In the Flesh: Fiction as an "Incarnational Art (original) (raw)

In the Flesh: Fiction as an "Incarnational Art" I arrived in Chicago in January of 2014, fresh from the warm Southern embrace of an imaginative English department at a small Christian liberal arts university. Chicago, as I saw it, was rich in artistic appreciation and participation, but equally abounding in rugged industrial pragmatism. Throughout that spring 2014 semester, I commuted from Pilsen, my beloved neighborhood known for its artists (some of whom also worked in a more "practical" job to earn money) to the business center of the city (which was not devoid of artists either). Although the world of ideas and intuition can overlap the world of business and materialism, the two often conflict. I am by no account a professional artist, but I do consider literary art an essential part of my self-expression and identity. My struggle to find the time and energy to write as much as I felt I needed to while in Chicago enabled me to empathize with the artists in my community. As I attempted to balance practical necessities like cooking, cleaning, and working at my internship, with the need to regularly and creatively express myself, it became clear to me that sustaining the creative mind and soul does not always coincide perfectly with sustaining the body. When time, energy, and resources are limited, one realm of human need must take precedence over the other. This dichotomy led me toward an interest in the intersection between art-especially literary art-and our physical human lives. Thornberry Thesis 2 When Amy Sonheim, one of my professors in that precious English department mentioned above, came to town in February, she suggested over lunch that I read Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners. Valuing her recommendation, I immediately ordered the book and soon found that O'Connor, too, takes note of the split between the realms of body and of soul, of form and of content, or-in her words-of mystery and of manners. In "The Nature and Aim of Fiction," one of several essays that make up the book, O'Connor briefly addresses the conflict that arises when artists, particularly writers, seek to "write well and live well at the same time" (66). She implies that good writers rarely live in financial comfort unless the writer already has copious amounts of money available by some other means. That is, good writing is a full-time job that doesn't pay well. However, writers who work for the quality of what they write don't write primarily because they want financial rewards.