My 4 year old son is going to die...sometime in the future, like me--wishfully long after me--and we'll have no more time to talk. We should hopefully grow old together, but we'll grow old together as men. Yes, we'll always be father and son, but for the most part when we talk and share, he will be a man. What should I tell him now, as a boy? He's too young to remember, but I have so many things I want to say, to teach, to protect... There are things I want to tell him that are important now, that are things he will need to know when he becomes a man.What if I die unexpectedly, and soon. What will I tell my son then? Nothing. He'll only have short, gauzy, incomplete memories of me doing something random with him. Teaching him to brush his teeth, buckling his car seat, throwing him into the air, comforting him when the thunder cracks; a dreamlike sequence of me passing through his thoughts, being present during an action, laughing at something he's done, somewhere. That's not enough. If that had happened with my father, I would have the slimmest perception of who he was and from what human stock I was beget. I wouldn't know my father.It's like this with my maternal grandfather. He and I were never men together. I was a boy, he was a man, and then he died. My memories of him are far too narrow--Christmas vacation in out-county Kentucky, a family reunion in a church basement, him sitting with unknown relatives under a tree drinking lemonade during a summer so humid I remember perspiration under his arms and old man breasts and him calling black people 'the colored.' Whenever he left the house he wore a wool hat, respectable, perfunctory, polished, like men in the 1950s, and a cane was hooked over his knee when he sat under that shade tree calling people 'the colored.' I so desperately want to know that man, my grandfather.I still have my father. I knew him when I was young; I knew him as my superhero father; I know him as a man. Thank God. I hope it pans out this way with my son. But, again, if it doesn't, then what do I tell him, now, that will guide and foster him into adulthood?The answer is a journal. Capture my thoughts now, so that he can read them as a man, whenever he's ready. Pass my wisdom to him now, my thoughts, my lessons, my umbrage. Exactly that is the story of Gilead.The father is in his mid-70s in poor health, nearing the end. His son is 7. The father is a minister like his father and grandfather before. The time is 1956 Kansas. The entire book is a journal entry for his son, not to be read until he grows up and becomes a man, and maybe not even then if the son decides against reading it. That's his prerogative. But, at least the father makes it available to the son. The entire book is a beautiful confessional of short thoughts on life, entries almost like one of his thousands of hand-written sermons bundled up with twine in the attic. He uses the written space to reveal family history, personal passions, his philosophy, his love, the guiding influences of his life. The book starts:"I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren't very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you've had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life...It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you're a grown man when you read this--it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then--I'll have been gone a long time. I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself."(p. 3)What a beautiful idea. Thoughtful, responsible, loving, timeless. My son will be a man longer than he will be a child. Childhood and adolescence are critical for human development and building basic personality traits, but reason, judgment, and wisdom wait to arrive until adulthood. That's when I need to talk to my son. So, unless I can promise my son I'll always be there, I need to sit down, collect my thoughts, and start writing a long letter to him. It will tell him how I grew up and learned about myself; it will tell him my joys and my strengths and my fears; it will tell him how I would do it all over again exactly the same way, and not to be so hard on himself; I'll tell him how I met his mother, and how our lives turned out so differently from the plans we made, but still so wonderfully; I'll tell him how I watched him grow up and rolled his ghostly thin and white belly skin between my fingers; I'll tell him how carefully he tottered over uneven ground; tell him how he always woke up with the same crazy bed hair, no matter the season or the length of hair or where he slept--always splayed out in the back and ruffled on the left; I'll tell him how I loved him in so many ways and know he'll be a great man and brother and father; I'll tell him people are mean, but not always; I'll tell him I loved rain to any other kind of weather; tell him to read more often; tell him to write to his kids. And when I write my journal, I'll have moments like this, I'm sure:"I have been looking through these pages, and I realize that for some time I have mainly been worrying to myself, when my intention from the beginning was to speak to you. I meant to leave you a reasonably candid testament to my better self, and it seems to me now that what you must see here is just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he's struggling with." (p. 202)Gilead is unique because of the subtle power of its narrative. It's a short book with simple writing, yet the father wrestles with the complexities