Back in the eighties I read "Housekeeping" by Marilynne Robinson. I remembered her excellence - crafting language with consummate skill. It was a novel about three generations of women and their quests for meaning and identity. There was a haunting beauty about that novel and that is what I mostly remembered.
And so I turned to her second novel - "Gilead" with hope and expectation that it would enthral me as "Housekeeping" had done thirty eight years ago. I finished reading it in peace and quiet at the top of our garden just yesterday evening.
Perhaps the fault was with me, but I am sad to report that I found "Gilead" pretty tiresome even though it won the Pulitzer prize for fiction back in 2005.
Essentially, the entire novel is a letter to a young son written by a rural clergyman in a small town in Iowa. He is very aware of his mortality and anticipates that death might be just round the corner. His wife, the boy's mother, is much younger than him.
The very notion that a father might write a two hundred and thirty page letter to a six year old son seemed quite absurd to me and I couldn't help feeling that The Reverend John Ames was suffering from an acute bout of self-importance. What he has to say to the boy isn't especially earth-shattering or wise. Gilead itself is a dull town on the prairie where nothing of real note has ever happened.
John Ames knows his Bible well and has sought to live a pious life, guided by the scriptures.. As you might imagine, biblical references figure significantly in his rambling address to the boy. As a lifelong atheist, I found the endless biblical references immensely tedious - belonging to a mindset that in everyday life is quite alien to me.
In Marilynne Robinson's defence, the words are as well-crafted as in "Housekeeping" and you can admire her linguistic artistry. It's just that for me the subject matter was underwhelming. It was difficult to care very much about the lives of the characters who inhabit this book. They live in obscurity and seem unremarkable.
Reading should be joyous and engaging but I was relieved when I reached the very last sentence of "Gilead":- "I'll pray and then I'll sleep." Phew!
I have a copy of Gilead and mean to read it one day. Perhaps the letter you describe is meant for the boy when he grows up to read again? I tried to read Housekeeping and just couldn't finish it.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that my father didn't leave me a tedious 230 page letter aimed at making me appreciate better who he was.
DeleteWell, it sounds like I wouldn't like this story either. You would keep waiting for an end and there was no real ending.
ReplyDeleteNo. The Reverend John Ames did not even die.
DeleteMy upbringing wasn't religious - though officially registered, in those days it was mandatory to declare your hand even if you didn't have one, as "Protestant". Martin Luther, Reformation, work ethic and all that.
ReplyDeleteMy upbringing not being religions didn't stop me from being christened and have a church wedding, christen my own son and defy my father who frowned upon me going to Sunday school at our local church when I was twelve or so. I went anyway.
I don't know whether I am an "atheist". All I know that I don't believe in God. Though will defend Jesus Christ, the man - the idealist - the myth, to the cross.
However, the dreaded however: I believe the Bible an amazing book of stories. And, non-believer or not, some of the Bible's sayings are not only true but really make you chew their meaning. Dig the roots of our existence. Philosophy by another name. Not gospel.
Re the author you mention, whilst I remember the name I can't recall the title I read many years ago. As damning verdicts go, it's not on my shelf any longer.
U
Like you I was also christened and married in a church and as a boy I sanf in our church choir but I always knew it was a fairytale. You can find moral truths in fairytales too.
DeleteFrom your description, I guess I will not put "Gilead" on my to-be-read list. "Housekeeping" sounds more like something I would enjoy.
ReplyDeleteJust to make sure: Did my email from August 6 arrive? It had a "word" document attached.
I just sent you an e-mail about this.
Delete"The very notion that a father might write a two hundred and thirty page letter to a six year old son seemed quite absurd to me" - isn't it called blogging?
ReplyDeleteWhat I write here is not for my son.
DeleteTasker, your being facetious "isn't that blogging?" aside, I don't understand your critique, YP. By which I do NOT mean the literary merit of the book (I'll take your word for it) but that for some reason you object to a father writing to his son. As inept as the father's observations may be. And what has the child's age got to do with it? If that (fictional) father was afraid of his mortality, rightly so, then why not write down his thoughts? So his son has something to hold onto should shit come to shove.
