Bringing Down the Fire

In [my Father's] confessing his own weakness [he] had found access to a hidden source of power inside, or perhaps outside, himself. In any case it was a source of power that was magical and mystical.

Until that night I had only understood that the writer's goal was to reveal truths in words manipulated so effectively as to cause movement in the minds and hearts of those who read them. What I hadn't understood was that it would cost anything. I thought I could do those things while remaining secure and safe in myself. I had even thought that writing fiction was a way to conceal my true feelings and weaknesses.

But that night I realized that no matter how good I became at manipulating symbols I could never hope to move anyone without allowing myself to be moved that I would only arrive at slight truths if I wasn't willing to reveal truths about myself.

I didn't enjoy the realization, for I was no fonder of self-revelation than my father was. And although I knew I would love to do with written words what my father had done in speech, I wasn't sure I could pay the price. I wasn't sure I wanted to.

Eventually I would write about my father and his church, in an article that was published in the New York Times. I wasn't exactly afraid to write that piece. But even as I began it I was aware that I would be touching on the marrow of my bones, that I would be playing with fire. And even now I can't say too much about the process, except this: it's still going on. Not writing the piece-that was done two years ago-but writing, or rewriting, myself.

For that's where my understanding of all this has brought me. . . . I also suppose that's how Faulkner [in Absalom, Absalom] may have felt, how he captured the fire to reach across the barriers of generation and origin and race and kindle a light of understanding in my heart. What I had to do to be a writer was to be in two places at once-to both bring the fire and to allow it to wash over me, to change me and touch me and make me different.

It may sound silly, but I believe that to become a better writer I have to try to become a better person, just as I believe that the best preacher is not the saint but the person who allows himself or herself to be touched by the word, even as he or she transmits or interprets it. Of course a writer isn't really a preacher, and a novel isn't divine word. . . Every preacher is not a saint, God knows. But the truth, I hope, is that we come to both a book and a service of worship with the same hopes-that we'll learn something, yes, but, more important, that we'll be touched by something, that we will feel a connection with some source of power and energy and understanding.

from a talk by David Bradley in "Bringing Down the Fire, part of Spiritual Quests, William Zinsser, editor.