Scrutinizing meaning systems more closely will help us to distinguish the good from the bad in the systems we develop as we seek to live in God’s world in a manner pleasing to him.
From Literature Through the Eyes of Faith
In the quotation above, Susan Gallagher and Roger Lundin make a case for the benefits of reading meta-fiction, a newer genre that seems in its very philosophical premises to oppose Christianity.
The work work I teach that most explores the epistemological skepticism undergirding meta-fiction is Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night. The novel purports to be the diary of an American Nazi name Howard Campbell who is writing from an Israeli jail cell pending a trial for war crimes. Vonnegut, the novel’s author, claims only to be the book’s editor. Campbell is himself a writer, a playwright more specifically, and Vonnegut-as-editor meditates on what that means for the diary’s veracity.
Continue reading “Mother Night as Meta-fiction”