Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (Harper Perennial, 2004)
I finally got around to reading Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer winning second novel, Gilead. I think she will forgive me for taking so long, since she herself has no particular regard for the passage of time. It has been more than twenty odd years since the publication of her first novel, Housekeeping. And the prose itself proceeds in a way that is more aligned with things timeless than with things urgent. It is meditative, calm, imbued with a spirituality reminiscent of Roo Borson. And so I expect she would appreciate the pace I keep, purchasing her novel, setting it on my shelf with other fine novels, allowing it to get its bearings, then after a year or so, pulling it down from its place and—not hurriedly—dipping into it, pausing from time to time to let a phrase settle into my thoughts, then continuing. That is how this book deserves to be read.
Notwithstanding my careful approach to this novel and my attentiveness to its rich prose, it has managed to annoy me—and for two reasons, one personal, the other, philosophical.
Personal Annoyance: Gilead strikes themes which are close to my personal history—a history which makes me uneasy. In form, the novel is presented as an extended letter written by John Ames, a pastor who has passed all his life in the small town of Gilead, Iowa. He is seventy–six and, because of a heart condition, believes that he is dying. Married late in life to a much younger woman, he has a seven–year–old son who will not know him beyond childhood. The writing must stand as a surrogate for the more considered conversations Ames will never have with his son. He needs to pass on something to his son—some legacy or wisdom—but not even he knows just what it is he intends through his writing. And so it proceeds in its quiet rambling way, slowly revealing facts that assemble themselves into what might loosely be called a plot, with frequent digressions into theological musings which, however tangential they may first appear, prove to be the novel’s center.
I am reminded of my grandfather, whose story bears some resemblance to the story of John Ames. Like John Ames, my grandfather was a devout minister and a good man who came to his Christianity through congregationalism which had been planted in New England by the Puritans. By the time it had found its way into my grandfather’s bones, it had attracted other descriptors. Some might have called him a mainstream liberal—a man of learning and tolerance whom you could trust not to offend. And like the minister in this novel, as my grandfather approached the end of his life, he felt compelled to set a down a few thoughts which he delivered to his two sons on a hundred and twenty or thereabouts type-written pages before succumbing to cancer.
Why, then, my feelings of dis–ease? Perhaps I see a subtle falsehood perpetrated through this character of Robinson’s. I see the falsehood as I recall how the great temple of my grandfather’s stolid faith came toppling down at the extremity of life—or at least the impression of it that he had spent most of his life carefully cultivating. As part of the family lore, it had been said to me (and I accepted it as I might believe a catechism) that my grandfather was as Christlike a man as I could ever expect to meet. There is an obvious logical difficulty which didn’t occur to me until I started studying formal logic at university—this comparison to Christ is impossible to verify. There are no time machines that I can commandeer to visit ancient Galilee and to test for myself the proposition that seemed to fall so easily from the lips of my grownup relatives. I suppose one could argue that because Christ is a resurrected creature, he’s still living among us; ergo the time machine is unnecessary. But let’s face it: the notion of a resurrected Christ—at least as it was presented to me as a child—is a load of superstitious crap. And that is the problem.
I am beginning to suspect that in some inchoate way, that realization began to enter my grandfather’s thoughts as he approached the last weeks of his life. Not long after he had officiated at my wedding ceremony, things began to change. There was a bitterness and pessimism that crept into every conversation. The world was going to hell in a hand basket, but most especially, the church, which was crumbling to dust. The bitterness devolved into rage, and soon the old man had smashed the family legacy of the wise and venerable Christ–grandfather.
The learned Reverend Doctor had tried to breathe life into a myth. It was the myth of Christ as some effete pacifist who was born without balls. And there was the myth of the minister, a surrogate incarnation whose duty was to strive beyond the human in himself and to attain the divine in Christ. But a lifetime of grasping for the hopelessly sacred had rendered him utterly profane. The church had imposed an impossible demand that threatened to break my grandfather’s back, and threatens to break many clergy still today.
My grandfather didn’t know a Kübler–Ross sort of death—no final breath of peace. Just a lot of free–floating rage. But is peace really a worthy goal at the end of life? Why should he feel peace? Maybe he had concluded that the church had deployed a lie to trick from him a lifetime of faithful service. Why shouldn’t he be angry?
And so, reflecting on my encounters with my grandfather, I look at Robinson’s character, John Ames, and wonder if he isn’t too good to be true.
Philosophical Annoyance: Gilead is set in 1956 and captures perfectly the worldview of a minister serving the rural Midwest in that era. So what? I wonder at authors who conduct impeccable research or immerse themselves in the study of milieus which belong neither to them nor to their readers. A more obvious example is A. S. Byatt who strives to recreate Victorian sensibilities. I think in particular of “Morpho and Eugenia” in Angels & Insects which also concerns a cleric in the midst of a literary project.
How is such writing anything more than a kind of intellectual or aesthetic exercise?
Temporally, and perhaps in many other ways as well, my place in the world (and yours) is a limnal place. We are as new and as fresh as is possible. And we stand forever staring into the chasm of the not yet. This is a terrifying prospect yet we face it daily. In such circumstances, how does nostalgia serve us? I’m not really asking this question of authors like Robinson and Byatt (since theirs is a relatively minor sin); I’m asking this question of theologians. Trying, Sunday after Sunday, to reinterpret ancient words and stories in order to force them to speak to our times and to our circumstances, while not wholly useless, nevertheless in most instances stretches credulity.
One of the techniques our clergy often use is a kind of recreative monologue. They take the week’s lectionary reading, then retell it as a scene, inviting us to enter imaginatively into the scene; if we can identify more fully with the characters in the story, and can sense in a more nuanced way the culture as it was lived in that time, then somehow the story’s meanings will be more fully revealed. But that technique leaves me cold. I don’t want my life to enter into someone else’s meaning. I want meaning to enter into my life. Where I am. Right now. If Jesus told stories that meant something to his listeners, why can’t we follow his example? Why can’t we tell our own stories, about us, for us, in our time.
My preference is to read fiction that speaks to me of my own story. My preference is to read theology that likewise speaks to me of my own story. Those preferences apply doubly to writers of fiction whose concerns happen to be theological.