of his faith, the enormity of life, and the profundity of culture and social values. Hidden beneath the plangent chords of his testimonial are approaches to deep chambers of religious philosophy and human nature. Marilynne Robinson achieves an awkward--but successful--balance in the book between, on one hand, a laser-focus on spirituality and, on the other, a broad, comprehensive account of one family's history and nature. It works, and it won the Pulitzer. However, for me, the book would have been better if the father wasn't a minister, and instead something more general like a farmer, entrepreneur, or laborer. Why? Because a minister lives his profession, always, unable to filter his thoughts and experiences through any other than a spiritual sieve. Everything a minister does is guided by religious precedent, biblical law and morality, and Godly intent. This minister--the father--was a good Christian, so there was only minor human infraction to reveal, and never scandal or salaciousness to confess. Instead, that kind of debauch was revealed in the confessions of a few members of his congregation. The minister led a life that was both very human but also very sterile. Compassionate but not very intriguing. Every man sins, yet there was very little confession from the minister. When I write to my son, I will reveal from my life the embarrassments, the pejoratives, the vice, and the shortcomings that make me whole. I think that's more realistic.Another great comment:"Why do I love the thought of you old? That first twinge of arthritis in your knee is a thing I imagine with all the tenderness I felt when you showed my your loose tooth. Be diligent in your prayers, old man. I hope you will have seen more of the world than I ever got around to seeing--only myself to blame. And I hope you will have read some of my books. And God bless your eyes, and your hearing also, and of course your heart. I wish I could help you carry the weight of many years. But the Lord will have that fatherly satisfaction." (p. 210)And so, 4 year old son of mine, if this review happens to be one of the written items you use to piece together a picture of your father, let me tell you this: I love you. I love your smell when you cry, the color on your cheeks in the summer, your early sense of humor, the spitting laugh you hold back when I tickle you, and the lines on the bottoms of your soft, pink feet. You don't necessarily have to be religious, but I think the secret to the world is to is to love one another. Be nice. Always take care of your siblings--even if they take a wrong turn here or there. That happens. Take your time, find the right spouse, and please have kids. Your dad gave Gilead 4 stars; give it a try. Maybe therein you'll see something of me.New words: susurrus, lour, fungo, mutatis mutandis, irrefragable, swain, miscegenation,
Dear Son:The Too-Little-Too-Late Dilemma of Marilynne Robinson’s GileadtIt’s deceptively tempting to approach a book like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and see only the main character’s theological musings. After all, in a novel about an old man reminiscing about faith and family, there’s a plethora of weighty spiritual content; everything from careful exegesis of Genesis 22 to references to Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans. Needless to say, this is no simple “I remember when…” fable of love and loss. Issues are being grappled with, weighed and eschewed. However, to review the novel from a theological stance cannot merely mean discussing old John Ames’ opinions on war, forgiveness or predestination. That job belongs primarily to his congregants and family within the narrative. The question I, the reader, encountered was of the theology of a book wherein the entire premise is of a man wishing to leave a testament of his “better self” (p. 202) for his seven year old, but spends his final days journaling, instead of spending time with his son. This is the battle I fought with John Ames and Marilynne Robinson throughout my reading.tIt began when I realized that about every four pages I found myelf drowsing off to sleep, or thinking of topics far beyond the narrator’s journal entries. As I had approached the novel with great enthusiasm (fiction at last!) I wondered what could be sending my mind off into orbit. Why the dissociation? From the frustration with not being able to stay focused from page to page, paragraph to paragraph, soon emerged actual anger. I found myself choosing to put the book down and find other activities, almost as if to spite the narrator. Something was wrong. I was refusing to sit passively and listen.tWith a little reflection, this is what I discovered. I was incredibly angry that John Ames was writing on and on about how much he loved his son and his wife and how he wished he wasn't about to die, and there he was, “reflecting” instead of living! Enter the transference. I realized how little tolerance I had for the “nobility” of a strong, silent-type preacher man finally unloading the deepest parts of his heart and soul onto paper, instead of through interaction. The drowsiness coming over me was of not wanting to listen to this man write. I wanted to see him take action. I didn’t want to honor him by reading his last testament, because I do not respect the idea that somehow, as long as you say what you feel before you die, it doesn’t matter how little you expressed to those around you until that point. The book brought up anger with