Fictional people

Being at the point of having completed the first full draft of my latest piece of fiction*, and of having a sense that most of the characters seem to have had a life of their own even before they discovered themselves in the pages of my book, I was pleased to re-read this paragraph by Marilynne Robinson, from her essay, Imagination and Community (from the book of essays, When I was a child I read books). 

"I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of—who knows it better than I?—people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification."

I found this paragraph in an article on Robinson, by Mark O'Connell, which is well worth reading for its other insights too. 

* The Disenchanted Wizard, the third book of fantasy for children, all under the general umbrella of Grimhilderness. 

Some random thoughts on "Housekeeping"

I've recently finished reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, the first of her three novels, which I  hadn’t got round to reading before.  Like the other two that follow, it’s extraordinary in detail, vivid in imagination, and seemingly plotless.  It's surprisingly readable, and superbly written. 

At least that was my impression before I got to the end of it. 

My enthusiasm for it waned a little towards the end because, unlike the other two books Robinson has written, this one ultimately goes nowhere.  It’s a long sad story of a family broken first by the tragic death of the grandfather in a train accident, then the departure of one of his three daughters to the mission field – she’s never heard of again – and then the suicide of the mother of the two girls (the grandchildren) who are the focus of most of the book.  

The lake near the town of Fingerbone plays a huge part in the story, but there are times when the whole metaphorical approach to storytelling just about takes over, and not a great deal actually happens. By the end of the book, the younger sister has gone off to the ‘world’, you might say; she’s making something of herself even though what she’s making doesn’t seem to be much approved of by her sister or aunt.  The aunt is a drifter who finds it hard to settle anywhere.  That she stays as long as she does, caring for her two nieces, is quite something, but by the end of the book she’s taken off again, this time with the remaining niece, the one who’s the book’s narrator.  And their lives seem to go nowhere.  At least the drifting character in the other two books has something to say for himself when he appears, and has actually done something, acted in his life.  Housekeeping is about women (there’s hardly a male in sight) who can’t get up and take action.  They’re seemingly so overwhelmed by the tragedy that took place decades ago that they just drift through life as well as through the geography of the planet.  Quite why they do this is never explained in so many words; we get metaphors for it, but not much clarification.  Perhaps the book, like the others, needs a re-reading to get to grips with what it’s about, because story is almost what it isn’t about.  That’s not to say there are no stories.  The remaining aunt offers a great number of somewhat inconsequential stories – they never seem to be terribly relevant to anything, and none of them are very straightforward.   And it’s not to say there’s no action in the book at all.  Towards the end the aunt and niece try to burn the house down (there’ll be no ‘housekeeping’ after this) but are as unsuccessful at this as they are about pretty much everything else they do together.  I don’t think we’re much meant to admire the other sister who goes off and gets on with life, but at least she does do something. 

Robinson's every word is carefully chosen; nothing is out of place, and there's a philosophical thinking under her writing that's rare in storytellers.  Perhaps the narrator explains a little too much - when I say 'explains' I mean that she philosophises just a bit more than necessary.  For someone who's willing to go drifting and do nothing with her life she still thinks very deeply.  The character of the narrator is elusive in some ways; she's nowhere near as sharply drawn as the narrators of the other two novels.  She doesn't interact much; she reacts, but it's still a very passive reaction.  There's little that she does (especially as she grows older) that's initiated by her.  And her aunt: what does she do all day, except dream, perhaps.   She's also an unfocused character, almost a ghost.  She has no connection with anyone in the town and seemingly is happy to stay in the house day in and day out, or to be on her own out in the country that surrounds Fingerbone, or on the lake.  

The book is something of a mystery: what is the story that's being told here?  There are so many unanswered questions that after reading the book you feel as though you've never had any grip on it.  It's not unmemorable - Robinson creates a very particular world - but it seems to be inhabited by people who've got no grip on life themselves. 

One sad book

I finished reading Marilynne Robinson's Home, this morning. Man, that is one sad book! I mean sad in its proper sense, not as in weak, pathetic. Even the cover has an endorsement that says: 'One of the saddest books I have ever loved' - that's from Sarah Churchill, in the Guardian.

Home is the reverse book to Gilead which is not one of the saddest books I've ever read. Gilead is unusual, strange, humorous, deep, wise. It's a brilliant book, and I've read it twice, with equal enthusiasm on each occasion.

I don't think I could read Home again. It isn't that it's depressing; strangely enough, it's not. There's an underlying sense of hope, and this is fulfilled at the end of the book, though not as sweepingly as the reader would like. The book is detailed: there are three main characters who take almost all of the focus. Glory is the youngest daughter in a family. After an unsuccessful engagement she comes home as a woman in her thirties to look after her aging father, Rev Boughton. The rest of the large family is scattered, happily married, having children. Except for one, Jack, who's a kind of self-imposed black sheep. Boughton has forgiven him time and again, has even forgiven him for the fact that he hasn't been in touch for twenty years. And of course Jack comes home, and the three spend the next couple of hundred pages trying to understand each other, and only marginally succeeding.

As in the story, Gilead, there's a great deal of forgiveness going on here. Although the main character of Gilead appears in this story at times, he seems different; in fact he seems to be the one person who can't forgive, although we know from the other book that he's more forgiving than he appears. But we're never privy to his thoughts in this book, whereas he told us everything in the first one.

