Occasional Literature

by Don Webb

Occasional literature, I’ve had to explain at times, isn’t poetry or prose that’s written sporadically; rather it’s intended for a special occasion such as a birthday, holiday or some other celebration or observance. It does have its place, especially on greeting cards.

The trouble with occasional literature is that it usually isn’t very good. We often have to decline with regret submissions that overstep our restrictions on sentimentality. And the people at Hallmark Cards are quite aware of their medium’s limitations: their “rejects” page can be very funny.

Some occasions can be the proverbial “elephant in the living room”: they’re too big to ignore. And they vary by country and culture; for example, Deep Bora has told us of Hindu festivals in India. And of course we’re well aware of others, such as Passover and birkat hachama or “blessing of the sun,” an event that occurs once every 28 years. If we receive any stories about them, they’ll be considered on their merits, like all the others.

In North America, Christmas and Easter dominate the calendar. Does Bewildering Stories observe them? No, we can’t: there aren’t enough days in the year — let alone weeks — to be fair to everybody. And yet almost every year we receive a Christmas story or two that deserves publication regardless of the occasion.

Strictly speaking, such works would go into the short-story or flash-fiction queue and appear whenever their turn came up. But let’s not be a spoilsport about it or, as the French term puts it quite appropriately, a trouble-fête. Anything that looks like a Christmas story gets slotted into the last regular issue of the year. And we’ll do the same for other occasions as well, given enough notice.

We almost never receive Easter stories; this year is an exception. Three stories in issues 331 and 332 seem to fit. Were they scheduled deliberately for the occasion? No, they just happened.

Diana Pollin’s “Extreme Makeover” gives a New York City accent to the sole character we hear. We might visualize him as a cigar-chomping theatrical agent hustling the latest angle. Since it’s the Church that the agent is promoting and the unheard side of the conversation is God impersonated by the Wizard of Oz, English-speaking North American readers will be struck especially by the story’s bitter cynicism. They’ll be tempted to compare it to the symbolic embellishment added in Luke 23:39.

Rather, “Extreme Makeover” will be best understood by our readers in France, where fierce anticlericalism had been brewing in a centuries-long power struggle before it burst into legitimacy once and for all with the Revolution of 1789. Witness Cyrano’s The Other World, written before 1655 — especially the episodes “The Devil Made Him Hungry?” and “You Are Whom You Eat,” among many others.
Jeff Baker’s “Darwin’s God” fits the spirit of the times as well as the commemoration of Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary. It views religion from the standpoint of realism rather than symbolism and yet at the same time transmutes cosmology into a secular mysticism, which has honorable precedents among such as Teilhard de Chardin.

The story indirectly brings up the existential problem of rationalism: even the rationalist had better decide for himself what the meaning of life is or someone else will decide it for him. And that explanation is what Gabe receives in the afterlife from his father.

Gabe derives personal relief and satisfaction from the revelation by being reunited with his long-deceased Sarah. A Sarah at what point in time, one may ask, but that’s a determination best left to the hereafter.
Kenneth E. Herritt’s “A Higher Purpose” echoes the experience of the robot R. Daneel Olivaw in Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel. At a crucial point in the story, Daneel receives a moral instruction from Detective Elijah Bailey, who serves as a combination priest and rabbi for the purpose.

However, “A Higher Purpose” takes the opposite tack. The robot comes to a revelation not by instruction but on his own. In doing so, he achieves a “higher purpose” by bringing meaning out of chaos.

And that’s what we’ve done here.

Even the three synoptic gospels don’t portray the same events in exactly the same way; rather they interpret the events, which sometimes have multiple meanings. Likewise, these three stories approach a common reality from widely disparate viewpoints and in modes as different as can be.

The stories were not made for the occasion; the occasion was made for them.

Don