my father, his father, and the generations of quiet, long-suffering, missionary-type men I am descended from. Though I am not a man, nor very quiet, I know about long-suffering, and I could not suffer the boredom or veiled anger that lay between the lines of John Ames’ memoirs. I wanted to rip the journal from his hands, and essentially, tell Marilynne Robinson that I refuse to applaud her character’s poetry, theology or self-reflection, when he is in essence, taking the easy way out of sharing himself. tI’ll admit, there are plenty of passages in the novel that show Ames’ growth and interaction with others. Even the fact that he married late in life reveals that he was unsatisfied persisting in the loneliness of listening to baseball games on the radio, writing sermons and hiding from neighbors when they knocked on his door. However, all his loving descriptions of sunsets, children’s laughter and the smell of raindrops, appear hollow the moment he starts describing his son playing outside as he writes. In that the entire purpose of the novel is for this aging father to express his heart to his son, for all the descriptions of moments of communion, (p. 103), I gained no sense whatsoever of how this father related to his son. Every human interaction Ames (Robinson) writes is marked by constraint, weariness and shy civility. The aching lack of intimacy in this novel made every page a grueling ordeal to wade through. “Take action!” I shouted. “Stop writing!”tI’m left to wonder what Robinson feels about her main character. I sense that she adores his humble (though never naïve) faith, and the grace he tries to offer others. But the portrait she paints, or at least the format she has chosen to use, counteracts any message I might derive from the old preacher’s wisdom and experience. By writing the story as a last testament in-progress, Robinson has created an utterly passive character, a true bystander of the life he is narrating. I don’t believe this was her goal. We are clearly supposed to revel in the homely and kindly spiritual reflections of a faithful old coot that is continually surprised by beauty. But for this passive bystander, I felt mostly pity, and quite a bit of anger. tAnother perspective, however, is that Robinson has rightly captured the unfortunate experience of so many pastors, especially of Ames’ (and my grandfather’s) generation: that of distance and objectivity. My grandfather once spoke of a minister he served under who believed it was un-Christian for a minister to befriend his congregants because it would cloud his ability to pastor. Can we even imagine a pastor who would not eat supper at a parishioner’s home? Does Ames’ loner quality, his reticence to become entangled, simply reflect the expectations put on a country preacher? This was the time (and the concept persists in some realms) where the pastor was expected to run every aspect of the church. Ames’ statement that everyday felt essentially like Sunday because once one sermon was over, it was already time to work on the next (p. 232-233), reflects the overburdened lifestyle of one who is expected to shepherd whole congregations by sheer determination and will power- with no rest or support system other than other local pastors (Boughton). This symptomatic lone wolf quality made it difficult for me to believe Ames’ speculations on relationships, because I could hear his strained resentment trying to come out. (It finally emerges somewhat in regards to being given a godson without his consent, and over Jack Boughton’s flagrant disrespect for others). tI have not written much of Ames and Jack Boughton, mostly because the character was introduced far too late in the novel to bear the climactic significance it was clearly supposed to have. The real story should have been how Ames chooses to reveal himself and be present with his young son, not his struggle to give grace to his black sheep of a godson. That is indeed significant, but is again, un-served by the journal format of the book. The developing story of Jack Boughton’s struggles have no place in Ames’ letters to his son. Confined by Robinson’s poorly chosen device, the last fourth of the book (despite being the most readable) breaks the rules set in the beginning of Ames writing to his son. Instead, the reader encounters Robinson’s clunky exposition about the life of a character we have not been effectively convinced to care about. Overall, this is my greatest criticism for the novel, both artistically and theologically: it’s nearly impossible to care for these characters when they are introduced as part of an avoidant old man’s journal entry. The richer story to be told here is that of an old man opening his heart through action and engagement with his community, after a long life of loneliness. In order to experience this part of the story, Robinson needed to give us voices other than Ames to listen to. Ames’ emotional distance in interpersonal relationships makes his spiritual and poetic ruminations fall short of the impact Robinson so clearly intended. This novel made my heart ache; wanting the silent men in my life to get up from their journals, and actually say what they’re thinking. And this, perhaps, is too much to require of a novel. Is it too much to require of these old men as well? Isn’t the real point of a last testament the admittance that too much has gone unsaid? Should we celebrate a theology that waits too long to speak?
What do You think about Gilead (2006)?
