Blog Post # 6: Agendas?! Ray Atkins Don't Need No Stinking Agendas!

The question of whether or not there is an agenda underlying my writing is an interesting one. If by agenda we mean an active attempt on my part to sway the reader to my way of thinking on one or more subjects, then no, I don’t believe so. I don’t try to coerce my readers into voting a certain way. Nor do I attempt to convince them to adhere to a particular religious belief or to subscribe to values I hold dear. I do have strongly-held beliefs on politics and religion, and on a large number of other subjects, and if I am asked for these, I will certainly share them, sometimes at length.  Otherwise, it's don't ask, don't tell.

When I read fiction, I do so to help me forget about serious issues for awhile, and I write it in the assumption that there are many other readers out there who could use a break from the bald realities of the world, as well.

I do, however, consistently write in a narrative voice that helps to convey a constant point of view. It is my firmly-held view that life is a combination of the ridiculous and the sublime, that we are players on the cosmic stage who spend our time on this world reacting to forces beyond our understanding and control. These forces can be termed random chance if the reader so chooses, or fate, or they can be examples of the good Lord moving in strange and mysterious ways.  Your belief in the nature of causality is your business.

My books are not about what this phenomenon is, but rather about how normal people behave in the presence of circumstances beyond their control. To paraphrase a famous quotation by someone whose name escapes me, we can’t win, we can’t break even, and we can’t even get out of the game. This philosophy is reflected in the narrative voice of my fiction.

In the following scene from The Front Porch Prophet, John Robert Longstreet—who lost his wife to a venomous cancer at a young age—responds to his own mother’s request that he accompany her and his young son to church. Note that he does not question religion, or God, or the politics of healthcare, or euthanasia, and that he does not interfere with his mother’s decision to take his son to church. The scene is about his reaction to that which he could not prevent or understand.

“You ought to come with us, John Robert,” she said.

“I expect I’ll wait awhile. Me and the Lord don’t see eye to eye these days. We’ll get around to talking, directly.” But they never did. The betrayal had been too great, the theft of Rose into the night too harsh. John Robert had looked deep into his heart and found no forgiveness. He knew he was a minute speck in the vastness of the cosmos, but he was the injured party and expected an accounting. But no bush on the farm burst into voice and flame to reveal why Rose’s presence had been required elsewhere. Skulled specters did not trot in across the back pasture under a white flag of truce to clarify why her transition from here to there had been so ungodly cruel. So John Robert did not forgive. And he did not forget.