... is now up on the HogwartsProfessor.com (HogPro) site (warning: spoilers alert!):
As I mentioned, Gleam is something of a survey course of Modern philosophy. John, the story hero, visits with a host of heroes and stand-ins who give voice to the worst of modern thinking or the traditional response to these errors. Two
questions on this philosophy seminar told in story: you don’t give the full names of characters who are historical figures though they are familiar from their first names and ideas, i.e., Gilbert for Chesterton, Edith for Edith Stein, Jack for C. S. Lewis, etc. Why did you choose to leave the surnames out of this cavalcade of celebrities?
I elected to leave the surnames out to maintain a respectful “space” between these literary characters and their historical counterparts, and to emphasize that they were not one and the same. I also wanted to avoid the hyper-realism that would have constrained the story that I wanted to tell. Finally, I wanted the story to be layered with many mysteries, big ones and smaller ones, including the identities of the historically-based characters.
On a more substantial note, you seem to be less “smuggling the Gospel” here than “smuggling” a response from tradition to conventional philosophical errors. In this respect, the book is less about the ‘Inklings and Company’ than a story told to illustrate their core beliefs, a story only coincidentally (and conveniently) using them as characters. David Downing does something similar in his wonderful Looking for the King. I especially enjoyed the deft way you wove Edith Stein into the story and her ‘phenomenal’ argument with the positivist strawman ’Krieger’ in the Heidelberg café. Frankly, I loved seeing the thinking mistakes of our times embodied in the bad guys of adventure stories so reading about them acts as something like an immunization. I assume this was your tip of the hat to Tolkien, Lewis, and company and to their fictions, stories which work in much the same way?
I desired to expose these crooked ideas while, as Tolkien might have said, respecting the freedom of readers to reach their own conclusions. I wanted the malignant characters in the story to be more than one-dimensional, even if they were unattractive; in this mission, I struggled as Lewis described struggling with The Screwtape Letters. Like Tolkien, Lewis, and Chesterton, I wanted readers holding different beliefs to be able to ponder and reflect on the ideas in the story, while still enjoying a (hopefully) rousing story. I’ve studied Husserl and phenomenology, a challenging philosophical system, and I wanted to juxtapose Edith with a spokesman (Krieger) for the Nazi’s virulent strain of neo-paganism.
Read the entire interview. For more information about Toward The Gleam, visit the novel's website.
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