Extinguishing the Light

Extinguishing the Light is an allegorical account, a parable, set in a modern Texas prison, of the appearance of a Christ-like figure who reaches out to his fellow offenders with a visionary message of love and acceptance.

Juan Carlos—JC to his friends—is mistaken for the perpetrator of a botched robbery of a convenience store which resulted in the death of the owner. Just as JC is coming into the store, expecting to carry on one of his usual conversations about religion with the Muslim storekeeper, the robber having fired his gun in anxiety rushes out the door and into JC—and in the confusion the gun ends up in JC’s hand.

JC is described as a believer in God, though not any particular God, and not a follower of any religion. When he sees his friend the storekeeper has been killed, he goes to his side and speaks to him in Arabic and welcomes him into paradise with Allah. Then, as if knowing he would be accused of the crime, he calls 911 and begins the “spiritual journey”/ordeal that is the story of this novel.

Obviously, he is Christ-like; his initials give him away. Once in the prison he gathers around himself a group of friends/followers with names like Simon, Philip, Bart, Andrew—even Mary. Mary’s a nellie flamboyant black queen. The novel’s a little heavy on the symbolism, but that’s okay. The appeal of this book is less the plot than the wisdom that JC conveys both through his heroic adventures and through his teaching.

This appealing and gentle innocent soon runs afoul of the pecking order and authority structure within the prison. Offenders, as the prisoners are always called, are not supposed to be well-motivated, loving teachers. JC inadvertently makes enemies with the warden and with the bosses of the racially divided prisoner cliques/gangs.

The story moves rather quickly as JC tries to teach his message of God’s love while being taunted by the enemies. He performs a couple of healings and one clear miracle that prove him to his friends and rile his enemies. You can tell where the story is going…

One of the most interesting and perplexing things about this book is the writing. It is styled in what might be called “prison writing”: an uneven mix of overwriting, circumlocution, cliché, tortured syntax along with beautiful, touching passages and lyrical, inspiring expressions of spiritual wisdom. It’s just right for this book. The narrator is never identified, but you can imagine this is just how one of JC’s followers would have written the story.

And though the plot is so transparently Christian, the wisdom is several notches above traditional popular American religion. The vision of God is transpersonal and transmythological, modern and psychologically sophisticated. God is the energy inside each person. JC’s wisdom includes a little Buddhism, a little Islam, a little Hinduism, but transcending any and all of them. 

The “spiritual novel” is a subgenre of speculative fiction. Not all so-called spec fic contains spiritual teachings, of course; werewolves and vampires and strange space aliens have their own shtick that doesn’t have to be profound. But even those stories usually resolve positively with a life-affirming maxim. So with prison novels.

Extinguishing the Light is an occasionally inspiring and interesting, if a little predictable, tale of a modern hero who passes through ordeal, goes beyond death and returns; and out of  his story, arises a sensible spirituality. This is modern myth-making with a modern myth.