Home and Marilynne Robinson and Book Club and God
In a book review published in The Independent, Salley Vickers writes, "Home is not a novel in which plot matters. Like Jane Austen, but in a different key, Robinson's intent focus is the super-subtleties of human exchange. The heart of this utterly absorbing, precisely observed, marvellous novel is the fumbling inadequacy of love, its inability to avert our terrible capacity to wound and maim, not even but especially, those nearest and dearest to us."
It took me a month and a half to read Home. That's in part due to the fact that our book club did a meet-and-greet in early April, met the next week, and bi-weekly after that. We wrapped up on Tuesday, May 24. If it hadn't been for book club, I probably would've read it a bit quicker but not much. My account at amazon.kindle.com tells me I highlighted 306 passages and made 188 notes. Mind you, some of these notes just read "wow" or "beautiful prose".
The novel works on so may levels, it's hard to know where to begin. Mike from our reading group was particularly moved by John Ames -- the protagonist of Gildead and, some critics argue, one of contemporary fiction's most powerfully, emotionally resonant characters -- and Robert Boughton, the troubling father-figure in Home, which, on one level, works as a modern day prodigal son story.
Speaking of Robert Boughton, our group had a very polarized reaction to him. Some of us felt that he is a culturally determined character, a product of his time, who deserves to be pitied. Others, Jill especially, had little sympathy for him, particularly with attitudes such as the following: "... to their father's mind, the world's great work was the business of men, of gentle, serious men well versed in Scripture and eloquent at prayer, or, in any case, ordained in some reasonably respectable denomination. They were the stewards of ultimate things. Women were creatures of a second rank, however pious, however beloved, however honored." Boughton's attitude regarding race is of the same timbre.
I mentioned that it works on many levels. It works as the story of the prodigal with Jack clearly being the prodigal, Glory the elder sibling, and Boughton, obviously, the father. But if you try to read the story as a tightly knit allegory it unravels. The complex fabric of Robinson's story doesn't bear the pull of such a cliched treatment. Boughton, as mentioned earlier, is in some ways the father awaiting the return of the prodigal: "Jack was a wound in his father's heart, a terrible tenderness... ." He is, however, more often the pharisee than he is the loving father figure. But the beauty of Robinson's story-telling is that as soon as her reader feels ready to pronounce judgement (ah, yes, Boughton is a hypocrite of biblical proportions) she gives us another layer of characterization: "There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding... If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace."
And although Glory is sometimes the dutiful -- "'[I] go to church.' 'Last in, first out. I have to do that. It matters to Papa.'" --self-righteous, jealous older sibling, she is more often the glue that vainly tries to hold the family together. She loves her father and her brother albeit fumblingly and inadequately. She, in fact, loves and forgives blindly and unconditionally (some people in our group argued that she is an enabler).
SPOILER! DON'T READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH
After Jack has just attempted suicide, Glory could/should become unstrung, angry, resentful and/or resigned. Up to this point in the novel, her motivation has been mostly an attempt to help Jack and their father reconcile. Her reaction, however, is nothing of the sort: "How resigned to Jack's inaccessible strangeness she must be to forgive him something so grave, forgive him entirely and almost immediately."
Jack. He's such a richly complex, sad character that I hardly know where to begin. Apart from the lack of physical deaths, the novel really does behave like a classical tragedy with Jack as its tragic hero. Alan from our group said that there are elements of Hamlet in Home. I would argue that there are also elements of Death of a Salesman. There are in fact times where the clothing imagery of Jack wearing lose fitting garments (his father's) are right out of Macbeth. I could go on and on -- in fact, in our reading group we did go on and on -- about the literary and biblical allusions. One critic points out that the novel also very much parallels one of David's Pslams.
The story takes place remote and removed from the backdrop of the racial unrest of the 1950's. Robinson's Gilead is guiltily and subtly indicted in its deliberate ignorance. This repeatedly plays out when Jack tries to bring up racial problems in Montgomery which his father mindlessly dismisses. "'The colored people,' his father said, 'appear to me to be creating problems and obstacles for themselves with all this—commotion. There's no reason for all this trouble. They bring it on themselves.'"
With regards to race and socially relevant faith, Jack very much reminds me of Augustine St. Clare -- a character from Uncle Tom's Cabin who can't reconcile faith and slavery and therefore remains cynical of Christianity. Of St. Clare, Tom or the narrator -- I can't remember which -- says that a sincere seeker who doubts is closer to Christ than one whose belief is disconnected from his life. I wonder if Ames would say the same of Jack who says, "'...the seriousness of American Christianity [is] called into question by our treatment of the Negro. It seems to me there is something to be said for that idea.' Boughton said, 'Jack's been looking at television.' 'Yes, I have. And I have lived in places where there are Negro people. They are very fine Christians, many of them.'"
My title mentions God and I could easily write as much as I've already written about Robinson and faith and God and the American church of the 1950's, but I'll leave you with a few quotes instead.
"Experience had taught them that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness."
"A person can change. Everything can change."
In the end, what I love about Robinson's writing is that that she takes the sharp edges away from the truth of our broken, human condition without minimizing it or sentimentalizing. And, yes, for those who have read the novel, I know that, ironically, I'm taking the quote out of context. But in the midst of all the beauty and pain of this novel, there's a certain kindness and gentleness; and for me, at least, God was also there.
The last quote comes on the heels of a theological conversation between Jack, Boughton and Ames which covers everything from the sins of the father affecting his children to the mystery of faith and finally to salvation that does or doesn't affect change. Lila, Ames's wife, who has been conspicuously silent through most of this exchange says, "What about being saved? ...If you can't change, there doesn't seem much point in it."
This is followed by a discussion of tent revival meetings that Jack recalls from his youth: "'And all of them coming to Jesus. Except myself, of course.' Then he said, 'Amazing how the world never seems any better for it.'"
The conversation ends with Lila saying "A person can change. Everything can change." Ames marvels at his wife, at "the thoughts of her soul." And Jack says, "Why thank you, Mrs. Ames. That's all I wanted to know."
What a "super-subtle" picture of the irrelevance of a highly individualized, ineffective brand of remote-removed-Giliead Christianity contrasted with the powerful and difficult truth that if a person can change, everything can change.
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