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Son of Laughter

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The Son of LaughterThe Son of Laughter by Frederick Buechner

The beautiful always surprise us. Everything else in the world we expect as we expect weariness at the day’s end and sun at waking. (171)

I’ve read a bit of Frederic Buechner, though not nearly as much as he deserves. Godric remains a favorite. In that novel, I especially love the way Buechner writes the prose with a cadence that makes it feels like I’m reading a poem or a song.

This latest, Son of Laughter, was recommended by a good friend, and it tells the story of the Biblical patriarch Jacob, the son of Isaac (whose name means laughter), the son of Abraham, who was a friend of God. The story is familiar—or at least the bones of the story are—to anyone who has read the Old Testament account. But what is truly wonderful about this book is the way Buechner takes the familiar Sunday school account and restores the foreignness and the strangeness that our familiarity with the story has worn away.

Buechner takes the reader back to the earthy, alien, near-savage, almost pagan reality of a dusty tribe of desert nomads who have a peculiar relationship with an unusually singular deity. And he does this while remaining true to the source material yet simultaneously resisting the urge to color the entire account with an obvious Christological teleology (as would no doubt be the case in your standard Family Christian Bookstore retelling).

Instead Buecher tells the story of a tribe learning about this deity they call only “The Fear,” trying to understand (in the midst of great pain and violence) what the Fear’s promise that they will grow to be a great “luck” to all the people of the earth means to them. Along the way, Buechner’s perspective continually reverse-telescopes the view of Jacob and his situations, reestablishing distance between our world and theirs. Surprisingly, this helps explain some things (like circumcision) that seem inexplicable to our modern sensibilities.

The moon is a shepherd with a pitted face. He herds the stars. (56)

The narrative becomes strained in the second portion of the book, where the reader moves from the perspective of Jacob/Isreal to follow Joseph’s time in Egypt. Buechner still tells the story through Jacob’s perspective, which enhances the dream-like distance. Yet this portion remains integral to the story, because the consummation of the promise is so wrapped up in what happens to Joseph in Egypt.

The book ends without any sentimental reassurances about God or his promise to Israel. In fact, in one conversation Jacob admits to his son that the Fear’s promise is only for the living and that Jacob does not know what the Fear has in store for the dead. Buechner leaves the reader with only the glimmer of a greater hope on the horizon. Along the way though, he expertly shows the story of the patriarchs through eyes that make them simultaneously incredibly alien and richly alive.

The Fear gives to the empty-handed, the empty-hearted. In return it is only the heart’s trust that the Fear asks. Trust him though you cannot see him and he has no silver hand to hold. Trust him though you have no name to call him by, though out of the black night he leaps like a stranger to cripple and bless. (184)

American Gods

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American GodsAmerican Gods by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Neil Gaiman’s work is a good example of the law of conservation of narrative: story is neither created nor destroyed; it is simply transformed from one form to another. Gaiman’s novel American Gods could have been a hundred different things, representing the new gods of America in a hundred different ways. But instead it’s something significant, because Gaiman knows the first rule of original story-telling: know the original stories.

This is what’s wrong with a lot of writing today: it’s shallow. Much of it seems to be written in a vacuum. But the thing about writing (and especially fantasy) is that for it to be really alive, for the story to be rich, it needs to draw on deep wells. And these wells— as American Gods illustrates— go all the way back to the beginning. Gaiman weaves a new and compelling story, a story about the new gods and the old gods in America, but he does it because he understands the building-blocks of the oldest tales.

If you’re looking for a modern story-teller archetype, Neil Gaiman is it. He accumulated a nearly inexhaustible supply of capital and credibility with the classic Sandman series of graphic novels, where he showed he had the knowledge and skill to weave with a rich and textured fabric, pulling in literary figures from Orpheus to Chesterton. To be honest though, after Sandman I found most of Gaiman’s work— Neverwhere, Stardust, the movies Coraline and Mirrormask— to be a bit disappointing (though I liked M is for Magic). Like I said though, he has inexhaustible credibility, so I when I found American Gods in paperback on my sister’s tall brick shelves, I took it home.

This is the Gaiman I remember from Sandman: raw, epic, and dark in a way that shimmers toward opalescence, like the sheen on a serpent’s back. Gaiman’s world is haunting and beautiful; it’s elegant and terrifying; it draws on the deep joy of Chesterton and the riddled wisdom of Gene Wolfe (both of whose words make appearances in this book) with a more pagan flavor. But not an anti-Christian paganism; more like a pre-Christian paganism, a paganism of the deep forests where Christ is still a rumor of Rome on the horizon.

