(A WRITER’S CREDO)

(A WRITER’S CREDO)

Reflections on an Essay by Edward Abbey 

“It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be the critic of the society in which he lives.  It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rile away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders, and at those within our borders  who question the prevailing order.” (Edward Abbey) 

Abbey believes that if a writer is not willing to take on this responsibility that he or she should become a surgeon or a truck driver or a cowboy or a nuclear physicist.  Writers, particularly free lance writers, are in a position to serve as the conscience of our nation, to speak truth to power.  So many Americans are in positions in which speaking out can put ones employment, and thus one’s ability to feed self and family in danger.  This does not mean that writers will not pay for their comments, but that they will have a forum through which to communicate with the public. 

According to Abbey, the writer as critic is able to point out those decisions and policies from government and business alike that support the status quo to the detriment of all the citizens of this country.  “Far better to remain silent than to use the written word to shore up the wrong, the false, the ugly, the evil.”   

I gather from reading Abbey that writing matters, that what writers do actually makes a difference in the world. Whether poetry, essays, or novels, writing makes a difference. Writers must, in fact, become political.  That is, they must become involved, responsible and committed.  The writers’ duty according to Abbey is “to speak the truth, especially unpopular truth, especially truth that offends the powerful, the rich, the well-established, the traditional, the mythic, the sentimental.” 

A writer can do these things when others cannot because they have the freedom to do research, to not lose their jobs, though of course, people can refuse to by their books or their writings.  As an aside, we priests and preachers should be able to speak the truth as well, but unfortunately the church is often the last bastion of the status quo and truth can be a real threat to that status quo; whether the truth is theological, political or anthropological.  And this is true even when we preachers make a point that what is being asked of people is not to agree with us, but to reflect on what we say or write through the lens of their faith and their life experience.  I am sure this is true for teachers and others in our world as well. 

Nothing should be sacred or spared from the writers work, whether it be Health Care, Immigration, Greed, In-effective Government, Homosexuality, Racism, or any other issue.  And writers do not have to be of one mind in what they write.  The must however speak the truth as the see it and understand it.  Writers may be one of the few forces in our world that enable civilized dialogue, a quality quite rare in our day. 

To become a bit more personal, Abbey’s essay inspires me to remember that I have been given the gift of writing, and as a retired priest, the freedom to speak the truth as I understand it and the responsibility to share this truth with the world.  As a priest I have been blessed to struggle with life and faith with “all sorts and conditions of people,” those who are likeable and those who are unlikeable, those who seek a newer and in their minds a better world, and those who are quite content with the past.  I have learned to see the world through the eyes of people who are in a different place in life than am I and therefore to see the world through many different lenses. 

One person does not possess all truth, but many people together sharing their portions of the truth can bring us much closer to “the truth” than simply trusting our own favorite sources of truth and the institutions which provide them. 

Abbey ends the first part one of this essay: “Since we cannot expect much truth from our institutions, we must expect it from our writers.  Tolstoy said: ‘The hero of my work, in all of his naked unadorned glory is truth. . .Thoreau said: The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth.  And that other trouble maker said, Ye shall hear the truth and the truth shall make you free.”