John Ames is a pastor in the forsaken town of Gilead. Ames, after losing his first wife and child to a difficult labour, has remarried late in life to a much younger woman and so at the ripe old age of seventy six has a very young son who he realises he will not see grow to manhood. So at the end of his life he is writing what he believes to be a kind of epistle to the beauty of God’s world for his young son. He is attempting to bestow grace on his son. He gives him advice – “I would advise you against defensiveness on principle. It precludes the best eventualities along with the worst.” The father-son (and Holy Ghost) relationship is very much at the heart of this novel’s traction. The first half of the novel has a languid old world pace, brimming with tenderness and somewhat idealised musings on the beauty of life (the world appears glorious in the light of Ames’ imminent departure from it) and on family and the town of Gilead’s history. “Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain.” You can feel the silent and invisible life.” Reading the languorous gentle lilt of Robinson’s prose is like being up in a tree house with the huge night sky spiralling its stars overhead, and like the stars the text raises both wonder and elementary doubts. Ames creates a tapestry of all the things that have formed him. Except there’s a sense of selective memory playing a big part. Ames, understandably, wants to paint a flattering portrait of himself. About half way through I was almost beginning to run out of patience with his benevolent tender self-serving musings, wondering where the novel was going. Then Jack Boughton arrives on the scene and the novel acquires all the contrast and tension it was beginning to lack. Jack is the wayward son of his best friend. As a teenager he stole from Ames, deliberately seeking to antagonise him. Ames doesn’t like him. He especially doesn’t like him when he begins playing with his boy and talking to his wife. All of a sudden Ames begins to appear less than Christian, shadowed and soured by envy and resentment. Jack is a kind of shadow self, an alter-ego with whom Ames has to reconcile and the second half of this novel is a moving account of his struggle to find the necessary forgiveness within himself to bring about this reconciliation. What Gilead lacks in momentum and dramatic tension is more than compensated for by the life affirming wisdom it contains in such generous measure.
—Violet wells
I am devastated by how much I despised this novel. It was one of the most uninspired stories about Christianity, forgiveness and familial bonds I have ever read. I can't help but wonder if this is the first plotless novel to win a Pulitzer. I'll be on the look out. The framework of the "story" is a dying minister writing in his diary presumably for his now 7 year old son to read after his death. The first person father writing to his son narrative was horrid. I felt like the entire book was one run-on sentence - not because the sentences were lengthy - but rather because it was written as rambling musings of an old man I neither cared about nor related to. Plus, the sentences were a clunky patchwork of memories and present day reflections that did not connect smoothly. If the story was more linear, the "journal" style mechanism that Marilynne Robinson used could possibly make the novel enjoyable. Or readable. Unlike the majority, I did not find the old man's reflections insightful - at all. The stories, memories, regrets, doctrine, in essence every single subject broached was so flippin, tear my hair out, boring. Call me ageist, but the stream of consciousness of a 77 year old comes across as senility not sentimentality. I can only assume Robinson was going for the latter. Don't be fooled.
—Chaybyrd
My book club read this book right before I joined the club. Most of the members hated it, and at many subsequent book club discussions, books were compared to Gilead as, "well, at least it was easier to read than Gilead, etc." After several months of hearing about this book, I decided I needed to read this book for myself. (Perhaps to get more insight into my fellow book club members!)Well, I liked the book a LOT. I was very surprised to find that it's a pretty slim book--from the way my friends talked about it, I had assumed it was 800 pages of turgid prose. But it wasn't at all! It was written in the form of a journal of an older man who knows he will die before his young son reaches adulthood and wants to record some of the interesting things about their family and his accumulated wisdom for his son. I can see how some areas of the book were initially confusing, as the narrator is sometimes repetitive, and not always clear on who he's referring to (for example, he talks about his father and grandfather, who are both ministers, as he is, and it's hard to keep the different ministers straight when none of them get names--and then add on to that occasionally he might refer to his father as "your grandfather"!). But overall, I didn't find it hard to read at all, and I loved so many of things that the narrator said that I wanted to write them down. And given the device, I thought it was only appropriate that the narrator might be repetitive or vague, as this would be true also of a real-life handwritten journal.I would recommend to anyone who enjoys reading a wide variety of genres. It's not a "story" in the traditional sense, but there was enough plot--wondering whether he would live long enough to finish telling about one particular relationship in his life---and particularly enough interesting insights gleaned from his long life in Kansas to keep me interested the whole way through. In my view, deserving of its Pulitzer Prize!!
—Giedra