American Gods is the story of a man named Shadow (and this is where Gaiman’s narrative credibility comes in: only he could give a protagonist in a fantasy novel such a trite name and have it stick and work). Shadow has just gotten out of prison and is traveling home, when he runs into a figure who recruits him for a coming war. It turns out that our country has become a battleground between gods of the old world (Europe, Asia, and Africa, primarily) and the new gods of America (things like Media, Internet, and other intangibles as well as gods of industry, railroad, and transportation).

If it sounds a bit transcendental, it’s not. Gaiman keeps it grounded in physicality. Apart from Shadow’s annoying tendency to have significant plot points revealed through dreams (though in fairness he’s spending a lot of time in communication with Native American deities), Gaiman’s gods are very physical: they screw, smoke, swear, throw punches, and try to assassinate each other.

Like I said, a master of old stories. Look some up. This is what the gods spent their time doing.

I can’t go into the plot much at all without dropping spoilers, because even in the very first chapter there are twists and turns. The whole book is a riddle, and there are pleasing knots throughout. The narrative follows Shadow, about whom we continue to learn more, as he works with a man named Wednesday (whose identity readers familiar with mythology will work out fairly quickly) to recruit the old gods— those brought to America by immigrants— in a coming battle against the new.

If you know your mythology, you’ll recognize figures as they’re introduced, but you certainly won’t recognize everyone. Gaiman doesn’t keep his mythology confined to a specific ethnicity. There are gods and monsters from all across the map, several of whom I didn’t know. And Gaiman isn’t one to spell everything out for you, putting nice labels on each god as it is introduced.

That said, it’s the riddles that really make this book work. When gods battle, they tend to do it out of sight of mortals, which is why Shadow— a human more or less like us— makes a good lens through which to view the story. We’re forced to figure things out along with him. And the riddles envelop this story like those Russian dolls that fit inside each other. The big riddle of the entire book is revealed at the end, and it’s flawlessly done, something you don’t expect but that you see clues for throughout once you know it. And the smaller, nested riddles— such as the mystery that Shadow stumbles upon in the middle third of the book in a small Northern town— you can amuse yourself by figuring out as you go. In this, Gaiman is definitely a student of Wolfe, though unlike his master Gaiman is more merciful in that by the end of the book he’ll show you how the trick is done.

If you know Gaiman primarily through his softer stuff, be warned: this book is raw. The language is that of a Brit who seasons liberally with profanity (effectively, to be fair). And there’s plenty of sex. And not mere mortal sex either: god-sex. If you blush easily, keep this book on the shelf.

But the book is strong, and besides an excellent tale, Gaiman is saying something here about the nature of narrative and belief itself and even something about the essence of America. It’s a story by someone who loves America with the wide open eyes of an outsider. Gaiman writes about an America that actually exists, as he explains in his introduction, about real roadside attractions and about a culture (albeit one already slightly dated) we’re sure to recognize. More than that though, he talks about what’s happening beneath the surface: what happens to gods and beliefs and stories when they find themselves in this new world.

This is where his work has the most depth, and this is where you get a glimpse of Wolfe and Chesterton peering over his shoulders (or perhaps perched on his shoulders, like the ravens of Odin). In this non-Christian (but not necessarily anti-Christian) polytheistic world, Gaiman’s sympathies are clearly with the old gods with all their arrogance and faded glory, with all their personality. They have something the new, brash, neon gods of commerce and industry lack. As Gaiman has his character Shadow say: I’d prefer the sad roadside attraction to the new gleaming hotel, because there’s something more real there.

America, it turns out, is a bad place for gods. As Gaiman spells out several times, the land isn’t fertile for them. And it’s the land itself lurking in the background of the story, a shadowy figure that’s never a player in the same sense as the (ultimately revealed) figures pulling the strings of even the gods. Gods don’t flourish here like they did in the Old World, and even the new gods arise quickly and fade fast. But this isn’t a work of comparative religion, so Gaiman never really chases this idea or offers us reasons why. And because this is a story to which the monotheistic gods aren’t invited, they’re not a part of Gaiman’s narrative.

But the book isn’t an explanation. It’s a story. The best stories explain some things, but they don’t explain everything. (This is what Biblical literalists forget about the Bible.) It’s a really, really good story about gods in America. It’s also, more significantly, a story about stories: what they do, what they’re for, how they have the power to shape cultures, and what happens to them (or might happen to them) in this brave new world in which we find ourselves.

The Remains of the Day

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The Remains of the DayThe Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The back of my copy of Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day uses phrases like “elegant,” “cruel,” and “quietly devastating” to describe this slender volume. This was another book read on the recommendation of my sister, and neither she nor the cover blurbs lied. I found the work to be a nearly flawless study of the life and reflections of a figure that has been often parodied but seldom understood– the English butler, living out a long and possibly futile career of service to a grand manor house in the first half of the twentieth century.

