The Origin Of The Brunists (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
I cannot now for the life of me remember where I first ran across the article reporting that The Origin of the Brunists was being reissued, the glowing recommendation that led me to add Robert Coover's first novel to my to-read list even though it's not at all the sort of thing I usually enjoy. There aren't many surprises, that's for sure. Coover tips us off to what's going to happen before he's done with his Prologue, creating a strong sense of foreboding—a dark warning which is justified by the rest of the book. But... even so, I find it hard to argue with prose like this:Like ravens fly the black messages. By radio, by telephone, by word of mouth. Over and through the night streets of the wooden town. Flitting, fluttering, faster than flight. Crisp January night, but none notice. Out hatless into the streets to ask, to answer, to confirm each other's hearsay. Women shriek and neighbors vulture over them, press them back into shingled houses with solicitous quiverings. Three hundred are dead. They all escaped. God will save the good. All the good men died. Flapping. Flustering. Telephones choke up. Please get off the line! This is an emergency! Below the tangled branches of the gaunt winter elms, coatless they run, confirm each other's presence. No one remains alone. Lights burn multifoldly, doors gape and slap. Radios fill living rooms and kitchens, leak into charged streets, guide cars. The road to the mine is jammed. A policeman tries to turn them back, but now they approach in a double column and there is no route back. Everything stops. All cars hear the beatless music, the urgent appeals, but nothing yet is known. Down roll windows and again the ravens flit.—p.55Those ravens are bringing news of a terrible explosion deep within the Deepwater 9 coal mine, mainstay of West Condon's faltering economy. The disaster leads to the coalescence of a new religious movement centered on Giovanni Bruno, one of the few survivors, whose brief and enigmatic utterances (though they may be merely the fruit of Bruno's oxygen-starved brain) are taken literally as a new Gospel. Soon, the Brunists are at odds with the rest of West Condon... and the conflict promises to be bloodier than the explosion itself.That's The Origin of the Brunists in a few sentences. But the linear elements of plot, the simple things its characters say and do in the furtherance of that plot—actions which are almost always misguided, or sordid, or both—aren't what matter about this, Coover's first novel. What matters are how these events play out, and how Coover chooses to tell us about them.Every now and then the marks rise up to shut down the carnival. Consider that a word of warning.The setting of The Origin of the Brunists cuts even closer to the bone for me. My father's father was an Italian immigrant, who came to the U.S. under circumstances the family never wanted to talk about, and who became a coal miner just like Bruno, Bonali, Lucci, and any number of their buddies whose names end with vowels. And while the town of West Condon is apparently supposed to be somewhere in southern Illinois, and therefore not technically part of Appalachia, nothing Coover says about it seems any different from the tiny West Virginia mining community where my grandfather worked and my own father was raised—just another one of those insular, fearful, hardscrabble towns whose only exports to more important places are coal, Christ and the occasional catastrophe. And their children, of course, who leave as soon as they collect enough cash.My grandfather eventually rose (literally as well as figuratively) to the above-ground rank of tippleman—but before that, without a doubt, he could have been in the elevator going down into Deepwater 9, right alongside the characters in this book.West Condon is like West Virginia in another way as well: there is no "East Virginia" (though perhaps there ought to be)... and the way "East Condon" gets used in The Origin of the Brunists, it often appears to be just a metaphor for outsiders in general. It's not at all clear that East Condon is a place you could actually drive to.You shouldn't suppose, however, that The Origin of the Brunists concerns itself entirely with niceties of geography, nor with the traditional enmities between capital vs. labor and Protestant vs. Catholic, nor with purely religious ecstasies in general. There is much talk of "forks" as well, some of it pretty filthy; Coover's euphemism for genitalia recurs again and again. Any cinematic version of this book (and yes, I can see this being made into a uniquely powerful film) would of necessity be at least as explicit as any season of Game of Thrones. The owner of West Condon's sole newspaper, Justin "Tiger" Miller, is just one of the sexually-obsessed townspeople whose impulses drive events.Ultimately, though, despite the undeniable lure of its sex and violence, its complexity and verismilitude, its visceral impact and flair for spectacle, I found The Origin of the Brunists somewhat disappointing. Rationality (of which, I must admit, I am something of a fan) not so much fails as proves nonexistent (as in Miller's case) or irrelevant (as with the Brunists themselves, as well as their antagonists)—which may be a realistic depiction of human nature, but it doesn't make for an especially cheerful novel.That being the case, I'm not sure whether I'm going to pick up the sequel, The Brunist Day of Wrath... but if I do, at least I'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect.
