The Reunion

Monday, May 19, 2014

On Happy Endings

“….and they lived happily ever after.”
Can a fairy tale end in any other way? Can the beautiful girl ever be eaten by the wolf, remain under the power of the wicked sorcerer, or end her life in abject poverty without the love and support of the handsome prince? If there is such a tale, I’ve never read it.
Happily ever after is a principle enshrined in literature for generations. It was something on which a reader could count. In the end, the hero would always come out on top. The interest in happy endings carried over into film. No matter how dark the circumstances, the guy in the white hat would triumph, and the villain – dressed in black – would be vanquished.
Of course, not every story or play or book ended in the way we might want. Romeo and Juliet, and its modern incarnation, West Side Story, come to mind as a plays in which the heroes died. But, by and large, the reader or the viewer could plan on a happy ending.
At some point this all changed. Today, one never knows what evil awaits the hero, nor if the hero will be able to overcome it. It has been asserted that if writers want to be taken seriously, today, they must actually avoid happily ever after endings to their books.
I wonder if the modern disdain for happy endings comes from the pervasive cynicism that we see among the baby boomer generation. Boomers were born between nineteen forty-five and nineteen sixty-five and, in part because of their numbers, they have had a dramatic impact on American society.
As a baby boomer, myself, I might well ask why we are more cynical than were those who came before us.
Perhaps it is because, during our lifetimes, we have seen political figures shot in the streets (the Kennedys, Wallace, and Reagan). We have watched as our government prosecuted two wars – in Viet Nam and Iraq – which ultimately seemed to make no real sense. A sitting president tried to break into his opponent’s headquarters and then resigned from office. We have seen corrupt politicians, immoral public figures, and rampant corporate greed. We have witnessed mass murders.
All of these have been brought into our homes in full color by the news media who seem to believe that the right to show and tell everything is the same as an obligation to show and tell everything.
Life is not happy, many boomers have concluded. We don’t believe in fairy tales anymore and we’ve lost our confidence in happily ever after. Happy endings are so unrealistic as not to be believable.
Still, I like happy endings. When I read a novel, I am entering into another person’s world, perhaps at a different time in history, in a place I’ve never been. The hero may be doing things I’ve never done. I get to know the characters. I come to care about them. I do not want anything bad to happen to my hero.
If I want to feel depressed, I can tune in to CNN. The news this week focuses on chemical attacks in Syria. Hundreds of noncombatants have been killed. I can feel sad for people who I do not know and have never met.
When I open a novel, though, I am not reading the Times. I am reading neither an autobiography, nor an historical account. I do not want the author of my novel to draw me into the story, only to leave me feeling depressed, or sad, or angry. I may be reading the novel, in fact, to escape from the world around me. I want a happy ending.
Perhaps more important than a happy ending, however, is a satisfactory ending.
Alan Watt, in his book, The 90 Day Novel, writes that the hero of a story is attempting to get something that he wants – the girl, a new job, a blue ribbon. He also writes that the hero has a need, which is bigger than what he wants, and the hero believes that what he wants will satisfy the need. The boy who chases the girl may really need love, and he believes that she will love him. The one who looks for a new job may really need recognition and thinks that it will come with the position. Winning the blue ribbon may be an attempt to obtain the acceptance that the hero believes will follow an outstanding performance.
It seems to me that the hero must get what he wants if the story is to have a happy ending.
In some stories, the hero does not get what he wants – no happy ending – but he does find a way to satisfy his need. This is a recipe for a satisfactory ending.
In the motion picture, The Titanic, Rose is a young lady sailing to America where she will marry. Her family is forcing her into the marriage, and she does not care for her fiancé. Jack is a poor boy sailing to America to make a better life for himself. They fall in love and want to marry.
Had the story ended with their arrival in New York and their marriage, it would have had a happy ending. We would have assumed that they lived happily ever after.
However, the Titanic strikes an iceberg and the ship sinks. Jack dies in the icy water of the north Atlantic, while Rose is rescued. She eludes the family members and her fiancé who search for her among the survivors. She gives a false name to immigration officials. She begins a new life. She does the things that she and Jack had talked of doing. She marries, she has children and grandchildren. Although she always cherishes her memory of Jack, she has a good life.
What Rose needed was freedom – freedom from her parents, freedom from her fiancé, freedom to build her life as she wants it to be. During the voyage, marriage to Jack seemed like the path to satisfy her need. While she was not able to follow that particular path, she did find her freedom.
The ending was not happy, but it was satisfactory.
In one sense, a satisfactory ending is better than a happy one, because getting what one wants may provide only short-term happiness – marriage to Jack may not have been as wonderful as Rose imagined it would be. Getting what one needs provides continuing satisfaction – Rose was free for the rest of her life.

