The big questions: an interview with Doris Betts

Christian Century, Oct 8, 1997 by W Brown, Dale

You say writing is "a gift the church gave you." Are you referring to a seriousness, an attitude toward words, taking words seriously?

Yes. Both the seriousness about what the issues are and the beauty of the language. I know I should like the Good News Bible, but I never will. I will read it, and it has its uses, but I will not prefer it. It has been translated by people with tin ears.

If someone were to say to me, "What are Doris Betts's books about?" I would have to say say something about love and how it validates your characters. Does that suggest a religious core?

It seems to me it does, because if you don't have love grounded in something larger than touchy-feely California love, it goes sappy very quickly. It goes sentimental. That's the great risk when you say love conquers all. It doesn't conquer all, but it is the best thing of all, and, at least in Christianity, it is rooted in the belief that that is the metaphor of the New Testament. God is love. It's what I mean by hope. Not only do we hope to survive after this life (which to me is not crucial, but it would be nice, so I have a hope), but there is a hope in Christianity that comes even through our suffering. That does seem to me to be the message of the Gospels--that on the other side of it all, in fact over-arching at every moment, there is optimism, there is love, there is hope. That's the good news.

Yet despite the affirmation, there's sadness too. What is that line in The Scarlet Thread about the sparrows? "God knows the sparrows fall, but they keep falling. Ain't creation just one dead bird after another?"

Well, look at Flannery O'Connor. Remember that story where the boy goes into the river and is baptized and presumably passes through. O'Connor sees that moment of passing out of this life into the next as the achievement, the promotion. I'm a little less confident; therefore, my inclination is to pull that boy out of the river and go give him a haircut and something to eat. Live as well as you can and leave the rest to the Father.

Have there been times when your writing has gotten you in trouble with some group or another?

Yes. Many people feel that you can't be religious and write about sex too, that it's automatically beyond the pale. So I've had some letters like that. If people sign them, which they don't always do, I always try to write back and raise those issues and talk about them. I don't believe you persuade those people, but it would be an act of arrogance not to try. My duty is to continue to speak of such things, because God made the pleasures. Some people don't know how to read. They read the way they pick out a Bible verse and apply it. Since they haven't learned to read the Bible and notice when it is metaphoric, when it is literal, when it is poetry, when it is history, they can't bring that kind of flexibility to other books.

I do not have the view that Faulkner had when he said one good poem is worth any number of little old ladies. I think that's not true. I think there's a number of good poems already, and little old ladies do make a difference. I do try to get students to cope with these issues when they write, too. What will their mothers think, for example, is an important question. They can't be limited by that, but they do have to think about whether or not their story will do damage in the world. If so, is it important enough to do that damage? I think that's a genuine question.