Robert Coover today "teaches electronic and experimental writing at Brown University". My general impression of Brown University's English Department comes from an alumnus friend of mine, who majored in English, but holds a grudge the size of Coover's forthcoming 'Wrath of the Brunists' against his school. He sums it up with a story about the end of one particularly painful, particularly Brownist English course: the professor (not sure who) asked if anyone had any questions; a well-respected woman stood and asked, quote "Why do you hate literature?" So I was a little wary of this one, though the rapturous blurbs and plot summary should have tipped me off that this is not electronic or experimental. The prologue is a sludgy pastiche of American biblical prose, the first chapter told from an awfully dull omniscient narrator, but from then on it's very, very well done realism, with long sections told from very stable, characteristic, individual points of view. Coover tries to give everyone equal treatment, but there is a central character, who is more or less a good late liberal dick swinging '60s kind of guy--despises religion, despises ignorance, but calls his predestined lover 'Happy Bottom', and never by her actual name (Happy Bottom, by the way, is a fantastic character, and I hope 'Wrath' is mainly her making fun of everyone). I was glad he got the shit kicked out of him. Anyway, these two find their salvation, "not the void within and ahead, but the immediate living space between two."There are plenty of historical nudges, as character fulfill the functions of, e.g., John the Baptist, or Paul, or Christ, or Judas. But there's no sustained allegory (probably for the better). There's much well deserved criticism of pretty much everything you might describe as 'The American National Character' (revivalist religion; ultra-rationalism; anti-rationalism; nationalism; commercialization of life; liberal self-righteousness), and not a whole lot of positive ideals set up in their place. It's too long, but otherwise this is just a really well done satire of ideas, that doesn't really provoke much thought after you put it down. Here's hoping the sequel is a bit like this, and not like Coover's later, 'subversive' re-writings of porn films.
What do You think about The Origin Of The Brunists (2000)?
I loved this book. I'm going to read the sequel, The Brunists' Day of Wrath, when it comes out in 2014 from Dzanc books -- I don't want to wait until March, so close on the heels of finishing the original novel, but well, I suppose I don't have much of a choice in the matter. As the book blurb on the back cover notes, The Origin of the Brunists won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for Best First Novel, but imho, it certainly doesn't read like a first novel.At its heart, the book is an account of the rise of a religious cult and the resulting religious fervor coming on the heels of a terrible mine disaster, but really, that statement is way too simplistic. It begins with a prologue as the people in the cult, known as the Brunists, have gathered the day before the second coming on a hill they've named the Mount of Redemption. A terrible event occurs, one that goes on to find its way into the very legends, myths and art of the religion. This part is related by a new convert, who seems slightly confused. The rest of the novel reveals what happened leading up to that event and beyond, beginning with the disaster at the mine, an event which will ultimately leave an entire town and several lives in chaos.I'm skipping most of the plot elements here, but you can read them in my blog discussion here. With lots of humor interspersed throughout the book, this is one of the craziest novels I've ever read. Aside from the new religion, which imho isn't the real focus of this book but rather the centerpiece around which the characters react, the author really gets into small-town life and minds, the workings of power and politics, and how seemingly "normal" people can get caught up in their own various forms of madness and mania. I'd say it's a novel about the people of West Condon much more than anything else. The author is a genius when it comes to the characters -- and it's really incredibly tough to believe that this was Mr. Coover's first novel. It does take some time and attention to get through, not because it's difficult to read, but because the author so carefully and slowly develops the frenzy that occurs not just among the Brunists, but the craziness occurring throughout the entire town. It also shows that no matter what sort of community these people find themselves in, even in "A community of good will," everything eventually comes down to matters of self interest -- a very non-idealistic view that makes this book well worth reading. Definitely recommended.
—Nancy Oakes
Just under halfway through, but I am enjoying this book quite a lot ... this (potentially) in spite of the fact that it's not a "cozy" read. Anyone who (like me) is troubled by the way religion has been debased in the US will not be reassured by any of the goings-on in this book. Let me hasten to add, though: there is nothing at all "over the top" about the way any of the actions or motivations or events are depicted by Coover here, even though many of the character's actions, motivations, and thought-processes are themselves more-than-occasionally over-the-top themselves. Characters are not caricatures here, and I marvel at how well Coover paints differences in the characters themselves. What a fascinating cast of characters! A lot of them, to be sure, but worth getting to know, and worth the work of keeping who's-who in mind. (Ah, the advantages of the ebook ... I just tap on a character's name, do a search, and I can find all of the mentionings of that character in the book.)[Update] And now, having finished, I find myself somewhat disappointed; the book did not finish as impressively as it began. Writing this, I am still in the process of digesting what has gone down and how it was told ... but provisionally I would at present give Origin of the Brunists just a shade under four stars ... 3.9 if we had a less blunt instrument than whole numbers of stars to use for evaluating books.For what it's worth, I do intend to read the 1000(+)-page sequel, .
—JerryB
A superior book. One of the best reads I've had in several months. The kind of book that from the first page makes you feel you are in the presence of something not just good, but potentially great. Felt this way all the way until the very end, but I thought the denouement was somehow cheap and unearned, or maybe just predictable. The wild orgy of violence and self-mutilation at the end satisfies a certain sneery take on religious belief, whereas the book otherwise held the question of faith in an indeterminate suspension throughout--yes, the Brunists are just a little bit looney, but then again, who isn't. That falls apart in the descent in to madness, and the romantic ending between Miller and the sexpot, sweet, but brainless nurse is thesis-ridden in a way I found unfortunate. Too bad, but the rest of the book is so good that I am still willing to say it's a book that everyone should read.
—Peter Kerry Powers