A story may have a happy ending. It may have a satisfactory ending. The very best stories have both.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Conflict and Story


Conflict is central to drama…we are naturally drawn to charged moments both large and small. We are not drawn to what our hero had for breakfast, unless he is on death row and it is his last meal. Alan Watt, The 90 Day Novel

 The conflict that drives a story can be an internal conflict, reflecting the interplay of the hero’s multiple wants, desires, and motives, or it can be an external conflict, resulting when the hero’s attempt to obtain something that he wants is frustrated by the actions of someone else.

Psychologists often distinguish among three types of internal conflict: approach-avoidance, approach-approach, and avoidance-avoidance.

Approach –avoidance conflict occurs when an event, a thought, or an action both attracts and repels. There is something that I want. At the same time, I do not want it

I want to invest my money because my investment may increase in value. I do not want to invest my money because my investment may fail. I want to gallop through the novel that I am reading to discover how the story ends. I want to read slowly so that I prolong my enjoyment.

In my book, The Handfasting, Katherine and Steven are engaged to be married, but they have been separated for a decade. When Steven finds her, Katherine wants to see him, wants to fall in love again, wants to pick up their romance where they left off ten years before.

But, “You don’t know anything about him,” her roommate tells her. “He was a painter when you knew him. Maybe he’s a starving artist, looking for someone to support him.”

Has he changed? Katherine wonders.  Will he be as nice, as handsome, as interesting as funny as he was before? Should I meet him for dinner? I want to see him; I’m afraid to see him.

An approach-approach conflict exists when there are multiple alternatives, and each one is attractive. I want to pursue them all, but I am able to choose only one.

I can go to the ball game or the party, but not both. I can read this book or that one, but not both, not at the same time.

Steven and Katherine meet one summer as they travel in England. They fall in love and they want to marry. They are young; Katherine is only eighteen, just out of high school. She wants to be a doctor. Years of school are ahead. Steven is an artist. He may go to graduate school. Years of school are ahead. They want to marry. They want to finish school. They cannot do both at the same time.

An avoidance-avoidance conflict arises when one has multiple options, but none is attractive. You want to avoid them all. “Pay the fine or go to jail,” the judge says.

Bill Wilson is a friend of Katherine’s family, and her mother wants Katherine to treat him nicely. Katherine despises Bill, but she does not want to disappoint her mother. Two options – neither is good.

In the central conflict that drives the story, Katherine is presented with a choice, and she has multiple options. It would be a spoiler if I were to be specific concerning the choice, but I can tell you that her decision will color all that she does for the remainder of her life. None of her alternatives is good. Avoidance-avoidance.

External conflicts are interpersonal conflicts. Two people want the same thing. Only one of them can be successful,

Steven wants to marry Katherine. He has waited for her for a decade. They are in love. Bill Wilson wants to marry Katherine. He has known her since childhood. He needs a wife and Katherine fits the bill. Only one man can have her.

Alan Watt indicates that conflict is central to our stories. He tells his readers – aspiring writers - to put their characters in relationships with other characters and see what will happen. Conflict, he writes, will ensue

Without conflict, a story lacks a driving force. It lacks interest. Where is the suspense? Where is the fear that the hero will have her plans thwarted, her hopes dashed? Where is the relief when a satisfactory ending occurs?

