Reaching Out through Retold Stories [Radio Readings]

Last updated on: March 9, 2015 at 8:47 am by Leah Libresco

Reaching Out through Retold Stories [Radio Readings] 2015-03-09T08:47:02-04:00 Leah Libresco

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm The episode is now available to download/stream on demand.

This week, Rosamund Hodge’s Crimson Bound served as a jumping off point to talk about why I love reading retold stories.

Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings” post, so you can track down the books, articles, and, (this week) fanfiction that I cite on the show. So, without further ado, here’s what I’m talking about this week.

Guaranteed Redemption or Damnation, Pick One

Rosamund Hodge’s Crimson Bound is set in a world where people marked by the forestborn must kill someone within three days or die themselves. If they survive, they will eventually become one of the heartless forestborn themselves.
Ted Chiang’s “Hell is the Absence of God” is set in a world where angels visit earth frequently, and people blinded by their light will automatically go to Heaven when they die.
Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy includes a secular Jewish character who winds up as a vampire and is distressed by his inability to say the name of God or pray the Sh’ma.

Why set a story inside another story?

Hodge’s Crimson Bound is only loosely linked to Little Red Riding Hood and The Girl with No Hands.
Nancy Werlin’s Impossible tracks “Scarborough Fair” much more closely.
Eliezer Yudkowsky told Vice that his Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is too closely linked to Harry Potter proper to be unhooked and told as an independent story.
Meanwhile, Marvel is transposing its Avengers to the Wild West.

Allusions and Asperger’s

The Moss Troll problem is the difficulty fantasy authors have, cut off from common points of reference, building up both sides of their analogies at once.
In Priscilla Goodman’s The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy, her hyperlexic son was more likely to use other people’s words than his own.
In “I See Your Value Now: Asperger’s and the Art of Allegory” Rachel Edidin describes how she finds it easiest to communicate by reaching for cultural references

The only way I am consistently comfortable communicating feelings is via broad fictional allegory. The friends who know me best—not just likes-and-dislikes-and-interests, but things more fundamental and less articulable; the friends I’m willing to let see me fucked up; the friends I text at 3 AM when my world is falling apart; are the friends who read the same comics I do.

I tell him that I have a folder on my desktop labeled “feelings” that is mostly panels clipped from comics and Community gifs.
The Curb Cut Effect is when an accommodation intended for people with a certain disability or other acute need winds up making life easier for a broader group of people than expected.
(If you want the fastest two-book summary of all of my feelings, pick up So You Want to Be a Wizard and Witches Abroad)

Arena Culture and #TheDress

David Brooks discusses “Arena Culture” — a modern substitute for a shared understanding of the world

For the past hundred years or so, we have lived in a secular age. That does not mean that people aren’t religious. It means there is no shared set of values we all absorb as preconscious assumptions. In our world, individuals have to find or create their own meaning.

This, Dreyfus and Kelly argue, has led to a pervasive sadness. Individuals are usually not capable of creating their own lives from the ground up. So modern life is marked by frequent feelings of indecision and anxiety.
Shared cultural references are required to pull off a joke like this Hunger Games/Mulan video:
My friend group has build up a strange, shared canon (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Kristin Lavransdatter) but we didn’t read them simultaneously the way we all did Harry Potter

Bonus content that didn’t wind up on the air: Princeton’s syllabus for their class on fanfiction, Barbara McClay on “What We Talk About When We Talk About What We Talk About When We Talk” and a charming niche shared moment when the BLS didn’t release the jobs report exactly on time, and all the econwonks flailed around together.

Oh! And if you don’t want to wait til May to read Crimson Bound, Rosamund Hodge has another novel, Cruel Beauty which is Beauty and the Beast/Bluebeard-ish, plus Gilded Ashes, a creepy Cinderella novella set in the same world as Cruel Beauty.

Radio

Reviews/Recommendations

Previous Post

March 6, 2015

7QT: Moss Troll Ichor and Human Hearts

Next Post

March 10, 2015 The Last 5 Years's Primer on Loving Badly [Guest Post]

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 7 Quick Takes Apologetics Atheism Book Conversion Debate Tactics Debates Epistemology/Philosophy Housekeeping Ideological Turing Test Marriage Morality in Practice Parsing Catholicism Possibly Heretical Radio Reviews/Recommendations Sequence Index Spiritual Practice Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land. Seek righteousness, seek what else?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Justice Mercy Humility Peace