DeleteBefore I break out, here in your comment box, YP, into a fully blown essay on the subject of reflecting on my own mortality on point of becoming a parent let me remind you that there are many letters written between the generations. One such that comes to mind is Kafka's letter to his FATHER. You'll find a PDF on Google. How it translates into English I have not looked into. I am currently writing letters to both my parents, mother/father respectively. I won't send them. There is no point. Neither do I wish them to send me one. They'd just be dripping, my father's with bullshit, my mother's with sentimentality.
I don't understand how disparaging you (and others) are sometimes, YP.
U
I wanted to enjoy that novel. There is of course nothing inherently "wrong" about an aged parent leaving a message for a child but in this case I felt that the artifice was a little hard to stomach. A letter of over two hundred pages seems excessive - especially as in my view The Reverend Ames had little of note to say. You might label it as disparagement, but it was my honest response to a book that I had concentrated hard upon for ten hours of my life.
DeleteI doubt if I would have even finished the book from that review! I wrote about six pages for my children because I had a very complicated childhood which needed explaining logically. As for religious messages, as an agnostic, I am quite happy to believe in fairies.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be more evidence for the existence of fairies.
DeleteI think life is dull without some kind of belief YP. Even Moses the Raven in Animal Farm believed in Sugar Candy Mountain a place of Paradise for the animals to go to when they passed on.
ReplyDeleteI guess my life must be dull then. Dull from Hull.
DeleteYou should write an Agony Aunt column YP?😊
ReplyDeleteDear Aggie,
DeleteI am becoming concerned about my mental health because whenever I see a garden plant I want to split it or propagate it in some other way. Please tell me how I can wean myself away from this habit.
Yours agonisingly,
D. O'Northsider
(West Cork)
👏. I think I'ma plantaholic.😄
ReplyDeleteYou need to sign up for a P.A. group. You sit in a circle and confess your addiction. "Hiya. Oim Paddy. Oim from Durrus and oim a plnataholic. Oim feckin obsessed wi' spuds. Dare loik women t' me."
Delete"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member". Groucho Marx.
Delete"Groucho Marx was a Marxist" - Alan Titchmarsh
DeleteNope. Not the book for me. I would have closed it long before the good father prayed and went to sleep.
ReplyDeleteI soldiered on... but there are no medals for that.
DeleteHi Neil. I wanted to tell you that my book club read Gilead a couple of years ago. Only one of two people managed to slog through it, and I don't mind admitting that I gave up on it early on. I'll never forget how we were having that meeting poolside at my friend Marian's house, and after a lot of small talk/socializing Marian shouted from the deep end: "So are we going to talk about this damn book or not?!" and everyone groaned. Ha.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to know that it wasn't just me. Thanks for sharing that Jennifer.
DeleteIt's interesting you had this reaction. I know people who rave about Robinson and her writing, but I felt the same way you did. I thought it was OK, but not fantastic, and I never read the subsequent books ("Home" and "Lila") based on some of the same characters.
ReplyDeleteI try to form opinions about books without reference to others.
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ReplyDeleteGood. Coarse language is not permitted.
DeleteI commented in the wrong place.
DeleteI've decided life is too short to slog through a book if I'm not enjoying it. In the past I wouldn't usually give up on a book but I've become more hedonistic as I've got older. Or shallow, I'm not sure which. Gilead would definitely not be on my reading list.
ReplyDeleteI thought that if I was patient it would improve but it didn't.
DeleteNo, not for me either. Thank you YP, you've saved me wasting money and time, on a book I know, from most people's comments, that I'm unlikely to enjoy!
ReplyDeleteYorkshire folk are even tighter than the Scots. Happy to have saved you some dosh CG!
DeleteWhen I left school I was given just two bits of advice from my headmaster. 1. Don't drink spirits; you'll need them in later life as medicine. 2. Don't visit prostitutes; you can get the same free by simply being nice.
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to delete this, if you think it might offend. It didn't offend me at the time.
I am not offended in the least and I suggest that only narrow-minded or contrary folk would be offended by your comment. Was the headmaster referring to sexually transmitted diseases?
Delete