we
Speaker 9: could make of ourselves and trying to grapple with that mystery.
Speaker 9: I think mystery is a bit of a lost category
Speaker 9: for us in London. What do you mean when you
Speaker 9: say that there is there is a sense in which
Speaker 9: there's an elusiveness we we elude ourselves which is precisely
Speaker 9: why you want to trust the one who made you
Speaker 9: to tell you your own story.
Speaker 17: Great that there is there is I don't trust the
Speaker 17: story I would tell about myself because I am I
Speaker 17: don't have confidence that I know who I am and
Speaker 17: yet if I surrender myself to the one who made
Speaker 17: me and knows me in a sense I'm receiving the
Speaker 17: gift of a story that helps me narrate my own
Speaker 17: identity and that's perplexing.
Speaker 5: I unfortunately I think what happens in modernity in an
Speaker 5: age where we think we know everything is mystery just
Speaker 5: has a negative connotation like what we're saying is the
Speaker 5: mystery is something that has to be solved it's all
Speaker 5: there's a puzzle and we're gonna figure it out whereas
Speaker 5: this historic you know even the St. Paul sense of
Speaker 5: mystery in the book of Ephesians or what a Gustin
Speaker 5: means by mystery or the mid evils is mystery. Is
Speaker 5: this plenitude this Fullness this overflowing so that when you've
Speaker 5: waded into a mystery it's not that you're puzzled it's
Speaker 5: that you're sort of overwhelmed by possibility but it requires
Speaker 5: a lot of trust like you have to know who
Speaker 5: you're trusting in that context I'm not sure if that
Speaker 5: helps is very helpful for writers but I do think
Speaker 5: it gets at something more true about the human condition
Speaker 5: than imagining that we could figure ourselves out Well I
Speaker 5: think it's one reason it's helpful for writers is that
Speaker 5: it frees.
Speaker 6: It opens up some possibility. OK. If if you know
Speaker 6: there aren't many Christian bookstores left. But but when you
Speaker 6: go through a Christian bookstore you realize the extent to
Speaker 6: which Evangelicalism has bought into that that modernist D mystification. Yes.
Speaker 6: You know it's it we're going to you know here's
Speaker 6: seven steps to this in five easy ways to what
Speaker 6: you were going to solve this problem rather than wading
Speaker 6: into a mystery and saying I think this the universe
Speaker 6: is too much for me and God is too much
Speaker 6: for me. But but here we go. We're gonna try it.
Speaker 17: Yes. Yes. Yeah. No I agree. We often don't appreciate
Speaker 17: the depths to which modern Protestantism sort of drank the
Speaker 17: modernist Kool-Aid in that regard.
Speaker 10: And it's it's it's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 10: actually think one of the best sort of imagination stretching
Speaker 10: exercises for Christian artists is to immerse themselves in ancient
Speaker 10: and medieval wisdom and traditions because it's just it's pre modern.
Speaker 10: And so they haven't they they don't they've never fallen
Speaker 10: into the trap of imagining that we're thinking things.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah. I've been I've been reading a lot of
Speaker 6: well as I say Aquinas really. JOSEPH Yeah I've been
Speaker 6: getting my Aquinas through Joseph good guide.
Speaker 12: He's a reliable God man.
Speaker 6: And this is rock in my world I mean this
Speaker 6: this business of conforming yourself to again we've used this
Speaker 6: phrase already to a reality that we didn't make me
Speaker 6: and I think that is so helpful for a right.
Speaker 19: And I think it's freeing for a writer to say
Speaker 19: you know what was Edmund Spenser you says fools that
Speaker 19: my muse may look in the heart and write. But
Speaker 19: when I look in my heart and try to write
Speaker 19: I don't know what to say but when I look
Speaker 19: out at the world I say okay I can do
Speaker 19: that yeah I can I can I can give an
Speaker 19: account of what I've seen. And it's such a relief
Speaker 19: to get out of my head and instead write about
Speaker 19: well Florida or whatever you know.
Speaker 12: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 10: But it's interesting to then also imagine your reader and
Speaker 10: make room for her to dwell in mystery writer. So
Speaker 10: the other another temptation for us is to be sort
Speaker 10: of overly exposition all and to try to make it
Speaker 10: all work for our reader and to solve it whereas
Speaker 10: Well it's funny I had this.
