The Beauty of Athol Dickson

For a year or so, I wrote a column for The Christian Manifesto, a site devoted to movie, book and music reviews and on faith and culture. It was something of an edgy site, and I was something of an oddity, with a more conventional perspective. But they were happy with my work, and I was happy to write for them.

We quietly drifted apart. My drafts occasionally get lost and I’ve to do a bit or prodding and reminding. Recently, the publication did a major overhaul, and my articles disappeared.

Well.

Many of my articles were actually pretty good (others’ opinions as well as mine) and the topics interesting and still current, so from time to time I will be reposting them here. I’m starting with one on author Athol Dickson, and it’s timely – next month under his own imprint, he’s republishing four of his novels – and he has a Win-A-Kindle and books contest this month. More information on the contest can be found here.

The Beauty of Athol Dickson

Author Athol Dickson wrote and published three suspense novels and a non-fiction book before he wrote four extraordinary novels: River Rising, a story of the 1927 Mississippi River flood and – slavery; The Cure, in which a small town in Maine attracts thousands of the homeless because of a rumor of a cure for alcoholism; Winter Haven, in which a young woman travels to an island off the coast of Maine to identify what may be the body of her long-lost brother, and his body hasn’t aged in 10 years; and Lost Mission, two stories of a mission in California set centuries apart.

The four stories are entirely different, although they do share several things in common.

All four portray a strong sense of place: a small town on an island in the swampland south of New Orleans; a seaside town in New England; an island off the coast of Maine; and the desert cities and suburbs of southern California.

Each of the novels contains a strong sense of the apocalyptic, with looming natural or man-made disasters or, in the case of Winter Haven, a foreboding sense of evil that is so palpable that the reader experiences high anxiety as soon as any character gets too close to the woods.

 

And each of the four are not “Christian novels” or “Christian fiction;” instead, they are novels – very fine novels – written by a Christian author.

They are also something else.

In a recent article for the Novel Journey blog, Dickson discussed fiction and beauty. He argued that a goal of a novel, perhaps the goal of a novel, is beauty. Even if we think beauty is a result of all of the other aspects of a novel – plot structure, characterization, narrative flow, even particular fine sections of writing – we still miss the point. It’s not a result of all these things; it is the result when all these work together, and work together well because it’s designed that way all along. Beauty, he says, should be intentional in a novel.

And then he says this: “The best friends of beauty in a novel are deep contemplation, honesty, intentionality, originality and love.”

I had to ponder that statement for quite some time. Those “friends of beauty” are not something readers, including Christian readers, are well versed in considering when we read a novel. Usually we say something like “it was a really good story” or “I felt so uplifted after reading it” or “that story edified me” (or didn’t, as the case may be). We don’t ask ourselves if the story was honest or original; in fact, originality often makes us uncomfortable because it takes us into uncharted waters (read Faces in the Fire or The Unseen, both by T.L. Hines, for examples). We look and look for familiarity, even when it takes us to the trite and clichéd.

Dickson’s novels are anything but trite and clichéd. While there are structural similarities in all four, they are not formulaic. And they take us into uncharted waters. River Rising, for example, takes on racism in a surprisingly unexpected way, through a kind of retelling of the story of Moses. Lost Mission tackles the motives that often lie unseen behind evangelism and contemporary Christianity, although never in an explicit way. Winter Haven looks at appearances, and how what looks like one thing can actually be an entirely different thing. And The Cure explores alcoholism and forces us to confront our discomfort with the homeless and “the bums on skid row” by turning them into something threatening – what we may appear to be to them.

If his intention was beauty, then Athol Dickson has succeeded – four times.

Since this article was first published, Dickson has also written the novel The Opposite of Art. My review was posted here last September.

Athol Dickson's "River Rising"

I grew up in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, in a suburb of New Orleans. Jefferson extends from Lake Pontchartrain on the north to the Gulf of Mexico on the south. Below New Orleans and to the east, separated from Jefferson by the Mississippi River, is Plaquemines Parish. For a very long time, Plaquemines was governed by one man, Leander Perez, who was known for his less-than-liberal views on all things, including race.

