“The Read”

The situation

Marcus isn't a real man. He's a composite, built out of letters that come across my desk, with the details changed so nobody is identified. The week he's living through is real enough. Marcus is forty-one. He narrates audiobooks out of a closet in his house, four feet by six, gray foam on the walls, a microphone on a boom arm, a tablet for the script. Two kids asleep down the hall. Nineteen years left on the mortgage. For three years he's been the voice of one publisher's thriller series, and that series pays most of the bills. Tuesday afternoon, four-forty, an email comes in from the producer. A new title assignment. In chapter twenty-two of that title, the narrator performs a mock communion and recites the Lord's Prayer backwards, line by line, as an act of renunciation. First person. Marcus's voice. Said slowly, said beautifully, because that is what the director will ask for. The email is four sentences. Studio and director are booked Thursday at nine. Title assignment inside the imprint is at the publisher's discretion under his talent agreement. Performers don't editorialize. Please confirm by Wednesday at five. Wednesday at five. One day to decide something he has never had to say out loud. And if he says no, nobody fires him. That isn't how it works here. He simply stops being assigned. The next book goes to another reader, the preferred-narrator list is quietly revised, and his agent says what agents say. It's a small industry, Marcus.

The technique

Let's name what's being run on him, because it isn't villainy. It's a method, and the method has a shape. In the book, William Green's Rules for Radical Christians, this one is the Instrument Fiction. Here is the mechanism. Redefine the person as equipment, and the words that come out of his mouth stop belonging to him. A microphone has no conscience. A violin has no conscience. So if a narrator is a kind of instrument, then speaking is no longer speech. It's conduct. It's the job. And once your words are only conduct, your conviction is no longer a conviction. It's a performance problem. That is the work being done by the sentence, performers don't editorialize. It's true in its place. A reader shouldn't rewrite an author's line or sneer at a character he dislikes. But the producer slid that true rule over a question it was never built to answer. The question isn't whether Marcus may review the book. It's whether Marcus must pray a prayer against his Lord in his own voice and let it be sold with his name on it. Two more pieces. The clock: twenty-four hours, studio already booked. Deliberation is the thing a deadline like that exists to prevent. And the price: nobody threatens him. They don't have to. If he says no, the calls stop, and the stopping looks like nothing at all. Raise the price of speech high enough and silence starts to feel like wisdom. Notice what the email never does. It asserts the publisher's discretion. It never names the clause.

The temptation

Wednesday night, eleven o'clock. Marcus is in the booth with the door shut and the script in front of him. This is where it actually gets decided. Not in the studio. Alone, in a closet. The sentences that come to him are reasonable. That's the problem. It's just a character. True. An actor voices murderers and liars and commits none of their sins. Narration isn't confession. God knows your heart. Also true. He does. He knows it better than Marcus does. If you don't read it, somebody else will, and he'll do it with relish. Probably true. You can say the words and refuse them on the inside. That's true of a lot of words. Every one of those has a grain in it, and that's exactly why they work. A lie you can see coming doesn't tempt anybody. None of them ask Marcus to deny Christ. They ask him to decide that what his mouth does doesn't count, so long as his heart files an objection afterward. Peter tried that. In the courtyard, warming his hands at the fire, he said words he did not mean, to people he would never see again, in a situation he'd been pushed into. He meant none of it. All of it was performance. And when the cock crew, he went out and wept bitterly. The Lord does not grade our mouths on sincerity.

Your move

Here's the counter from the book, and it begins by changing the ground. Marcus loses on two grounds. One: is this a good book? Nobody wants his review. Two: are they allowed to assign it? Mostly, they are. So he fights on neither. He moves the fight onto ground he actually owns — his own mouth, a sincerely held religious conviction, and a written request for the rule. He doesn't argue by phone at midnight. Wednesday morning he writes to the producer, copy to his agent, courteous, no heat. Here are the words. "I'll be in the booth Thursday and I'll read anything else you assign. Voicing that prayer crosses a religious conviction. Which contract term requires it?" Then he offers a path forward: a different title, or another reader for those pages. He is solving their problem, not only refusing it. And he is asking them to put in writing the duty that requires the words. Institutions are slow to write that sentence down, because written sentences get read later. Two more moves. Before he sends it, he calls a brother from church and tells him exactly what he's about to do, and he tells an elder. That's pre-commitment. A man who has said it out loud to two witnesses is far harder to talk out of it at nine the next morning. And he keeps being excellent. Early to the booth, prepared, pickups turned around fast, no attitude. Make the one line you won't say the only remarkable thing about you. This isn't legal advice. Religious accommodation is a recognized idea, and if your job is on the line, bring in a lawyer licensed where you live.

Scripture & close

Scripture. Psalm sixteen, verse four. "Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips." Nor take up their names into my lips. David didn't draw his line at what he believed. He drew it at his mouth. Your voice is not equipment. It's a mouth, and mouths belong to men who will answer for them. This is the Arts & Entertainment Mountain. If this is happening to you, Ask: rules for radical christians dot com, slash ask. Your first one is free. And to know which of the seven mountains you are standing on, take the free assessment at rules for radical christians dot com, slash start. Stand your ground. We'll see you on the wall.