Debate: Has fiction lost its faith? (2)

Cosmos the in Lost has been engaging with the debate initiated by Paul Elie’s New York Times Op-Ed piece, “Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?”

He begins by summarising Elie's argument and even supplements it with the following quote from Czesław Miłosz:

 “The fact of Europe’s dechristianization is indubitable and depressing. It can also be translated into numbers of victims. If a half-Christian Europe could not prevent the First World War and its massacres in the trenches, then two totalitarianisms, which exterminated millions in concentration camps, were the product of leaders who were entirely godless. However, the ties between religion and society are too complicated to draw up a clear boundary between Christian and post-Christian countries. A fish rots from the head down, and what we call the erosion of the religious imagination began with the philosophers of the 18th century, only to progress through the whole of the next century, receiving its lasting expression, above all, in literature and art…”

His response, however, is to compile some Top 10 lists of contemporary poets and novelists who write from within a theological imagination and he suggests that this task won't be as tough as tough as Elie makes it out to be. Rather, "the toughest task will be keeping the lists down to only ten authors each!"

His first list can be found here and the next will follow tomorrow. You can then make up your own as to the extent to which he is right or wrong about Elie's argument. My initial response to the debate can be found here and a recent article by Michael Arditti, summarised here, is also relevant.

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