Donna Freitas, a teacher in the Religion Department at Boston University and a writer of young adult novels (The Possibilities of Sainthood – Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2008), invited Cheryl Klein (my editor at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic) and me to talk to her Religion and Children’s Literature class tomorrow. I thought I would jot down some thoughts here in preparation for some of the tough questions I may get asked. In particular, I’m worried about someone asking me: “What role does religion play in Marcelo in the Real World?” So here’s a practice run of what I might say. Marcelo, the protagonist of Marcelo in the Real World, is a young man consumed with God and all things religious. God and the Holy Books that pertain to God are his “special interest.” Marcelo prefers the term “special interest” to the term “obsession” because obsession has certain pathological connotations. When you are obsessed with a subject you are forced by an inner force to think about that subject. A special interest, on the other hand beckons your attention without compulsion. Marcelo enjoys thinking about God. He chooses to think about God and read the Holy Books that pertain to God. He would rather do that than anything else. His religious interest is non-denominational. He likes all religions. He reads all kinds of Holy Books. He manifests no sense that one religion is better than another. Moreover, Marcelo’s interest is not simply intellectual, he hears something that for lack of a better word, he calls “music” that no one else can hear. This music fills him with a sense of “longing” and of “belonging.” What happens when someone with Marcelo’s faith, let’s call it, is asked to function in our modern corporate world? I believe that this question, at the heart of the book, is ultimately a religious question. It is not a question that is associated with any religious dogma. It is the question of how a a faith can survive the pressures of the modern, competitive, ego- centered world. What do you do if like Marcelo, you are suddenly overcome with the question: “how do I live with all the suffering?” What if the suffering in the world grabbed you like an iron hand around your throat and wouldn’t let you go? What if you are privileged to see and sense God’s goodness in you, while at the same time, you are forced to witness the pettiness and meanness and evil that surrounds you? How do you go on living? These are the questions, living, burning questions of Marcelo’s life. To Marcelo, these are “religious” questions – and so, I would say, that the role of religion in the book is in the asking certain type of questions when the asking is done with mind, heart, body and soul.
October 20, 2008
October 19, 2008
Journal versus Blog
I had to update the website to include Marcelo in the Real World (due out in March) and I took the opportunity to change the title of this section from Blog to Journal. Why? The simple answer is that ‘journal’ is a word that I am more comfortable with. It makes me feel better. It gives me the sense that I am writing things for myself (as in a journal) except that someone may read them. There was something about calling this a blog that put pressure in me. I felt guilty for not writing in it more frequently, for not commenting on this or that current event. I don’t know, somehow thinking that I was ‘blogging’ made me feel funny. It made me feel kind of pretentious and self-important. It made me feel phony. So now I write the same kind of stuff as before, but I feel better. I feel more honest. Why? I’m not exactly sure. As best as I can figure, writing in a journal (even if it is a public journal) gives me a sense of freedom. Here’s what I am musing on, thinking about, you’re welcome to read it, if you like. I write with a view that what I say may be helpful, interesting to someone and yet I keep a sense of integrity about the process by writing what touches me and affects me, like in a journal.
