Dear Judith,
You could say an examination of the issues you raise here has been done in The Turning Year: a memorate, my husband’s account of the year he became a Christian and we married. We asked the same questions about telling the truth when he approached the story of his almost-ex wife’s having murdered the woman (“Marta”) he (“David”) was about to marry when their divorces came through. I met him at the wake.
As a folklorist who wrote his dissertation on folk narrative, he is acutely aware of story in human history and in individual consciousness.
Marta had been married to a man who came out as gay after they were married. David was divorcing a mentally unstable woman. They had a five-year-old daughter. Marta was finishing her dissertation on a classic Canadian Catholic author (a friend of her family) who did precisely the things in his novels that give you pause. Morley Callaghan was pushing the borders of Catholic thought in some circles by writing about redeemable sinners who would be considered beyond the pale by traditionalist Catholics. Another Christian (Catholic, as Marta was) gay man wrote about his conflicted feelings for Marta years before the tragedy when she was about to marry an artist he was sure was gay. He demurred from telling her his insights, which soon proved correct, and the outcome was tragic. Of course, my future husband, who she met a few years later, had his own roster of guilt in the matter. And Marta had a wild streak in her, which was not easy to understand.
Several of these people were university teachers of English literature and/or editors with major Canadian publishers. I have also made paintings, some of which were visions. We spent fruitful time with the Association of Christian Artists in Toronto in the early 1980s.
We waited a very long time before publishing his book. We looked at every issue from every angle we could think of. I edited his writing ruthlessly. He fought back. He wished he had merely written a novel so he could “lie” and embellish and obscure some things. Or so he could tell a more comprehensive version of the pared-down version he finally accepted. I was strongly opposed to a hybrid: part truth, part fiction. It seemed to me that what God had done in our lives — and would continue to do — was far too important to be less than factually truthful — except by being less than comprehensive in many of the peripheral threads of the story that were just as thorny as the central tale.
We did not want others to be hurt. They were hurt anyway. As literary folk, we felt we owed it to the real Marta to be true to her real personality. After all, she had been martyred for it.
If you want a simpler, Biblical directive: you can find any conceivable horror or sin in scripture and, therefore, can justify your realistic writing on that basis. However, the writing of Holy Writ and the writing of a novel are not quite the same thing, however holy your story. Or are they? Isn’t that the essential question? Can God speak through you as certainly as He does through the writers of the Bible? I am inclined to think He wants to.
Our marriage led through trials and tribulations to my eventual discovery of the cause and the cure for mental illness. I am not sure what happens to literature when you more fully understand the physiological reasons for all behavior, including the kinds of dramatic behavior considered essential to novels. Much of the mystery evaporates. The wild-bad-mysterious-crazy people can be cured and live fulfilling lives. Well, not quite. Something like Pilgrim’s Progress or The Lord of the Rings transpires. On the other hand, I sometimes wish I had written the story of my discoveries in novels rather than in academic prose. By now, more people might have learned how to help themselves and their loved ones to avoid the sorts of tragedies enacted in The Turning Year: a memorate and to find its happy “ending.”