My readings lately have been orbiting around the First World War. I read Logicomix not long ago and was struck by the role that the War played and realized how little I knew of the history of the conflict. Logicomix led me to Wittgenstein’s biography, in which the War was the backdrop to the dissolution of the philosopher’s native culture and empire. Right now I’m about halfway through Keegan’s excellent one-volume treatment of the First World War, and I was not surprised to again find the War haunting the pages of Ishiguro’s work, its repercussions echoing down the halls of the house to which Ishiguro’s protagonist, Mr Stevens, devotes the prime years of his career.

The Remains of the Day is a novel about reflections, reminding me in many ways of Gene Wolfe’s Peace, one of my all-time favorite novels. As far as actual action and plot, not much happens on the surface: a butler, Mr Stevens, who has spend his career as the head butler of Darlington House in the service of Lord Darlington, finds himself in the evening of his life (this is where the title comes from) reflecting on his years of service as he takes a motoring trip across southwest England to renew an old acquaintance. The larger themes come out only slowly, as Stevens’ interior monologue takes him back and forth between reflections on the countryside and villages he is passing through and his own memories of past years at Darlington House.

You learn several things right away. The first is that Stevens defines himself in terms of “dignity”– a quiet, steady service to a worthy lord. We meet Stevens’ father in his recollections and see how this shaped his upbringing, and we get hints of the sort of international policies that were hammered out in unofficial meetings between great personages coming together at Darlington House. This is where the echoes of the Great War make themselves felt: Lord Darlington and his allies feel the terms of the Treaty of Versailles deals too harshly with the German people and want to preserve international peace by mitigating some of the more draconian strictures.

Stevens explains his view of the world at one point: To us the world was a wheel, revolving with these great houses at the hub, their mighty decisions emanating out to all else, rich and poor, who revolved around them.

As the novel progresses, Stevens is forced to acknowledge the ultimate failure– and indeed the sinister advantages made– of Lord Darlington’s naive idealism. What is more difficult though, is his slow realization of the costs his years of service have had on his own life. It is in this slow, subtle realization that Ishiguro’s writing truly excels. Stevens’ self-reflection, his recollected narratives, are couched entirely in painfully reserved– at times almost Asberger-like in its emotional detachment– preoccupations with proper decorum, dignity, and service. His attempts to reflect on his own feelings, such as those associated with his father’s death and his own unrequited love, are painfully stymied and round-about.

In many passages I found myself reminded of nothing more than Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation trying to understand certain difficult human emotions or expression. Stevens admits that a truly great butler– and for all his humility it is clear that he believes himself to be one by dint of doing good work at a great house– wears a persona he must never remove, and even in his own self-reflections, in the monologue within his mind, we see this persona so carefully constructed that he is unable to escape from it, even at the cost of his relationships with others.

This makes Stevens himself an unreliable narrator, something that again reminds me of Wolfe. It’s not that Stevens tells outright lies, but he either cannot reveal or cannot even perceive emotional nuances that would be obvious to anyone else. Because of this we don’t, for instance, ever learn the true extent of Stevens attachment to the acquaintance he is traveling to see or what their past relationship may have entailed– not because Stevens is covering it up, but because to speak of such things would be irrelevant or unseemly. He doesn’t give us his own emotional state; we’re left to learn of how he is feeling at particular times by the interactions he has with others and the questions they ask him. What we have, always, is the consummate butler.

I don’t know what Ishiguro knew of this world, nor do I know how much a story like this was a model for things like Downton Abbey today. But it seems to me he got a lot right about people who give themselves up entirely to a certain cause or perceived ideal and what happens when one is forced to live up to the fact that loyalty may have been misplaced or– even worse– ultimately futile.

If I have a single complaint about this novel, it’s because I’m partial to fantasies in which the house itself is part of the story. The quote by Stevens above puts me in mind of places like the Professor’s house in The Chronicles of Narnia or Evenmere of The High House. In this novel, Darlington House is never anything more than the background. We don’t see much of its character. We don’t really get any sense at all about what it looks like or its moods or atmosphere. Perhaps this is intentional: for Stevens, it is simply a workplace to be managed with a quiet and ceaseless efficiency. It also means that Darlington House has the strength of non-specificity; imagine any large, stately English manor house: that is Darlington House.

Like every story, The Remains of the Day is a love story at its core, but it is a buried love story. It is a love story of carefully spoken courtesies in which the shape of things unsaid only slowly become apparent. It is a romance of averted glances and missed opportunities, all the more tragic because the hero only slowly has any awareness that they have been missed. The ending, for all its soft cruelty, was satisfying, if not unexpected. This is not a book about storms or sudden, swift changes. It is a book about an evening– of an age as well as a life– about the slow fading of light and the reflections that long English evenings in the countryside entail.

