The Writer Takes a Guess

If some day I write a novel, or more than one, I think that what I write will be something similar to the writing of Flannery O'Connor.  As a non-violent, I am intrigued with writing that contains violent elements.  How better to show the evils of violence than to let them play themselves out in your writing?  Besides O'Connor I am also intrigued by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club and the recent Rant.  I don't agree with his ideology, which is, as far as I can tell, a mix of existential post-modern angst, littered with bits of Freud and Sartre.  On some level I do see eye-to-eye with Palahniuk.  I believe that he sees himself as a realist, and in a way I will grant him that.  What is important is that we acknowledge the presupposition that he brings to his work:  there is no God, or if there is, He might hate us.  It's a sort of immature anarchism, which I will admit is what originally drew me to him (how many years ago was it that I first read him).  This is not what will drive my writing.  Instead it will be a different presupposition.  What will inform my writing will be a world-view that sees the cross as a statement of how we are to live.  In seeing God as the Lord of history, I believe that through the cross he showed the futility of methods of violence which seek to create their own solutions for the problem of history.  My writing will play with the dance of violence and non-violence.  At least as far as I can guess.  What is important to me is the implications of a live that is lived non-violently.  For instance, I consider myself a pacifist.  But what good is pacifism for pacifism's sake.  In that case it is little more than a political ideology that can be seen to shy away from the real problem of violence in the world.  You could say that it is convenient to be a pacifist in time of war.  It makes you a voice that stands out.  Instead of considering myself foremost a pacifist, it is important for me to say that I am a pacifist because I believe in living non-violently, and not the other way around.  Otherwise, my pacifist beliefs hold no theological weight, but are just a lofty idea that sets myself over and against the violent war-mongering culture that I live in.  So again, the implications of what it means to be non-violent are important to me.  And I can imagine that my creative writing will delve into the issues that arise from my beliefs.  I can't see how my writing would be very honest otherwise.