In this book it's Glory who most exposes her soul. She's the one who achieves understanding when others don't. She's the one who keeps Jack from destroying himself completely (though there's nothing especially dramatic about this part of the book), and she's the one who continues to love even when the love is returned only in the most odd of ways.

Her father never seems to understand anything clearly, although he's been the one who held onto the dream of seeing Jack again, he's been the one who seemed most capable of love and forgiveness. In the end he starts to slide into mild dementia, and understands even less.

Robinson has a wondrous ability to write superb prose, to probe into the depths of people's character, and to create a world that isn't unusual, and yet is full of unusual detail.

I kinda loved Home, but I'm not sure I could recommend it to anyone the way I did with Gilead.

Another word on Gilead

To my surprise I discovered, on looking back through my old files, that I've never written a review of Gilead, in spite of being so deeply affected by it the first time, and very pleased to have read it again. The only time I came close to reviewing it was when I did the annual triple-brief review for the local paper, and space being what it is in those reviews, Gilead, like the other two books, got barely a 100 words. Hardly enough to do it justice.
But I'm more surprised that I didn't review it for Tui Motu, which would have been the obvious place to have written about it. Perhaps I felt it was just too big a book for me, in some ways. Not that it appears to be 'big' (like War and Peace, for instance, or one of Dickens' novels). I think it's more that the way it's written almost precludes getting ahold of it enough to try and sum it up.
The story seems very simple, yet it's a story full of stories (from the main biographical one to the puzzle of the main character, John Ames' godson to the story of the crazed old prophet of a grandfather to the strangely hilarious story of the horse that slowly sank into the tunnel under the road). The theology seems straightforwardly about grace and forgiveness, yet there are all the other elements that come into it too. Grace and forgiveness turn out to be only part of the theology; the book is almost thick with theology, but theology done in such a way that you just absorb it as you go along.
There are different slants on Christianity: Ames seems to be the most straightforward - but that's an illusion. The father seems to have been a good solid minister, but he's also a mystery. And the grandfather is John the Baptist come to life again, or Ezekiel, or one of the weird prophets out of Kings or Chronicles. He makes us realise just how hard to live with those OT prophets must have been.
Then there's the wife, who appears out of nowhere (she has no history in the book, unlike her husband, who is as much history as present), and who simply tells the man he should marry her and he does. Her Christianity is childlike, almost, and so open that even the difficult godson is honest with her.
There are almost no un-Christian characters in it; the outside secular world barely impinges. (A television makes little impact, and while a couple of the characters go to the movies, we hear nothing much about it.) This is a world where the Christian worldview is pretty much the norm. When the older brother comes home with his heretic views, he doesn't really seem to make much of a dent on the surroundings.
I'm sure I could say a lot more, could rave on about it. This is enough for the moment.

Heaven

Boughton says he has more ideas about heaven every day. He said, 'Mainly I just think about the splendours of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy. But two is much more than sufficient for my purposes. ' So he's just sitting there multiplying the feel of the wind by two, muliplying the smell of the grass by two. 'I remember when we put that old wagon on the courthouse roof,' he said. 'Seems to me the stars were brighter in those days. Twice as bright.'

From Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, page 147 Picador edition 2007

Gilead - again

I'm reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead again. I keep wanting to mark something on virtually every page; the book just seems full of quotable material. And it's not the clever laying out of words so much as wisdom. This is one of the few novels I've ever read that is wise.
Don't ask me how she does it; probably Robinson is no wiser a writer than many other great writers. But something in this book has brought out the wisdom in her, and it shows time and time again.
Probably quoting from it wouldn't work that well, because you need to have read what's gone before and to have felt the tone of the thing. The apparent meandering, conversational tone of the writing (an old man writing to his very young son) seems almost as if Robinson had sat down, from day to day, and just let the thing pour out. But I suspect it's far better constructed, and structured, than that. And the writing is frequently vivid. There's nothing 'casual' about the way this book is put together, even though on the surface that may seem to be the case.
I'm about half way through it again (I first read it in 2006, I think, when it was relatively new) and it moves me as much as it did the first time; maybe even more. I've just been reading it at a cafe and kept feeling emotional about one thing or another in it.
Perhaps it's the whole father/son thing that appeals to me particularly. Because of my own history I've always been a sucker for books that deal with that subject. Perhaps it's the fact that the main character is a good man; there are very few really good characters in fiction - or in life, if it comes to that. Perhaps it's the fact that in the last couple of months or so I've had more concerns about death and ill-health than I've needed to have in a long time. The main character in the book knows he's going to die fairly soon, which is why he's trying to lay out his life and history for his son. But he doesn't dwell on the dying; he's constantly talking about life, and creation, and joy and celebration and the extraordinary things that make up the day to day. Death comes into it, of course, but it isn't the focus.
As he says in a page (126 in my edition) I've just read again today:
I have not been writing to you for a day or two. I have passed some fairly difficult nights. Discomfort, a little trouble breathing. I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earhtly solution to the problems that confront me. But I can add to my problems, as I believe I had done, by dwelling on them.
This speaks very strongly to me at the moment, when the discomfort I'm dealing with day to day tends either to get right in the way of things or be put to one side as something I will endure without great anxiety. Trusting in the Lord is an element of it, but not necessarily the easiest path to take.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll write more about this wonderful book as I go on.