Fiction Writing & the Religious Imagination, or How to Write a Spiritual Thriller

April 18, 2016
Joseph Roccasalvo, author and graduate school mentor
Joseph Roccasalvo, author and graduate school mentor

On Wednesday, April 20, Joseph Roccasalvo, author and graduate school mentor, delivered his lecture "Fiction Writing & the Religious Imagination, or How to Write a Spiritual Thriller."

Below, Roccasalvo spoke about how translating his Harvard PhD thesis on the Buddhist doctrine of non-soul led to his fiction writing, his definition of a spiritual thriller and the religious groundings for his spiritual thrillers, how his time as a CSWR resident influenced his career, his recently published work Island of the Assassin, and how Octavian (his pet cat while at the Center) has been memoralized.

HDS: Your lecture is entitled: "Fiction Writing & the Religious Imagination, or How to Write a Spiritual Thriller." What do you mean by "a spiritual thriller?"

JR: By "thriller," I mean a narrative that thrills; that's written to elicit excitement, surprise, anticipation, and anxiety. It leaves the reader on the edge. A thriller uses plot twists and ends chapters in a cliff hanger. In a word, it's about suspense. If it thrills it's a thriller. It creates Intensity of emotion and fear, exhilaration and breathless pacing. It moves at a clip because it fosters curiosity: the hunger to know. From the opening paragraph—the opening sentence even—you're hooked. Your mind battles for equilibrium in an atmosphere of menace and sudden violence. A good example is my recent thriller—Island of the Assassin—whose cover was used to illustrate this lecture.

By "spiritual," I acknowledge that the word was once co-extensive with the word religious. Not any more. You often hear, "I'm spiritual but not religious." What's meant (at best) is the search for what's worth a life without the aid of organized religion. It means pursuit of an "ultimate concern"—to use Paul Tillich's term—through the search for truth, goodness, beauty, whatever transcends the spatio-temporal goals of the 4 p's: power, privilege prosperity, and pulchritude.

HDS: When you write your own novels, do you plan them as spiritual thrillers?

JR: In writing thrillers, I'm attuned to contemporary realism—the world as I know it in the headlines—but I seek an affinity with doctrine and practice in any of the world's religious traditions. The novel's storyline must be secular but have transcendent overtones. A thriller best involves a premise that's unresolved. It’s Henry James' "What if? And if so, what happens?"

An example is my recent novella:  Island of the Assassin. What if an undercover killer, Kai Landrie, contracted by the CIA to target terrorists, develops moral scruples? What happens when he shares his doubts in confession with Peter Quince, a priest, who then suffers rendition for receiving classified information? What results when two unconditional secrecies—sacred and profane (the Seal of Confession and the CIA's vow of silence) tragically collide?

HDS: Your PhD at Harvard was in Buddhist Studies—did that influence your fiction writing?

JR: How did I go from a Harvard-trained Comparative Religionist specializing in Theravada Buddhism to a fiction writer? I taught 6 years at Manhattanville College, over 15 at Loyola University's summer graduate School; was Visiting Professor at Columbia University in NY and at Franklin University in Lugano, Switzerland; then full-time for 10 years at Fordham University’s mid-town campus. I took a year off to practice fiction writing by translating my PhD thesis on the Buddhist doctrine of non-soul into a novel called Fire in a Windless Place. It begins: "The Supreme Patriarch was late for the appointment." That was my fateful first sentence.

HDS: How does and should fiction influence how we think about religion itself?

JR: Here are the religious assumptions operative in all my spiritual thrillers:

a. We live in a fallen world. Evil, guilt, and death are the tragic triad. Suffering or Buddhist dukkha underlies a mutable world. The Gestalt is always changing.

b. We need Redemption through the Christian 8 beatitudes and Enlightenment through the Buddhist 8-fold path.

c. Supernatural help or the Other Power of Grace is everywhere. The Buddha nature breaking through is immediately possible. But Buddhist Nirvana like Christian Salvation is gratuitous. In Buddhaghosa's Path of Purity (Visuddhimagga) we read words that are applicable in both cases. Being saved or enlightened are purely free events, uncaused because they are supernatural, but always occasioned by some ad hoc event. Everything is what it is but potentially SOMETHING more.

d. Sacamentality, or outward signs, are central; Zen attentiveness, too, whether raking pebbles, using archery, or transubstantiating bread and wine.

e. One must Un-embarrass the religious element by serious fun. Teach and entertain in the classical tradition. Wit will get you everywhere.

HDS: You were once a resident of the CSWR. How is it to come back to the Center now to give a lecture?

JR: Being at CSWR is like coming home. I spent three memorable years living at the Center. I likened my experience to the Periclean Age: that golden time of classical Greece when history, drama, architecture, and sculpture all peaked. It peaked for me here too. It was the era of Professors Smith and Carman, and that one-man show in Buddhist languages: Professor Nagatomi.

HDS: Did your time at the CSWR inform your fiction writing?

JR: I was later given permission to pursue fiction writing by Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who had retired as CSWR director. I sent him my spiritual thriller, Chartreuse.  This is what he wrote:

Dear Joe:

It turns out that a total hip replacement is not much fun; the fortnight that I spent in hospital proved less delightful. Nonetheless, I discovered the best possible way to outwit the post-operative problems; I might say, the only possible way, except that the matter is available to a lucky few. It is: to read a rich, engaging, exciting, intelligent, gripping novel, written by a friend of mine, about the part of France that I love best, about people with whom one can immediately identify or sympathize or about whom one quickly comes to care. I could go on and on.

In other words, I not merely enjoyed Chartreuse. I loved it. My congratulations are vigorous. My thanks to you for sending it are warm and deep—to say nothing of my thanks to you for writing it.

This note must be brief; I am still quite weak. Let me wish you, on behalf of both Mrs. Smith and myself, a joyous Christmas. And more power to your pen! 

                                                                        Sincerely yours,

                                                                 Wilfred Cantwell Smith

HDS: Your cat while you were a resident of the CSWR is legendary here. Do you still have a cat?

JR: I don't have a cat as yet since I travel overmuch to research my fiction. But I plan to get a Chartreux, the cat of La Grande Chartreuse, about which I wrote my thriller. I have already named him after the founder-saint of the Carthusian Order which resides there.  His name will be Bruno.

My cat, Octavian, who resided at the Center, became legendary after we left. When he died I wrote a poem which was anthologized in 101 Favorite Cat Poems. On page 90, you can find the poem. I offer it to you as my parting gift.

HOMAGE TO OCTAVIAN

Who says cats have nine lives has told untruth.

For I once shared four lives with such a one

That bounded up the heights of feline youth

And, at the summit, shone so like the sun,

His angles were like angels. Yet undone

Was he, for though a cat of high estate,

He chose, in the fifth year of reign, to abdicate.

 

I wonder how Egypt, then, could bend its knee

And magnify his name as lord and liege,

And bow to all his elusive majesty,

Intoning words meant sole to besiege

That high-born soul to show noblesse oblige.

For he was to the godhead next of kin

Being, at all times, all he could have been.

 

But as for me, it was always otherwise;

I never knelt before his sinuous grace

Nor made obeisance to those lustrous eyes.

I lived too close to miracle to embrace

Him more than as a splendid commonplace.

And though he seemed to the gods their next of kin,

He proved to be mortally beautiful: Octavian.

 

by Melissa Coles, MDiv candidate