Rethinking Worldview

Unacknowledged Legislators?

Percy Bysshe Shelley dubbed poets the "unacknowledged legislators of the world," a testament to the power of stories to shape culture. In Rethinking Worldview, I pick up this note during the course of a discussion about the ways in which worldviews function as stories. Today, fellow writer Mike Duran, inspired by some passages of mine, takes a look at the question of artistic influence on the larger culture.

Storytellers: Culture's 'Unacknowledged Legislators'

Follow the link to have a look!

Comment Q & A

Comment Magazine runs a regular Q & A asking "a diverse group of mentors for their stories." The February 29 installment features yours truly, talking about what it means to be a writer.

Q & A with J. Mark Bertrand, Author

Here's a taste:

Comment: What is the best advice you've ever been given?

JMB: Bad advice is always the best. I've learned the most from being told what not to do, from studying bad examples. In writing, there is rarely just one way to solve a problem. Good examples can be imitated, but too much imitation leads to staleness. T. S. Eliot once wrote that, although they believe themselves to be individuals pursuing their own agendas, contemporary authors inevitably work as a group, pushing in the same direction. All those good examples are a way to tap into the spirit of the age, I suspect. Only in time do the real individuals emerge, and they turn out to have been bucking the trend. They're revolutionaries, or in the case of novelists, reactionaries, and I can't help thinking they were probably nurtured on bad examples, as focused on what they were determined not to be as they were on being.

Best advice? Be rigorously honest about the world. Write until you finish, and then edit. Revise. Write about what you love, even if no one pays to read it. When you write, don't bother about current trends or what's relevant or what's selling. Finish, and then worry about the business. Above all, finish.

Through the Looking Glass?

Author friends have warned me not to get hooked on Amazon, but since yesterday's crazy observation that Rethinking Worldview was higher on the bestseller list (albeit for a brief instant) than Calvin and Thomas a Kempis made that impossible. I checked again today, and found to my horror that things have gotten worse.

Consider this:

And this:

Somehow I've overtaken J. I. Packer's Knowing God and St. Augustine's City of God. Crazy, huh? Is this a portent of the End Times? More likely, it's a reflection of how easily a few sales can move a book up the rankings. I promise not to keep updating these reports, but let me take this opportunity to say: buy the classics.

I'm grateful to everyone who's helped make Rethinking Worldview a success, and one of my hopes is that it will encourage readers to go on to bigger and better books!

Before You Buy My Book...

In addition to tracking overall sales rank, Amazon also gives a book's standing in various categories -- in the case of Rethinking Worldview, the lists are top apologetics and theology titles. When I discovered this, I decided to see how the book was doing against other titles. No one, it seems, can hold at candle to C. S. Lewis -- Mere Christianity dominates both lists, and has for awhile -- but I was flattered that Rethinking Worldview has (at least temporarily) shown up as a blip. When I examined the titles, though, I got a little worried.

Take a look at the photo. That's my ranking on the theology list as of this morning. Rethinking Worldview is #68 on the list. That's great. But Thomas a Kempis is #69 and Calvin's Institutes is #70. That's just not right. Sure, they're classics. They'll be on the list long after my book has been forgotten. But it's strange that even for a moment my book can overtake either of those on any scale. I'm not complaining, and I'm certainly not asking people to stop buying the book -- but let's get real! If you're trying to decide between The Imitation of Christ, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, or Rethinking Worldview, promise me you'll go with the other two first!

Amazon has sold out of its stock of Rethinking Worldview for the moment, so if your shelf is already stocked with spiritual classics and you're anxious to get a copy fast, you might want to try one of the many other sellers with copies in stock.