In a book I read over the summer, the seeds of conflict are planted in abundance, but none matures. Never is there any question in the reader’s mind as to whether the ending will be happy, whether it will be exactly as the hero plans.

And I yawned.

Without conflict, a story is bland, like store-bought white bread or hospital food. We all want lives without conflict, and most of us manage to make it through with few serious problems. However, few of our autobiographies would be best sellers!

Without conflict, the story becomes a simple account of events, strung one after the other, without direction or purpose. Conflict makes the story.

 

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Instant Love



I’ve just completed Katherine Lowry’s fantastic book, The Last MacKlenna. Set primarily on a horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky, the story revolves around Meredith Montgomery, owner of a winery in Napa Valley, and Elliot Fraser, who raises thoroughbred horses. They meet at a B&B in Scotland two days before Christmas, are immediately attracted to each other, and quickly fall in love. It’s a common pattern: boy meets girl; they fall in love; they fall into bed, and shortly-by Boxing Day in this case-they are on the path to happily ever after (although Meredith actually takes a bit longer to completely trust the handsome Scotsman).

I addition to being an author (The Handfasting and The Reunion) I review books for the Kindle Book Review. Many of the books I receive are Romance novels, and, as I have reviewed books over the past year, I have found that the almost “instant love” that I observed in The Last MacKlenna is really the norm.

In Dunham by Mariah Jovan, another excellent book that I recently reviewed, Celia and Elliott, privateers who prey on British ships during the American Revolution, meet in a bar on a Caribbean island. A few weeks later, following a battle with the British navy, they find their ships together in calm waters. Elliot sneaks aboard her ship, through the window of her cabin, and into her heart. Four days later, as the winds again begin to blow, they are in love.

In a third book, Until I Met You by Annette Evans, a girl and boy in their late teens meet, sleep together and decide to wed in the space of a week – and the girl’s parents are happy about the proposed marriage! While not all Romances follow this pattern – mine don’t follow it in all respects - I could cite many that do.

This instant attraction certainly moves the action along, and it leaves plenty of time to develop other elements of the plot, but is it realistic? Is love instantaneous? Is it simple chemistry? Do Cupid’s arrows pierce our hearts and cause us to swoon?

When I am not writing or reading, I am a psychology professor. (Yes, I stay busy.) When my classes discuss the topic of interpersonal attraction, one explanation I offer is reinforcement theory, a theory which suggests that love is learned. You get to know another person, spend time with him, perhaps date him, and you learn that the two of you are similar. You learn that you enjoy the same activities, that you think in similar ways, that you have similar goals in life. And you fall in love.

Learning takes time! Falling in love takes time!

Isn’t this your experience? It has certainly been mine. I might have been attracted by her blond hair and blue eyes (sorry, brunettes), but love? Even with the girl I married, falling in love took more than the long weekend in a snow storm at the top of a mountain!

If the image of love that we find in books is so unrealistic, why do authors continue to present it? Why do readers continue to buy into it?

We buy into it because we want it to be true.

We want it to be true, first, because no one really wants to delay gratification.

If you have ever spent time with children, you know that they want immediate gratification. They care nothing about rules. They care nothing for the laws of physics, the constraints imposed by reality. They want what they want, when they want it, and they want it NOW. A child may want a particular kind of candy sold only in a shop on a side street in London, eight hours away by air, but the child wants it now!

Our lives, today, are on fast-forward. We never want to wait. We use email or we text; we do not post letters. We pull into the drive-through at Starbucks; we do not wait in line. We Google for information rather thumb though a book. We click for movies on demand rather than drive to a theater. We want instant information, instant service, instant contact. We also want instant love.

We want it to be true, second, because life would be less painful if it were true. We do not enjoy the “process” of falling in love.

Who really enjoys dating? Wondering if he will call; wondering if she will answer. Trying to decipher the other person’s feelings. We panic when he flirts with another girl, when she smiles at another boy. Adults who find themselves alone after many years consider dating, and their stomachs turn. Would it not be preferable simply to lock eyes with someone across the room, and to live happily ever after?

