Slam, Bam, Say "Goddamn!"

Those of us who blog in the Atheosphere frequently deal in “quick fuck” ideas. We start by stating a premise, either through words or pictures or a combination of both. The premise is almost always unoriginal, since atheism has been around for as many years as religion has, and all the same arguments have cropped up over and over and over again. The game is to find a new way to go through the age-old motions, and for you and your reader to get gratification when you do it. But you can’t resort to more than, say, 2000 words, maybe ten minutes of reading. That’s the “quick fuck” part. Good posts don’t really have a whole lot of time for preparation and foreplay; they have to grab their readers fast. Then, still holding those readers as tightly as they can, they have to race to a climax before boredom sets in.

That’s not a negative judgment on blog-writers. The best newspaper columnists do the same thing. So do most modern poets. And the funniest comedians.

There’s a kind of heightened emotional intensity that goes along with a quickie. That’s why many of us have a tendency to portray theists generically as being wackos, dangerous or otherwise. I do it all the time — and so do you. Christians, in particular, are often characterized as stupid or crazy or hypocritical. Or evil.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of religionists out there in the world — probably a supermajority of them, in fact — to whom the words “stupid,” “crazy,” “hypocritical,” and/or “evil” apply. But there are some, even if only a few, who fit none of those descriptions. We just don’t tend to write about them often because they’re dull. It’s not our “job,” here in the Atheosphere, to try to be nuanced and even-handed, and we surely don’t want to do that if it means being dull. Because in the “quick fuck” world of blogging, dullness — no matter how thoughtful — will guarantee that your masturbatory writing remains just that: a lonely solo activity.

Still, I suspect that most of us, in our day-to-day lives, do come into contact with some believers whom we find tolerable. We may get mutually irked by our ideas, but we don’t dwell on our philosophical differences, do we? We just work together, or play together, or party together without the thought entering our heads: Christian=Bad.

So that’s my attitude about blogs versus life. I tell you this because I think that novels should be more like life than like blogs. A good novel should feel like a “real” world no matter how fantastic that world may be. A gifted storyteller asks the reader to suspend his or her disbelief and to enter into a relationship, ready to be pleasured by the made-up events as they unfold. Some authors let their stories slowly caress us, giving us plenty of time to explore our feelings and heighten our enjoyment. Other authors just grind away with one sensation after another until we close the book, having been brought to the edge and finally sated.

Christopher Brookmyre, in his non-thrilling thriller entitled Not the End of the World, does neither. He lacks the writing skill or the desire, or both, to create three-dimensional characters who play expertly with the reader; he lacks the technique to keep the titillation going with believable plot twists. But he also has no staying power for just banging away in a frenzy of excitement; his meager story doesn’t have enough juice for 388 pages. Instead, he offers a series of quick fucks, aimed especially at the easily satisfied atheist. Oh, yes, almost every Christian in the book is crazy and a hypocrite and evil, evil, evil. The rest are stupid. You’re getting aroused just thinking about that profound commentary on believers, right? But guess what? That’s the whole thing; you’re done. Sorry if your intelligence was insulted.

For those of you who may find yourself wondering about my imagery here, I guess I should mention that one of the main characters in the book is a recently retired, freethinking, porno actress, the modern version of the “whore with a heart of gold.” That sounds more appealing than it turns out to be once you get a closer look. Still, the story might have been far better if someone like her had actually written it — as a year’s worth of daily blogpost dalliances, each one fleeting and forgettable.