The High House

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The High House (The High House #1)The High House by James Stoddard

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is a survivor, one of those volumes that has come through multiple bookshelf purges over the years. It was purchased in an age of Brooks and Jordan and Star Wars novels, but it was solid enough that it remains when most of my pulp paperback science fiction and fantasy are gone. I was reminded of it recently by the graphic novel Joe the Barbarian, so I fished it off the shelf and decided to return to Evenmere, the epigrammatic house of the title, for the first time since childhood.

Evenmere is the central idea and the setting for The High House, which is more of a fable than a fantasy novel. The story is of Carter Anderson, a boy who grew up in the country English manor and only now returns to it as a man. The master keys of the house have been stolen by Anarchists, and Carter has to seek the mantle and the sword of his missing father and take his rightful place of Master of the House. This house, however, is more than a rambling mansion. It is a world unto itself, with entire kingdoms and countries within its rooms, corridors, and courtyards. The image of the house itself is enough for Stoddard to hang his tale on, and the concept comes to life with his descriptive language. Evenmere is Gormenghast done brighter (even with the Room of Horrors). It is a more cosmological version of Wolfe’s House Absolute. It is the extension of the house Susan, Lucy, Edmund, and Peter found a wardrobe within. Stoddard takes the idea of finding an entire world in a cabinet and transforms it into a place where a suite of rooms can be a kingdom without ceasing to also be a suite of rooms.

What is it about this kind of rambling, magical house that has such an appeal in fantasy? Stoddard’s house is a Christian house, the house of the created universe. There is an appeal here to a certain type of fantasy writer (and reader): those who believe the universe was indeed created and that we are all living in our Father’s house. It touches on a way of seeing the universe itself. Stoddard has his main character spell it out after a day of wandering empty corridors:

I love these halls, the crannies and endless passages. The secret panels. The promise of adventure. I think there is something wonderful in all the desolate places. It’s like being a child again, walking outside at night, with the wind stirring the trees, and the sudden fear that something would leap out before I reached the house. But beyond the fear there was a question, a mystery of what inhabits a land when no man is there. What do the trees do when they are alone? And the stones? And this is another desolate place. Think of it, year upon year, and perhaps we are the first ones to walk her halls in many lifetimes.

It is the same thought a friend voiced upon viewing a planetarium show on exoplanets: what does it mean that there are these worlds out there with measurable wind speeds and surface temperatures? How is it significant? In a sense, these places are the empty rooms, the barren corridors. For a writer like Stoddard, they are not simply random or wasted space. They are aspects and portions of a created order. Evenmere is a representation of a universe in which every seam and joining of space was crafted. There is meaning or significance to all of it. The characters spend days walking down empty corridors with dusty sconces and threadbare carpet. But even the empty parts were designed. They are part of the plan of the house. As empty or desolate or far away as they may be, as endless, they are still part of a home.

That’s the power of this book, the idea of a house as an entire universe, which reflects the idea of the entire universe as a house. The rest of the work, unfortunately, has not held up as well as it did when this book first captured me. The characters, though likable, are wooden and predictable. Besides their names, it is difficult to tell one from the other. It is a fable, not a character piece. You follow an Everyman on an adventure through the house, an adventure in which there are no deep personal twists or surprises or stakes beyond the survival of the universe itself. The bad guys, including the Wicked Stepmother, are unequivocally bad. The good guys have to wrestle with their own weaknesses but never in a way that transforms how they think. Everyone is on a set trajectory from the novel’s very beginning. In fable though, these are not necessarily weaknesses.

More disappointing reading this as an adult was the realization that the central theme, a house that is a universe unto itself, could have gone so much deeper. Stoddard’s Evenmere is beautiful, but about halfway through the novel I started getting tired of wandering its corridors. The world of the house starts to become simply an endless variation of architecture and decorating along with a network of secret passageways, all painstakingly described. But a house is so much more than that. There’s an entire universe in the plumbing alone, or the chimneys and gas pipes, or a hundred other things that could have been brought into play. Stoddard has written a sequel to this work that I have not yet read, and he is apparently working on a third novel as well, so perhaps these are aspects of the house he will explore in the future.

One final quibble: the dreams. A house that contains entire kingdoms within its walls is dreamlike enough, but a major portion of the action in this book takes place in long, meandering dream sequences that didn’t do much to move the plot along. These made the action drag.

The High House may not be a perfect, tightly executed novel, but it is a wonderbook, a quest through a beautifully rendered world hidden in the hallways of a house as old as time. In this respect it is simultaneously as new and mysterious as a house you’ve never visited and as familiar and comforting as your own hearth.