We would so like for love to be immediate. It would be convenient; it would fit our lifestyles so well. It would be so pleasant if love could be found as rapidly as we brew coffee in a Keurig, if we could fast forward through the emotional ups and downs, if eHarmony could guarantee a perfect the match on the first try, if Cupid aimed his arrows at the boy and the girl, the man and the woman, at the same moment in time.

Some people criticize stories with instant love as examples of simple escapism. They argue that we need to confront the world as it truly is rather than wallowing in sentimentalism.

On the other hand, books exist, at least in part, to take us away from the routine activities of our lives, from “the squalor of the real world,” as they sing in Evita. Books enable us to imagine doing thing we could never do, being people we could never be, having adventures that could never happen, visiting times and places in which we do not live. We experience other people’s lives and see the world through their eyes. We are able, through the people in our books, to experience life, love, and adventure as we feel that they “should” be, as we wish they were.

We know that the easy, fall-in-love-in-two-days stories are unrealistic. But we don’t care. When we pick up a Romance, we willingly suspend our disbelief in such things, we lose ourselves in the story, and we experience, for a short time, life as we would like it to be.

And this is good.

So, choose a Romance, and lose yourself in the story. Escape for a while! Imagine yourself as one lead, your spouse or your steady as the other.

And fall in love. Or fall in love again.

Monday, March 31, 2014

On Sequels


It has been several years, now, but I well remember reading Game of Thrones. I read it slowly because I was enjoying the story. Even though I very much wanted to find out what would happen, I was reluctant to hurry through it, preferring to stretch my enjoyment over as long a period of time as possible.

It was a long book! The Starks of Winterfell were the good guys and the Lassiters were evil. I loved Danny, the woman who birthed the dragons. I was appalled when Edard was executed, and I was excited when his kingdom, the entire North, in fact, rose against the evil king. I turned the pages looking for their victory. I imagined ways in which Edard’s younger daughter might recue her sister from the clutches of the enemy. I hoped that Jon would leave the Wall and go south…

The book ended, and multiple crises were left unresolved.

There was, however, a sequel.

If you are at all familiar with Game of Thrones, you know that there are a host of sequels. I read only a few pages of the second book, and I suspect that I would have been no more satisfied at the end of it than I was at the end of the first.

I have a love-hate relationship with sequels.

A sequel, as we all know, is a book that continues the story or the theme that first appeared in another book. There are at least three forms that a sequel may take, three ways in which a second book – or a third, fourth, or fifth book - may be related to the original.

 Brand New Story

 Sometimes a sequel is a completely different story from the one in the original book. The original story is over. It is complete, and it can be read and enjoyed on its own, without the sequel. Readers, in fact, are often surprised when the sequel hits the shelves in the bookstores.

The sequel, in turn, is also a complete, independent story that can be enjoyed on its own. It generally occurs later in time than the original. Typically, it revolves around the same characters – or some of them. The sequel, however, is not a direct continuation of the original story. It does not pick up the day after the original ended. Although reading the original might enhance one’s enjoyment of the sequel, having read it is not essential since the sequel supplies any important background information. One has the impression that the author completed the first book and then thought, Well, I have another story to tell…

Nicholas Sparks’s book, The Wedding, is generally acknowledged to be a sequel to The Notebook. The first book is about Noah and Allie, how they met, how they fell in love, how they died. The Wedding is about Jane, their daughter, and her husband, Winston. Noah appears in both books, although he is a central character only in the first. The Wedding tells a different story concerning the same family.

In this type of sequel, the books stand alone. Each book is satisfactory in and of itself.

 Tell me more, Tell me more…

 The first book can stand alone. At its end, the story is complete, and the reader needs no more information in order to enjoy the book.

The sequel, on the other hand is closely tied to the original, very dependent on it, and cannot be understood or enjoyed if the first book has not been read. While the first book can be enjoyed without the sequel, the sequel makes no sense without the original.