Speaker 17: I mean I'm a philosopher I'm an academic so I'm
Speaker 17: still very much learning how to write.
Speaker 9: And in this book that writing on the road with St.
Speaker 9: Augustine was a new experience for me because I knew
Speaker 9: I wanted to move into a kind of writing that
Speaker 9: was more narrative and literary.
Speaker 17: And one of the things I realized I had to
Speaker 17: learn is I had to actually say less and I
Speaker 17: had to make make room for the reader to have
Speaker 17: an encounter but to then not program exactly how every
Speaker 17: reader was going to respond to that encounter. And there
Speaker 17: is a certain almost a a discipline of a kind
Speaker 17: of minimalism of not wanting to explain it all. And
Speaker 17: then once I think I'm not saying I accomplished it
Speaker 17: but I think once I understood how that works I
Speaker 17: then thought of novels memoirs biographies that I value and
Speaker 17: realized oh yes they gave me room as a reader
Speaker 17: to do some of my own imaginative work in in
Speaker 17: that encounter.
Speaker 8: So in other words they left room for mystery too.
Speaker 8: They didn't they didn't feel like they had to tie
Speaker 8: up all the loose ends.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now I want to return to something you said a
Speaker 6: minute ago that you kind of just breezed past but
Speaker 6: the thought was really important and that is the idea
Speaker 6: of a lot of stories. Well I guess I'm just gonna.
Speaker 3: It reminded me of something from from your new book
Speaker 3: that you were quoting Leslie Jamison when she was talking
Speaker 3: about the idea of of addiction stories in recovery communities
Speaker 3: the ways in which people find their identity in these
Speaker 3: stories and the value of stories is that they are unoriginal.
Speaker 3: You know yes.
Speaker 6: As writers we so value originality because originality makes me
Speaker 6: seem smart but. But can you talk about this idea
Speaker 6: that that unoriginal stories are really valuable for people.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So this is from Leslie Jameson's book the recovery
Speaker 5: which is kind of a memoir of her own recovery
Speaker 5: but then also a foray into the literature of recovery
Speaker 5: and one of the things she struggled with as a
Speaker 5: writer and as a novelist short story writer was Yeah
Speaker 5: the burden is to always tell a story that no
Speaker 5: one's ever heard before or otherwise you know who's going
Speaker 5: to publish it.
Speaker 12: But then and then she would go to an AA
Speaker 12: meeting and so much of an AA meeting was just
Speaker 12: people trading stories back and forth. But it was always
Speaker 12: kind of a story you know like it was a
Speaker 12: very defined arc.
Speaker 20: And she had this sort of epiphany where she realized
Speaker 20: Oh wait stories can do different things. These are stories
Speaker 20: that aren't supposed to be original. They are supposed to
Speaker 20: be stories we give one another so that I can
Speaker 20: actually sort of put it on and say this fits me.
Speaker 12: And now I know who I am. Right. Like that's
Speaker 12: like somebody. Somebody gives their testimony as it were tells
Speaker 12: their story in an AA meeting and somebody who is
Speaker 12: there for the first time can say That's me. Yeah.
Speaker 12: Oh my gosh that is me and all of a
Speaker 12: sudden now they have insight into who they are because
Speaker 12: they they've received a story that helps them make sense
Speaker 12: of who they are. It's given them an identity.
Speaker 9: And I think our culture has you know we live
Speaker 9: with such a cult of novelty and uniqueness and quote
Speaker 9: unquote authenticity that everybody thinks they are special. You know
Speaker 9: one of a kind.
Speaker 10: And I don't want to discount it that there is
Speaker 10: a way in which that's true. But on the other
Speaker 10: hand it is an absolute burden to imagine that you
Speaker 10: would have to invent your utterly unique story whereas maybe
Speaker 10: actually finding rest from anxiety is somebody giving you a
Speaker 10: story and saying oh that's me.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah that's me.
Speaker 12: I mean I just think of that as that's not
Speaker 12: being unoriginal that's being found which is a very different
Speaker 12: way to construe it.
Speaker 6: Yes. You know I was I was talking back around
Speaker 6: Valentine's Day I did a little webinar on writing better
Speaker 6: love letters.
