January 26 (Monday) Pastor’s Post

Sullivan UMC—J. Michael Smith

  • My days in town this week are Tuesday and Wednesday.  I’ll be in Sullivan from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. each day.  (But if you want to see me between 6 and 9, please schedule in advance.
  • Remember that I can be reached ANY DAY OF THE WEEK at any time:  217-898-3148 or at jms754@gmail.com

My Weekend Essay

The Problem with Miss Fannie’s Biscuits

I read books of all genres.  My daughter Alison thinks I don’t read enough romance novels.  I’m not sure why—perhaps she thinks it might help improve my grumpy personality.  So, without getting her advice about which book to read, I picked up The Rise and Fall of Miss Fannie’s Biscuits. It was billed as a romance novel. It also claimed to be a foodie book. And a mystery novel. And “Christian literature.”  And—it takes place in Amish country, giving us an anthropological bonus.   

“Wow,” I thought.  This must be some book.  I’ll learn some new recipes (I always like eating at those long tables where the Amish serve meals family style.)  Plus, I like a good “who-done-it” story.  I’m a Christian.  And romance in Amish culture sparks my curiosity.  

Amish romances!  I have heard about Rumspringa—where Amish youth around age 16 are allowed to try the “modern” life and parties before deciding to be baptized in an Amish church.  And I’ve heard of “Sunday Night Singing,” where Amish teenagers gather to sing hymns and socialize and meet future partners.  And I have heard of bundling, where an unmarried couple spends the evening in bed together, fully clothed, talking and getting to know each other.  But all this knowledge only increases the mystery for me.  An Amish romance novel should be interesting.  Right?

Well, Miss Fannie’s Biscuits never rose to the task.  I was fifty pages into the 300 page book when it occurred to me that the intended romance between Foster and Fannie was moving so slowly that nothing was going to happen in this book.  At the pace the story was going, the author was going to need a sequel if Foster and Fannie were ever going to get to the bundling phase.  In fact, the story was so stuck that I didn’t think there’d be any hot stuff until at least volume eight. I’m an old man—by that time I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it anymore.

After spending three pages describing how happy Miss Fannie was to get splashed on the nose by a raindrop, and another three pages privy to an argument inside Foster’s head on whether he should take his dog to the front yard or back to do his “business,” I decided to put the book down and bake my own biscuits.  

The only mystery I could find in this book was whether I would be able to uncover anything interesting in it.  To make matters worse, there was quite a bit of Jr. High-type gossip and  disapproval about one of the sisters who worked in the Bake-Shop.)  

I usually finish most books I start.  But there is that rare book that I’ll retire part way through—usually at the 50 page mark.  I will quite a book if it is poorly written and features protagonists who are morally and intellectually stunted—in a story that is going nowhere.  Often the authors of those books are as ethically and intellectually clueless as their characters.  

But this Miss Fannie book posed a different kind of problem to me.  I’ve never read anything that was so boring.  It just kept going in circles.  I did notice in the first 50 pages that most of the characters were trying to avoid each other.  And rightly so. Everyone is the whole town was downright tedious.

Before quitting the book, I did cheat and get online to see how it ended. Just in case the action began on page 51. It turns out that our lover-protagonists never even kiss.  I’m okay with people not getting all kissy-kissy in a book.  I finished a several hundred page biography of J. Edgar Hoover last year.  There was no kissing in the whole book, in a literal sense.  But Miss Fannie is a romance.  How can there be not a single kiss in a romance book?  

So here’s the thing for anyone who writes a novel for me to read:  if you are the author—you and only you are responsible for creating your characters, deciding who they are, what they do, and how they react to the world.  So—create your characters just as God has created us.  Make them complex.  Make sure that they aren’t always what they appear to be.  Make sure that they don’t really understand themselves without doing the painful work of introspection.  Throw them into chaos and make them grow.  Make sure others misunderstand them so that they have to come out of their shells and courageously reveal who they really are. 

Make your characters run into trouble—so that they have to open their eyes, their minds, their hearts, and their mouths.  Make sure to push them around—so they can’t live in the boxes they’ve built around themselves.  Expose the lies they tell themselves and others.  Make them do good things that get out of hand and go wrong.  Prod them to go faster—because we all lollygag at times.  Trip them up when they go too fast—because we all buzz past flowers we ought to stop and smell.

Expose them to illness, injury, death, disappointment, and crushing defeat—because that is how the rest of us have to live our lives.  An author needs to create characters who are like us, who can try things we can’t afford to try, who can mirror our own best and brightest selves, who can subliminally show us when we are being stupid.

Give me a STORY.  Fill it with kisses and flatulence and crowns of glory and gout.  And don’t let some guy spend three whole pages trying to decide whether the dog is going to dirty up his back or front yard.  

Okay—give a guy a dog.  But when the dog gets antsy while standing in the living room, before the first paragraph of that conundrum goes more than a sentence and a half—have Miss Fannie toss a biscuit at Foster through an open window, hitting him in the face with it.  Have her collapse on his front porch, belly up.  Make him come out and give her mouth to mouth.  Make her throw her arms around him and do a little bundling right there in front of the bakery ladies as they ride their buggy down the street.  

To riff off the poet Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  What a necessary question to answer well—whether we are creating characters in a novel—or creating our own story.  

(P.S.  Alison has very good taste in books—I always follow her recommendations.  She asked me to make sure all my readers know that Miss Fannie was NOT on her “to read” list.)