Gone with the Wind and Rhett Butler’s People are an example of this type of sequel. At the conclusion of Gone with the Wind, Rhett walks away, leaving Scarlet, disappearing into the foggy Atlanta night. Rhett Butler’s People was written some eighty years later as one attempt to tell what happened next. It involves some of the same characters, as well as many new ones. It is set after the war although there are flashbacks to earlier events.

Millions of people had read and enjoyed Gone with the Wind long before even the idea of the sequel was born. A reader, however, could not enjoy Rhett Butler’s People unless she knew the story of Gone with the Wind.

Bethany Claire’s book, Love Beyond Time, and its sequel, Love Beyond Reason, follow this pattern. Love Beyond Time has a satisfactory ending, but a reader would be lost if she attempted to read Love Beyond Reason first.

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone can be enjoyed with no knowledge of the remainder of the series. The Deathly Hallows, however, makes no sense without an understanding of the story contained in the other six books.

 A Never-Ending Story

 Today, many sequels seem to be planned in advance. The first book often concludes with a “cliff hanger,” a twist in the plot designed to hook the reader and obligate her to dive into the sequel in order to obtain closure. The sequel picks up immediately where the previous book ended, and neither book is complete without the other; neither can be enjoyed without the other.

The Hunger Games is, at heart, the love story of Katniss and Peeta. They find themselves participants in a “game” in which contestants publicly battle to the death and in which there can be but a single winner. Their love, so obvious to the millions who are watching the contest, forces the government to accept them both as victors. As they return home - in the final pages of the book - Katniss tells Peeta that her show of love was simply an act that was designed to assure that they both would survive. The reader knows, immediately that a sequel is around the corner. The Hunger Games has no satisfactory ending. Neither it, nor its sequel, nor the second sequel can be read alone. One must read all three books in order to enjoy the story.

No single book in Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy is satisfactory by itself.The Game of Thrones series is another example. My wife reached the fifth book, and she is no closer to anticipating the ending than I was after reading the first.

 I love sequels of the first two types!

When I enjoy a book, I frequently find myself constructing sequels, imagining what might happen next, what crises might occur, who might fall in love with whom. At the end of December, I completed Dunham, an excellent book by Mariah Jovan. I thought about the book for days, imagining various scenarios involving several of the characters.

When I truly enjoy a book, I am happy when I find that the author has enjoyed it, too. When I like the characters enough to create additional plot lines, I am excited to find that the author has chosen to do the same thing. When I want to know more, I am pleased when the author chooses to tell me more.

I object to sequels of the third type.

When I reach the last few pages of a book, only to discover a new twist in the plot, one that cannot possibly be resolved in the space that remains, I feel cheated! I purchased the book in good faith, expecting to enjoy the story and the experience of reading it. I should not have to read a second or third book, or more, in order to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

This pattern occurs so frequently, today, that marketing plans are built around it. When the sequel is published, one of the books will be offered free, the author knowing that anyone who wants to enjoy either book must also purchase and read the other one.

So, as I said, I have a love-hate relationship with sequels. “A Brand New Story”? Bring it on! “Tell me more, tell me more”? Bring it on! “A Never Ending Story”? Don’t even let me start the first book!

 

