Hallelujah! Something to look forward to still! (The truth is, look hard enough, and there is more than enough!) Some time ago I blogged on the confirmation of another Gilead novel from Marilynne Robinson, and schedule-wise not much has changed in the interim – what after all is a couple of weeks in these trying times! But it does now indeed have a cover – and, it seems, an author’s name typeset to the same dimension as the title. Presumably “Marilynne Robinson” sells! And so she should!
“Jack” by Marilynne Robinson, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
In any old time I would be awaiting this book, but the circumstances and constraints, under which we are at the moment so struggling, particularly cries out for the grace and quiet and fortitude that emanate from Robinson’s prose.
“Jack” by Marilynne Robinson, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Expected, but still thrilled by the formal announcement of Marilynne Robinson’s new Gilead novel – the fourth. Finally (and is this the final word?), we are going to hear Jack’s side of things – at least the St. Louis story, for I recall Robinson stating last year that the new instalment would go to Gilead; though in some respects the place “Gilead” – real and mythical – and its effect on the characters, is always present.
Though coming late to Marilynne Robinson, I was immediately captivated by her narrative form, the power of the characters and the moral integrity that rises above moralising.
Having written several posts during 2018-19 in respect to Robinson’s Gilead trilogy, I have taken the time to experiment a little and put together an edited collection; compiled in LaTeX and available in PDF from my Downloads page.
I found it really quite interesting and often enlightening to consider Marilynne Robinson’s various name choices in her Gilead trilogy (that is – to date, trilogy!), and seeking out hidden meanings and symbolic. And they are certainly there aplenty; first and foremost, Gilead, that biblical place offering balm for souls searching, and in the names of siblings and children – all those Johns and Edwards, and Glory and Grace. Not immediately apparent to me was the significance one could give to the two family names. It must be said, Robinson could of course have chosen them from the recesses of her mind, or even at random! But anyway for what it’s worth…
William Ames was an important Protestant theologian, educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, who by and by fell afoul of the clerical elite with his rigid Calvinist and staunch Puritan views (can said points of view be anything else but?), and specifically in relation to the debauchery and excesses (again, to his mind) surrounding the Twelve Days of Christmas. Persona non-grata on the island it then seems, he travelled to the Netherlands, and initially courted again controversy – this time with a dispute to do with the Arminian position of predestination. Nevertheless, he obtained important university teaching positions, and his person and writings were to become influential in reformed theological circles in Holland, and flourished across the Atlantic in the fledgling New England colony (where he had hoped to go before being hindered by ill health) and the purity of faith embraced there.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Jonathan Edwards
Probably the most prominent American theologian, Jonathan Edwards‘ fusion of Calvinism and Puritanism became one of the defining aspects of American protestantism, especially through the Great Awakening and Revival Theology period of the mid-eighteenth century, and his influence and legacy remain to this day theologically pertinent, and absolute to an understanding of American colonial history (see all things Perry Miller.)
A bit of a stretch – but anyway. George Henry Boughton was born in Norwich in England but grew up in Albany, New York. No learned man of church and theology here, Boughton was a painter and illustrator! The subject matter of his work though was very often drawn from New England colonial history, and per se therefore often representing Puritan life.
With my thoughts on Lila Ames I included an image from George Henry Boughton, and here is another that may very well be seen as representative of Lila’s quest for the grace and salvation that the Rev. John Ames believes and preaches.
Woman Kneeling in Prayer, George Henry Boughton, ca. 1860. The Walters Art Museum
Interestingly, Boughton also illustrated the 1881 edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and when I think of Lila, I can’t help but think of Hester Prynne and the inner dignity and strength that they share, enabling them to surmount extreme denigration and hardship.
As we accompany Rev. Ames as he leaves testament to a good life lived in Gilead, his wife has been at his side for eight years perhaps, borne his child, grown into herself – distant still, but accepted. She is after all Mrs. Ames. Lila.
Told differently again is this third novel of the series. It is in the third person, but from the very reliable point of view of the subject – Lila’s voice shines through. Lacking the intellectual stringency of the first and the emotional roller-coaster ride of the second, and the complexity of both, it shines instead with its honesty and integrity and the more simple and direct tone.
Migrant Mother – Dorothea Lange source: Library of Congress
Ah, Lila! Taken, kidnapped, saved, however one may look at it, as a feeble five year old by the wandering Doll, and from the most desolate and abused circumstances. Their bonding and time together, with and without the company of itinerant workers, was, in those pre-Depression years and the harsher times to come, what was to define her, and give her the inner strength in the times spent alone on the road and in a St. Louis brothel.
One is left to imagine the many years from childhood to adulthood, to ponder quite how this clever woman, this kind woman, lived her life, to imagine it as equal and as flawed in all its goodness to that of the Reverend Ames; he who she on whim, or an inner sense of destiny, pleaded for and who took then her as wife, and without hesitation – that wondrous lost soul; searching there for shelter one day at his church door. Did Rev. Ames presume himself saviour? Who saved whom at God’s door?
Woman at Church Door, George Henry Boughton, circa 1860
Marilynne Robinson, in the parlance of these days, delivers again, and with her unique voice and an abiding humanity. Lila provides another fine character portrait from which the narrative springs; drawing one again near to the essence and limits of the loneliness, wariness and despair that pervades the little world of Gilead and the greater world of humankind, and along the way fosters a belief in the capacity to grow and change.
Not too long ago, I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and so it’s hardly any wonder that while reading Marilynne Robinson’s novel I was very much struck by these two very different fictional places being called Gilead – on the one hand Atwood’s dystopian rogue nation and on the other Robinson’s small town anywhere. Certainly, both are American, of a sort; one most definitely imagined, a pessimistic vision. And the other? A place of hope, romanticised like a prairie legend. And both are the scene for patriarchal narratives, albeit of a very different nature, and the biblical reference that lends both their name can be interpreted such as to justify the respective authorial intent. But the diabolical darkness of one is so contrary to the simple human failings and joys of the other, that one is tempted to take note and look not much deeper. But it was the coincidence (?) of place name that interested me, and the parallels that are exposed I find revealing and worthy of some thought.
