I just finished William Peter Blatty's Dimiter, published in 2010. In the post-log, he calls it "the most personally important novel of my career."
In 2011, on the 40th anniversary of The Exorcist, Blatty told NPR that that book was a work of faith, not horror (listen here > ).
Blatty says he actually didn't mean to make [The Exorcist] as scary as it turned out. Instead, it was meant to be a novel about faith... "It's a humiliating confession. I have no recollection of intending to frighten anyone..." Source >
--William Peter Blatty talking to NPR in 2011
You sometimes build an opinion of a writer through accretion - thin layers of accumulated wit.
Having seen The Exorcist a number of times and heard Blatty read it himself, I believed there was a thread of sincere Christian faith running through it, something smudged by Hollywood, but occasionally glinting through the blur.
After reading Dimiter, written nearly 40 years later, I can say with certainty that Blatty expresses a Christian authenticity that is far more rewarding (and challenging and discomfiting) and more worth our time than most of the professed "Christian" novels you'll find at a "Christian" bookstore.
I've heard similar said of John Updike, whose novels I've read and liked, but I cannot say from my own response to them that I've felt anything quite like what underlies Blatty. I suspect it's just more subtle in Updike, or I haven't encountered it, or haven't tuned myself to detect it.
Christian writers paint with Christian themes in much the same way a speaker of English uses English words. We express ourselves out of the abundance of our being.
We can do nothing else. So what that means, precisely, I'm not sure. It's essentially about leopards and spots.
[2013-05-12]
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A short post by me on the 40th anniversary interview >
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