I'm in the middle of reading it for the first time -- I've written this draft over year(s), but I've never read the whole thing at once -- and one thing that I'm seeing that I've never really acknowledged before is that it really is, at least in part, a story of spiritual struggle. So, there's that.
There are a lot of other things, too, though. My first three novels are set mostly in the west -- or, in the case of Venus of Chalk, in a bus on its way west -- and, although I was born in Texas and grew up and went to college in Colorado, I've lived in Massachusetts since 1983. My brother, the landscape painter, suggested to me that I might want to set my next book in New England. So I was looking around at the things and land around me, including in the cemetery across the street from my apartment, where I was going to write a lot, and found the graves of many people in the life of Jonathan Edwards -- his daughter, David Brainerd, his grandparents -- as well as markers about him and Sarah, as well. I heard a presentation about his life at First Churches, the site of his congregation, and I really loved the story of it -- it's very dramatic to me. Also, I felt urgently moved by political events to examine fundamentalism, especially from within Protestant Christianity, which is the tradition I was raised in and understand best. Also -- this isn't very explicit in the book, I think, but it was one of the paths for me -- my explorations of cultural attitudes towards the body made me want to really try to get inside Calvinism to see how it works (how it worked in the eighteenth century, and how it still works inside me and, I think, in much of our culture). When I started to read the writing of Jonathan Edwards, he got a fierce hold on me and shook me in all sorts of directions.
And, at the very beginning, the raptures and upheavals in Northampton in the 1730s and 40s had striking parallels for me with some of the raptures and upheavals that I'd witnessed and been a part of a lesbian feminist community in the very same place, and I started out writing mirror stories that ran in different centuries. That structure didn't work, but it still provides some of the juice for me. I sometimes talk about that as tension between ideology and human messiness.
The more I learned about the history, theology and complexity within this story, the more fascinated and compelled by it I became.
Thanks so much for such a thoughtful answering of the question! It makes me even more excited to one day read the book, particularly the aspect of religion and spirituality's connection to the body. I imagine that's a pretty rich landscape *
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Date: 2007-04-04 03:51 am (UTC)There are a lot of other things, too, though. My first three novels are set mostly in the west -- or, in the case of Venus of Chalk, in a bus on its way west -- and, although I was born in Texas and grew up and went to college in Colorado, I've lived in Massachusetts since 1983. My brother, the landscape painter, suggested to me that I might want to set my next book in New England. So I was looking around at the things and land around me, including in the cemetery across the street from my apartment, where I was going to write a lot, and found the graves of many people in the life of Jonathan Edwards -- his daughter, David Brainerd, his grandparents -- as well as markers about him and Sarah, as well. I heard a presentation about his life at First Churches, the site of his congregation, and I really loved the story of it -- it's very dramatic to me. Also, I felt urgently moved by political events to examine fundamentalism, especially from within Protestant Christianity, which is the tradition I was raised in and understand best. Also -- this isn't very explicit in the book, I think, but it was one of the paths for me -- my explorations of cultural attitudes towards the body made me want to really try to get inside Calvinism to see how it works (how it worked in the eighteenth century, and how it still works inside me and, I think, in much of our culture). When I started to read the writing of Jonathan Edwards, he got a fierce hold on me and shook me in all sorts of directions.
And, at the very beginning, the raptures and upheavals in Northampton in the 1730s and 40s had striking parallels for me with some of the raptures and upheavals that I'd witnessed and been a part of a lesbian feminist community in the very same place, and I started out writing mirror stories that ran in different centuries. That structure didn't work, but it still provides some of the juice for me. I sometimes talk about that as tension between ideology and human messiness.
The more I learned about the history, theology and complexity within this story, the more fascinated and compelled by it I became.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-04 04:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-04 04:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-05 02:35 am (UTC)