Firstly, going back to the name. Gilead means “hill of testimony” – at least that is one accepted meaning – and both narratives are presented as testimonies – from a dying Rev. Ames and a handmaid (Offred) on the run (we think!) – and both tell their stories in that temporal fragmented way particular to memory. And as I said above, one just can’t get pass the generations of men and the societies they have defined; be it as men of God offering their interpretations of church and Godliness on a patch of Mid-western earth, or as degenerate Sons of Jacob perverting religion and taking the notion of patriarchy to its radical end in a Godless New England.
It also interests me that, like Atwood’s Handmaids and Commanders, Lila is so much younger than the good Reverend Ames, and this follows the Biblical narratives of old men and young women (especially the Israelite patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), and both stories are driven by fertility, not just of man and woman but also of the land and its habitability and production affected by contamination and climate (and one could ask, where lies the fault: with the sins of man or by the will of God). This latter, this equating the people with the land works for both narratives and, as Ames’ would say, that is a wonder.
I live in Germany, and Germany has what many other countries also have and tout, or aspire to have if only to tout, and that is, a special relationship with the US. And this often translates as a complicated relationship, and is reductive and too often simplified. I thought about this recently while reading reports in the German media, ostensibly about the end to Bruce Springsteen’s much acclaimed Broadway show, but where the overriding tenor was of “another” America, a better America, an “America the Beautiful”, as one particularly good piece was titled, and this America being personified by Springsteen. (Hallelujah to that I would say! But I am not here to talk about the Boss, or the original fan blah! or what that says about one’s age!) The comparison with the other America defined from another perspective is obvious enough and need not be pursued; my point here is the inherent diversity of place and people, and what if anything this has to say about a nation and national character.
This thinking about the everyman and everywoman, and how affected their narrative is by place, and how our perceptions are formed by place, coincided with my reading of Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead. Written in 2004, I come to it belatedly I know, and I am in fact reading Robinson for the first time; her reputation of course is well known to me, at the latest with a legendary tête-à-tête with Barack Obama for the The New York Review of Books a couple of years ago.
Rev. John Ames’ epiphany, for Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is just that – the revelatory testimony to a life well lived, is a monument of sorts to a gentler, kinder America. It could be fairly said that Gilead is a religious book, moralising in tone, but it is one that remarkably transcends a religious reading. The man, the father, the son, the husband, the brother, the friend John Ames explains himself, and while it is the Reverend Ames that bears witness with all the tools of his vocation, the thoughtful reader doesn’t need scriptural literacy nor to have read Calvin’s Institutes nor flirted with and rejected, or maybe not, Feuerbach; interesting as that all may be, needed only is an open mind (and heart) to explore beyond the particular (Christianity for instance) to what is being said of the greater human experience. The Reverend I indeed wanted very much to believe. I wanted to believe in the grace and goodness of his God. In the end though, it was the very human, less virtuous, John Ames that I journeyed with through the years and a landscape that could well be described as biblical, and with whom I felt the burden he carried of being the less favoured, less gifted son, but the one who stayed. I shared with him his self-imposed solitude and unrequited longings, and bemoaned an intellectual curiosity that had nowhere to go so went everywhere. I imagined intimately his losses and the wonder that came with the new so unexpected, so late in life. And I sat right there alongside him as he wrote it all down those last long nights through…
I must say, too, how very much I was captivated by John Ames’ voice – the cadence, the warmth – and found myself on occasions talking it out loud with some sort of (what I imagine to be!) mid-western accentuation, and even had moments of casting fantasies ranging from Henry Fonda to Sam Elliott – which sort of unites heaven and earth. A temptation a serious reader should resist I know!
Gilead is so embedded in a very particular America, in the hardships, social norms and contradictions, and injustices, of a century gone, that it takes a leap of faith (is that a pun?) to insist upon its relevance. But I will. This old and dying man, from the more prosperous Fifties looking back and passing review on his own life and that of his forbears, allows a glimpse into a historic America, radically formed by its puritan roots, an ever evolving politic and the contrary demands of its vastness and a people displaced sometimes freely and often not, and always searching. But the themes that drive the narrative – of memory, of legacy, of the point of it all – are universal themes that transcend place and religion.
Just a wonderful read in my opinion – profound, uplifting and beautifully written – to be followed now by Home (2008) and Lila (2014), Robinson’s sequel novels to Gilead that seem to run parallel but with different voices. Home tells of the family of Reverend Boughton, Ames’ best friend, expanding upon the murky past of Jack Boughton (or more precisely John Ames Boughton), the fallen prodigal son; more than just alluded to in Gilead. And then Lila, told from the perspective of Ames’ wife, she who brought light and love to his later years, but with a story too of her own to tell. I look forward very much to completing the trilogy in the days ahead, and writing a little about them.
And I sat right there alongside him as he wrote it all down those last long nights through… I see before me the son reading the father’s testimonial in years hence…And the son will surely know so much more – he will know what happened next. He will know his mother and Jack as is his father did not. He will know of President’s who have lived and died. He will see wrongs being put right, but new wrongs being created… He is a young man leaving Gilead tomorrow, and with his father’s blessing…
My imagination runs away with me! But I can’t help but want to put together all the elegant shards of memory and fragmented personal narratives that Marilynne Robinson has left with me, but perhaps she will do the putting together – I did read somewhere that a quartet was always intended.
That I post this on the Christian feast day of Epiphany is only half coincidental!