Speaker 21: I should probably sign up.
Speaker 6: Well I'll give you this for free. Jamie this is
Speaker 6: just one question just for the to write about your
Speaker 6: feelings when you're feeling something. You think that's unique. You
Speaker 6: think you think my feelings are really unique. The truth
Speaker 6: is your feelings are or what's not unique. Everybody look
Speaker 6: the way you feel about your wife. There are lots
Speaker 6: of people who feel that about their wives and what
Speaker 6: is unique is the particular the concrete the things that happened.
Speaker 6: The things that you and your wife have shared and
Speaker 6: have done together. That's that's unique. And you tell that
Speaker 6: story that generates that same emotion that we all have
Speaker 6: felt for for somebody. And I think something similar is
Speaker 6: going on in those A.A. stories. You know the details
Speaker 6: I'm sure change from story to story but that underlying
Speaker 6: not just the feelings but the dynamics under under those details.
Speaker 6: So it as you as you tell those details it
Speaker 6: doesn't matter those details are different for other people. You
Speaker 6: getting this common story.
Speaker 12: Yeah I think that's really insightful. You know David Foster
Speaker 12: Wallace also had a number of interesting reflections on cliche
Speaker 12: which is of course something every writer wants to avoid
Speaker 12: being cliche and we get exhausted by us like all
Speaker 12: real effort on the other hand he says. And this
Speaker 12: also comes from his own experience in recovery context what's
Speaker 12: on the other hand sometimes cliches work precisely because they're true.
Speaker 12: It's just that people have said them over and over
Speaker 12: and over again so many times.
Speaker 11: So I love what you're saying that in a way
Speaker 11: the unique intersection though is when this received story even
Speaker 11: the cliche intersects with your history and your particular contingent
Speaker 11: legacy of life together or whatever it might be. And
Speaker 11: at that point what's beautiful is not that I'm saying
Speaker 11: something to my wife that I've never done no one
Speaker 11: else has ever said before but that I'm taking the
Speaker 11: time and sometimes the courage and and to say it
Speaker 11: now here despite everything right that there there's always a
Speaker 11: triumph of history and that.
Speaker 6: That's great. I love that once it it's I love
Speaker 6: from from your book you said identity is our name
Speaker 6: for being found by a story someone else told.
Speaker 21: Oh I'm glad you like that. Yeah that's a great
Speaker 21: lesson I learned from Leslie Jamison too. And I think
Speaker 21: it's what a Dustin Gustin was such.
Speaker 9: I mean he was just one of these people that
Speaker 9: you almost would love to hate because he was just
Speaker 9: brilliant and popular and you know all all these kinds
Speaker 9: of things. And yet he spent a lifetime sort of
Speaker 9: not knowing who he was. I mean that's his constant
Speaker 9: refrain is I don't know who I am. I'm a
Speaker 9: mystery to myself. I'm an enigma to myself.
Speaker 11: And it's not until he picks up Paul's Epistle to
Speaker 11: the Romans and he reads this story again and he
Speaker 11: realizes that's me that's me. And then he sort of
Speaker 11: knows who he is and it's a gift to receive
Speaker 11: such a story.
Speaker 7: Yeah and that's yes that's the gift that storytellers are
Speaker 7: giving to the world.
Speaker 8: I wanted to end. And it strikes me by the
Speaker 8: way too because then you'll know this more than others.
Speaker 12: But the trick isn't to tell a generic story right.
Speaker 8: I think generic stories rags or have no purchase on
Speaker 8: us whatsoever because they don't feel it we don't feel
Speaker 8: like we know anyone. So what a Dustin does is
Speaker 8: he tells the very thick specificity of his own story.
Speaker 8: Yes hoping that somebody might read that and say oh
Speaker 8: well this is about a very particular guy at a
Speaker 8: very particular time in a very particular place. And yet
Speaker 8: there is something universally human about it so that somebody
Speaker 8: could say that's me. Yeah. And it's in the the
Speaker 8: recognition happens because of the specificity of the story.
Speaker 7: Mm hmm. Yeah. Flannery O'Connor said one country has to
Speaker 7: do for all countries in your area.
Speaker 4: You've got to this one country the only way you
Speaker 4: get to universal is through the specific.