Monday, March 10, 2014

It is the Story that Counts

It was once said that elevators would replace stairs.
Why would they not? After all, elevators provide faster access than do stairs, are more efficient than are stairs, and cause less stress to the human body than do stairs. Why would one choose to tromp up a long flight of stairs instead of stepping into an elevator and being whisked away to another floor?
Of course, it didn’t happen. We have elevators, we have stairs, and we have escalators –moving stairs. They co-exist, each serving the same purpose, that of moving people and things from one floor, one level, to another.
We have all read the speculation that Ereaders – Kindles, and Nooks, and iPads – will ultimately replace books. Indeed, sales of Ereaders have soared while bookstores have closed.
The writer who reported the early speculation about elevators, however, asserted that the demise of the printed book is as unlikely as the demise of stairs.
Now, argument by analogy is a tricky business. No analogy is perfect, and it may well be that the suggested link between the future of books and the future of stairs will not hold. Modern inventions have, in fact, replaced many of the things we formerly used.
We write on paper, not papyrus. We pull plows with tractors, not horses. We fly across the Atlantic rather than sail. Cars have replaced carriages, digital has all but replaced film, clocks have replaced sun dials, and my wife maintains that cell phones are replacing wrist watches.
The question of whether books have a future was brought home to me a few weeks ago when it was announced that a Books A Million store in our city was closing, leaving just three full service book stores in a metropolitan area of over 785,000 people. Only a year earlier, there had been six stores in the city.
Nevertheless, I tend to believe that Ereaders will not completely replace books.
I take this position as one whose wife gave him a Kindle Fire last August as an anniversary present. Amazon identifies it as “David’s Fifth Kindle,” (although two of the five actually have belonged to my wife). I have used a Kindle since shortly after I first read about them in the New York Times. I love my Kindle and the ability it gives me to take a single volume on vacation, rather than having to choose between three or four thick, heavy books and the second pair of shoes that I really need for river rafting.
Ereaders are terrific for straight reading, when you start on page one and read directly to the end. I review books for The Kindle Book Review. Last fall, I sped through each volume on my Kindle. It was great!
Yet, there are situations in which I prefer a book, a printed book.
Some texts are complicated. Financial Intelligence, a book I’m currently reading, describes how to understand and use various financial documents. For the chapter on how to read a balance sheet, there is a sample balance sheet – in the appendix. When the text discusses “cash on hand,” for example, I turn to the appendix to see how “cash on hand” actually appears in a balance sheet.
With a book, I’d stick a piece of paper – or my right index finger – at the appendix and flip back and forth as needed. With my Kindle, I bookmark the page in the appendix. To consult it, I tap the top of my screen to access a menu. I choose “Bookmarks,” locate the correct bookmark, and touch it. To return to the text, I touch the arrow at the bottom. In the next paragraph, the text discusses “depreciation,” and I repeat the process. It is as complicated in practice as it is in my description. Thumbs and sheets of paper work much better!
Have you ever looked at images, charts, or tables in an Ereader? My Kindle Fire produces beautiful color images. But they are small. Have you ever tried to follow the flow of a line graph across a screen? When I do find the balance sheet in the appendix, can I even read the entries? I have to touch the screen to enlarge the image and touch it again when I have finished with it. Give me a book any day!
When I read Mariah Jovan’s book, Dunham, I read it straight through. On one occasion, though, I had forgotten the significance of a particular character and had to page back to find who he was. It was not fun – flipping backwards, having to remember my location in the book rather than marking it, locating the reference, then selecting “go to” in the menu and typing in the location when I was ready to read again. I can imagine reading a technical work, something difficult to understand – Steven Hawkins’s book, A Brief History of Time comes to mind – and having to frequently page back to find a previous reference. Lost is an understatement. Ereaders are not optimized for this activity.

Finally, if the book is something that I want to keep, I want it printed on paper. I have the Book of Common Prayer on my Kindle, and I pretty much read in it six days a week (I hear it read on Sunday). My prayer book, though, is on a table beside my chair in the den; the copy on my Kindle is simply for convenience.
I have published two books, both of which are available on Ereaders (The Reunion and, recently, The Handfasting) and in print. I have copies of them both on my Kindle, but I assure you, printed copies can be found on the desk in my office. I love Greek icons, and I have books with reproductions of numerous images. I want these on paper where I can page through them slowly, enjoying their beauty, finding meaning in the details, something that would likely be impossible on my Kindle.

We know that technological innovations can be fleeting. In a decade, will .mobi files be readable on any device? Have you heard an eight-track tape recently? How about TRS-DOS, the operating system once used by Radio Shack’s computers? Paper survives. Today’s digital files? Maybe.