It is the fictional town of Pilotville, set in 1927 Plaquemines Parish, that is the setting of Athol Dickson’s 2005 novel River Rising. As in all of Dickson’s, “place” plays a very important role, often becoming another major character in the story. And that is what happens in “River Rising.”

The Rev. Hale Poser guides his leaking pirogue (that’s Cajun for canoe) into Pilotville from New Orleans. He gets a job as a janitor at the infirmary for the town’s black people, and shortly thereafter performs a healing miracle for a woman in childbirth – or what is believed to be a healing miracle. Then her baby daughter is stolen, and the whole town, white and black, turns out to search. This stolen baby turns out to be only one of many others stolen over the years. Poser, compelled by something he doesn’t understand, keeps looking for her when everyone else stops. He canoes deep into the swamp, almost dying from lack of food and water in the process, and eventually finds the missing baby. And he finds a lot more: an almost unspeakable horror.

This is 1927, and something else is at play – the Mississippi River. The historical flood of that year serves an apocalyptic purpose in the story, and the river will both destroy and expose, and possibly help redeem.

This novel received a host of accolades and recognitions, including the Christy Award for best Christian novel of the year. But its appeal is much broader, for it is not so much a Christian novel as it is a very fine novel written by an author who happens to be a Christian. It is a grand story, and an honest one. And it ends up being a story of great beauty.

Related:

Athol Dickson writes on “Forgotten Beauty” at Novel Journey.

The Beauty of Athol Dickson, my post published Thursday at The Christian Manifesto.

Athol Dickson's "Lost Mission"

Athol Dickson’s novels always seem to include at least a touch, and often more than a touch, of the apocalyptic. In River Rising it’s a flood. In The Cure, it’s a town under siege by desperate alcoholics. Winter Haven, perhaps the least apocalyptic of Dickson’s works, still portrays a sense of unease and then menace and impossible, almost paranormal things happening. And now there’s Lost Mission.

Lost Mission is apocalypse, Southern California style, crossing two centuries – the late 18th century, when missions were being established by the Spanish from Mexico (New Spain), and the 21st century, with its eclectic and politically/socially explosive mix of wealthy Americanos and illegal aliens. Layer on both eras the rigidity of religious belief (Franciscan Catholic in the former and evangelical Christian in the latter), and you discover some fascinating parallels.

You also find an incredibly good story.

In the late 18th century, three Franciscans, Abbott Guillermo, Brother Alejandro and Brother Benicio, travel with a contingent of soldiers to Alta California to establish Mission de Santa Dolores. They gain early converts among the native population, but Abbot Guillermo’s rigid sense of propriety and order, and his inherent condescending attitude, soon begin to work against the goals of the mission. Brother Alejandro is ordered to paint an altarpiece, a triptych of paintings, so that the converts can visualize the crucifixion of Christ and related events.

In the 21st century, Guadalupe Soledad Consuelo de la Garza leaves her small shop in Mexico to preach to the pagan Americanos. She is given a triptych, kept safely locked away by the local priest, to help lead her onward. She will need to enter the United States illegally, and she is helped by Ramon Rodriguez, crossing into the United States to find work. She wanders in the desert, until she is found by Tucker Rue, a seminary graduate spending 40 days in the wilderness to understand his calling. Eventually, Tucker established Sanctuario to help illegal aliens and their families, and Lupe goes to work for Delano Wright, a wealthy Californian who lives high atop a mountain and who will eventually develop a plan for a Christian enclave, separated from the world.

The enclave, of course, occupies the same site as the old Spanish mission. And the old mission was destroyed in an attack by the native population following a long period of plague. And plague, under certain conditions, can remain dormant.

The author credits his agents for slogging through “an ugly early draft” and his editor for her work on the novel. Whoever is responsible for the final outcome did an extraordinary job – Dickson tells the two stories as one, moving deftly from one to the other. And gradually the reader comes to understand that one story is actually being told.

Lost Mission is the work of a master writer, a good story told incredibly well.

(Attention Federal Trade Commission: I purchased this book from Amazon.com. No one gave it to me. I have received no compensation from it other than the pleasure of reading a really good novel.)