Of Cigarettes and Grace

The dramatic action of grace is rooted in Christology: Christ descended into the world and passed through the particular in order to redeem. This movement is the model for writers with Christic imaginations; they strive to imitate it—or at least make legible its effects. The poet or writer needs to pass through the concrete in order to arrive at insight. Any storyteller worth her salt does this by discovering particulars—telling details, arresting images, revelatory actions, snatches of dialogue—that signify more than themselves "without becoming less actual in so doing," as Father William F. Lynch contends in Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of the Literary Imagination. These symbols "make the imagination rise indeed, and yet keep the tang and density of that actuality into which imagination descends." F. Scott Fitzgerald's posthumously published short story "Thank You for the Light" narrates an action of grace that, though comic, successfully captures how Christ transfigures the mundane and works miracles through the concrete particulars of this world.