Speaker 21: Yes yes yes. Which is which is a very incarnation
Speaker 21: of idea to us isn't it. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: Could you say one more sentence about that would you
Speaker 6: say it's just incense.
Speaker 21: You know we sometimes talk about the incarnation of God
Speaker 21: in Christ is sometimes described as a scandal of particular hilarity.
Speaker 8: Right. Like how how could the creator of the cosmos
Speaker 8: sort of channeled himself not become not charmed but become
Speaker 8: this first century Jew in Palestine. Isn't that exclusive. And
Speaker 8: yet it's precisely because he came in the thick specificity
Speaker 8: of this person at this time that then it actually
Speaker 8: creates the possibility of every human being finding themselves in
Speaker 8: his image. Right. That that the image of the invisible
Speaker 8: God could become the mirror in which we say That's me.
Speaker 8: And it couldn't have been any other way. There couldn't
Speaker 8: have been some IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN SOME vag force
Speaker 8: that manifests this stuff. We would never recognize it. We
Speaker 8: need this the mirror of specificity to be able to
Speaker 8: see ourselves.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Well that's great. Okay. Jamie I always end every
Speaker 7: episode of the habit by asking this question I didn't
Speaker 7: give you any heads up so. OK. All right. But
Speaker 7: the question is what writers make you want to write yeah.
Speaker 9: Which her interestingly are often the writers who also make
Speaker 9: you say oh my gosh I can't write a word.
Speaker 9: So slow slobber I will say Flo Bear is a
Speaker 9: sort of touch point for me and then I'm terrible
Speaker 9: at answering these questions because I always remember what I
Speaker 9: just read or I'll say I mentioned I think earlier
Speaker 9: but Garth Greenwell is a writer at University of Iowa
Speaker 9: who I just finished his book what belongs to you
Speaker 9: and he's got a new one coming out in January
Speaker 9: and it's it's an experience of reading prose that is
Speaker 9: so luminous and yet invisible because it takes you right
Speaker 9: into the mind of another person. I just it was
Speaker 9: very inspiring to me. And then I should give you
Speaker 9: a poet because poetry is really important to me and
Speaker 9: I would say friends right. The poet Franz Wright has
Speaker 9: been a touchstone who just makes sort of language and
Speaker 9: diction come alive for me in ways that others have
Speaker 9: not good like that is.
Speaker 21: I feel like I could pick just I tried to
Speaker 21: pick amongst my children and saying Sure yeah could you
Speaker 21: go back to Flo bear.
Speaker 5: What is about flipper that makes you feel there is
Speaker 5: I think in many ways I see a parallel between
Speaker 5: flow in August and feel there is such a remarkable
Speaker 5: psychologist so I see him as somebody who is has
Speaker 5: this incredible power of describing emotion and how emotion then
Speaker 5: is the way we interpret and perceive the world.
Speaker 8: And he also he also creates character and worlds that
Speaker 8: are so evocative I guess what I love about so
Speaker 8: bear is he's sort of slow motion you know you
Speaker 8: slow the world down and over 15 pages actually nothing
Speaker 8: has happened but you've you've you've journeyed a million mile
Speaker 8: in someone's consciousness and I just find that quite delightful.
Speaker 22: Great. Well Jamie thank you so much. This has been
Speaker 22: a lot of fun. This has been great fun. We
Speaker 22: could have talk forever we could do it again. Yeah
Speaker 22: let's do great. All right. Thank you. Thanks Jonathan. The.
Speaker 23: Rabbit room has partnered with Lipscomb University to make this
Speaker 23: podcast possible. Lipscomb has graciously given us access to their
Speaker 23: recording studio and the Center for Entertainment and Arts Building.
Speaker 23: We're so grateful for their sponsorship and their encouragement and
Speaker 23: the good work they do in Nashville. Special shout out
Speaker 23: as well to the Arcadian wild for allowing us to
Speaker 23: use their delightful song Finch in the pantry. As part
Speaker 23: of this podcast. Check out their album of the same name.
Speaker 1: The habit membership has a library of resources for writers.
Speaker 1: By me. Jonathan Rogers. More importantly the habit is a
Speaker 1: hub of community where like minded writers gather to discuss
Speaker 1: their work and give each other a little more. Kurt
Speaker 1: find out more at the habit not Canada.
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