It is true. Ereaders may replace books. I’m thinking that they won’t, but in the end, does it really matter?
Children’s author Eric Carle once told a reporter, "I like to hold books and touch them. But in the future, who knows? When they invented papyrus, someone probably said, ‘Storytelling was so good. Why did we have to go and put it on papyrus?’ But one thing doesn't change: It's the story that counts. The medium doesn't matter."*
“It’s the story that counts.” Well said.

  

*USA Today, November 14, 2013

 

Monday, February 24, 2014

Truth in Reading




 

What is truth? Pilate asked Jesus.

It is one of the greatest questions with which philosophers and theologians grapple. It is also a question that we should consider any time that we reach for a book.

“Is the story true?” we should ask. “Did it truly happen?” “Is it based on fact, or did it totally spring from the author’s imagination?” “Does it offer us any insight into the nature of our world, or is it solely an attempt at escapism?”

On some occasions the answers come easier than they do on others. In any case, though, there are three types of “truth” for which we might search when reading a book.

First, there is what we might call “literal truth.” An event is literally true if it really happened just as it’s described. It is what we hope to find when reading a newspaper, a biography, a memoir, or a history book.

Second, there is “embellished truth.” An event truly occurred, but not in exactly the way that it seems in the book. For example, in historical fiction, the events that are recounted truly occurred, but the specific characters are not historical, or perhaps, a character was historical, but the author supplies dialogue of which there is no record.

We find embellished truth when a real event is altered in part. The alteration might occur, to protect the participants, or perhaps the alteration helps the event to better fit into the story. Perhaps the event occurred in the author’s life, and it seems in the story, happening to one of the characters. We find embellished truth when the characters behave in ways that are consistent with a particular period in history. That is, the things they do are things that might well have happened in the circumstances that are described.

Finally, “philosophical truth” refers to the meaning that an event has. Does it tell us something true and important about a character? Does it convey some ultimate truth about humanity in general?

Consider the following excerpt from my new book, The Handfasting.

He actually had proposed, once. It was when men were being drafted into the army to fight in Vietnam. The rules were changing, and he’d discovered that he couldn’t be drafted if he got married within the next four weeks. A friend of his had done just that, and Bill made the suggestion to Melissa, partly in jest, partly not. He was shocked when she’d agreed, but she gave him two conditions. First, she would not be married in name only. After pausing to let him consider the full meaning of her words, she said that Bill would have to explain things to her father. “I’m guessing you’ll be safer in the army than you would be talking to Daddy the morning after our wedding night,” she had told him.

She was probably right—Bill had no wish to tangle with Melissa’s father. He enrolled in college and generally managed a C average. When he came up short—three times in four years—his uncle sat on the county’s draft board, and he managed to keep Bill out of the army.

We find all three types of truth in this passage.

It is literally true that in the nineteen-sixties, men whom were married could not be conscripted into the United States Army. The policy was altered in the middle of that decade, but the new policy did not apply to men who married before the date of its implementation.

It is literally true, that conscription could be avoided while one was enrolled in college and making satisfactory
grades. Finally, it is literally true that each county or parish in the country had a board that selected those who actually would be
called into service, and those boards had some discretion in who they called.

The passage is an example of embellished truth only because Bill and Melissa were not real people. Bill’s behavior, however, was very real. Men did propose marriage to avoid having to serve in the army. (My older brother jokingly suggested that he might do exactly
that!)

Since Bill was fictional, so, of course, was his uncle, but board members did prevent their sons, their nephews, and sons of their friends from being called into service.

In each case, the characters behaved as some people truly behaved when they found themselves in similar circumstances

The excerpt is an example of philosophical truth because it highlights certain aspects of Bill’s character. It highlights characteristics that we see time and again throughout the book. He is self-centered. He’s only interested in his own good. He tries to get what he wants, even if someone else is hurt in the process. This set of characteristics is not unique to Bill. Many of us have known people like him.

We should always consider the truth in the books that we read, the literal truths as well as the other types. All three are important. We should learn to distinguish among them and to appreciate all of them.