Sentiment Versus Art

I do apologize, noble readers, for the lags in air time on Thinkulous lately. I've been swamped in training week and the first week of a new job. It's been very interesting and extremely tiring. Add wedding planning to the mix (and a couple of other logistical flare-ups in our lives), and you have the infrequent posting habits of late.

I did finish Gilead (previous posts here) and was richly rewarded for my efforts. I debated with myself long and hard whether this book was sentimental -- a damning term in my family's cultural lexicon. I've decided it's not. That term, in my mind, refers to a work that evokes emotion in order to make the reader (viewer, listener, etc.) feel s/he has witnessed something powerful. Usually, the emotion is pleasant, but it doesn't have to be. Sentiment, in this sense, carries connotations of crassness, lack of subtlety. Hallmark movies. Etcetera.

Gilead did indeed invoke a lot of emotion at a few key points (though far more often, it provoked deep intellectual musings). But the feelings were complex, and they were a product of a believable character and an authentic story line. Sentiment is manufactured. Genuine emotion is evoked through artistic quality that powerfully reflects some part of my experience of life -- and often offers some new insight into that experience.

Gilead starts out looking like it's headed for sentiment. It ends up firmly in the camp of high quality literature. It does this without giving in to the modern novelist's greatest crutches -- far more prevalent and pernicious these days than sentiment, in my view: Depressive pessimism or excess irony.

It's a warm, affirming novel that faces, struggles with, and ultimately embraces the ugly points of life. Don't miss it.

I Have Wandered to the Limits of my Understanding

"I have wandered to the limits of my understanding any number of times, out into that desolation, that Horeb, that Kansas, and I've scared myself, too, a good many times, leaving all landmarks behind me, or so it seemed. And it has been among the true pleasures of my life. Night and light, silence and difficulty, it seemed to me always rigorous and good."

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

This paragraph pretty neatly outlines an essential aspect of my personality so I thought I'd lead with it, by way of illustrating Marylinne Robinson's considerable chops. The woman was undoubtedly called "good with words" by her high school classmates. Gilead is eminently quotable. Yet this kind of pronouncement is also thoroughly in character for the hero of the book, who lives and breathes theology and philosophy, and is, after all, a preacher.

I have to hand it to Robinson on the subject of voice. I have had to remind myself numerous times that Gilead was not written by an elderly gentleman. There have been a few times when her own world-view seems to peek through, but mostly, she nails the word-choice, thought processes, emotional responses, and personal interests with uncanny precision. I have the strong feeling that I know John Ames.

Of course, that kind of insight is at the heart of the book. It's a fairly psychological story. There are no chapters; as mentioned in a previous post, it's written as one long letter. And Robinson mostly makes that work very smoothly. Though she weaves in a pretty good plot element that definitely keeps me reading, Robinson seems most interested in slowly unveiling, in loving yet unflinching detail, the inner life of this thoughtful, ethically meticulous man as he prepares to die.

While Ames' letter ranges from earthy sadness to elegiac celebration, it never becomes hopeless or depressive. He leans toward stoic Midwestern understatement, which in itself comes under Robinson's finely-ground lens -- but never explicitly. Reading carefully, I am rewarded with layered insights into the man's strengths and challenges.

This is not to say it is a perfect book. But more on that anon. I should finish it before critiquing further.

"Any Human Face is a Claim on You"

"They say an infant can't see when it is as young as your sister was, but she opened her eyes, and she looked at me. She was such a little bit of a thing. But while I was holding her, she opened her eyes. I know she didn't really study my face. Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I'm glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. Boughton and I have talked about that, too. It has something to do with incarnation.... Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it..."

Marylinne Robinson, Gilead: A Novel

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

As promised, a report on the other non-work-related book I’m reading. I’ll try to keep this one brief, I promise.

In January, 2006, Marilynne Robinson published Gilead, only her second novel in 25 years. (She also produced two non-fiction books during that time.) The first, Housekeeping, won the PEN/Hemingway award. Not bad, but this one topped it; it won the Pulitzer.

Valerie Ryan, from Amazon.com, did a pretty good job laying out the premise:

The narrator, John Ames, is 76, a preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. He is writing a letter to his almost seven-year-old son, the blessing of his second marriage. It is a summing-up, an apologia, a consideration of his life. Robinson takes the story away from being simply the reminiscences of one man and moves it into the realm of a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfectability of man. The reason for the letter is Ames's failing health. He wants to leave an account of himself for this son who will never really know him.

I’m on page 65 of 247. As I understand it, most of the plot is yet to come, but I really don't mind one bit. I read it before bed, and it’s well-suited to that. Robinson’s prose is simultaneously highly crafted and clear as a mountain stream. On the Amazon.com page, Publishers Weekly said “Many writers try to capture life's universals of strength, struggle, joy and forgiveness—but Robinson truly succeeds.” This is true. Robinson keeps away from sentiment. When Ames marvels at this mysterious world, he steers me right into his own sense of wonder and joy, and I have found myself with tears in my eyes a couple of times already.

There are various other themes woven in, including a lovely one on Ames’s grandfather, a larger-than-life abolitionist who fought in the Midwest during the Civil War. The history that’s revealed thereby is quite engaging.

Stay tuned for more on this rewarding book.