The Son of Laughter
Malin, Irving
from formerly complacent traditionalist Christians, who must fight political and cultural battles without White House support. As Wuthnow and others in No Longer Exiles argue, this means that...
...He, indeed, compels us to define exactly what a "religious novelist" does...
...Their agreement was that she would write first, if she thought she could do so--although it 28:16 July 1993 Commonweal...
...The point is that it was a gorgeous, clownish, inspired, and inspiring thing to do...
...Commonweal 16 July 1993:27both loony and profound...
...As for the tape itself, to me it was all fascinating--even the lists, the pauses, the unfinished scraps of things--because it was all Bebb, and Bebb speaking from another worM, and Bebb speaking to himself, which meant that for all I knew he might at any moment lay some secret bare, some shadowy corner of those last days of his life when he recorded it" (my italics...
...IRVING MALIN teaches at CCNY...
...how the mystery of faith is found in the faulty language we use repeatedly...
...Note that the narrator' s voice, from Treasure Hunt (1977), is different from Bebb's and from the voice in A Long Day's Dying...
...Who even cares...
...In other words, to act locally...
...Jacob throws away the idols of the heathens and he says "simply": "Who knows about gods...
...it is merely a way to demonstrate that Buechner's artistic method relies upon the uncertainty of how we "know" meanings...
...Please excuse the following series of examples...
...The question of belief is at the heart of Buechner's work...
...The only effective way, however, to be such an insider is to share the world of the poor where they live...
...He surprises us with the suggestion that Bebb may hold "secrets" from "another world...
...It is Saint Paul writing, 'We are fools for Christ's sake'" (my italics...
...If we can't know--or don't want to know-the ability of a monkey to "think"--then how can we dare grasp human and superhuman messages...
...An odd passage from The Clown in the Belfry, a collection of Buechner's essays about "faith" and "fiction," is instructive...
...Jacob comes to realize the inadequacy of language...
...He uses simple sentences which, in effect, mirror the Hebraic style...
...He blessed me as I had asked him...
...Locally the ground is cleaner, the troops more maneuverable...
...CLARKE E. COCHRAN is professor q/'political science at Texas Tech Universi O, in Lubbock, Texas, where he teaches and writes on religion and politics, social welfare atut health polio', and political philosophy...
...When Agatha eventually visited Ireland, however, she learned that James had concealed his priesthood from her--because he feared diminishing the openness of their letters were he to declare his identity-and no letters have been exchanged in the intervening three years...
...It was a radically new way of looking at the mysteries of earth and heaven...
...I want to stress Buechner' s methods by offering examples of his comic interpretations of interpretations, of his surprising new hermeneutics...
...What raised their spirits was just the sight of him...
...In the "wonderful"--a pun intended-Book of Bebb (a series of four novels about Bebb) there are again many references to misunderstandings, to linguistic inadequacies...
...Yet the Catholic Center, similar to their brothers and sisters on either side of the cultural war, just may find happiness in local action...
...Buechner is a religious novelist, but, as he writes in The Clown in the Belfry (1992), he refuses to be dogmatic or propagandistic...
...Suffice it to say here only that one day he climbed up and stood on his head in the belfry...
...They are Center, however, less out of conviction than because they end up suspended between forces pulling to the Right (prolife, family values) and to the Left (economic justice...
...How can he express ambiguities that disturb believers and nonbelievers...
...They are now seventy...
...This is how Buechner imagines Jacob's confronting the angel and wrestling with this being: "We were both of us whispering...
...Indeed, he dares to enter the complex, bewildered consciousness of a revered ancestor...
...He recognizes, despite his brilliant words, that language cannot capture those extraordinary, wordless, "radical" moments (or eternities) which transfigure us...
...how we can move from easy interpretations to sudden revelations...
...How can he surprise secular readers...
...He believes that faith, like fiction itself, is surprising, edgy, always elusive...
...Joseph l-Iynes L ove is best for everybody," remarks Bishop Richard ("Call me 'Dick'") Baker...
...Catholic political thinkers and activists will discover no firm place among centrist Democrats or Republicans...
...He is also a Catholic deacon...
...CLARE COLLINS is a writer who lives in Pawcatuck, Connecticut...
...He did not wait for my answer...
...Buechner knows that he cannot simply offer fixed messages...
...The event is described in its proper place...
...Jacob speaks as the novel progresses...
...The passage, I think, startles us and makes us think about the value of words and of the Word...
...His talk is startling-more and more about dreams, visions, and signs, and his emphasis upon these reinforces the point that the "uncanny" is beyond language...
...Maybe they are still waiting for me to call once again their queer and terrible names...
...His books offer coincidences, secrets, and dreams which resist fallen words...
...The local organizing described in Religion and Radical Politics is more challenging and effective than grand Christian socialist ideological movements...
...His novels are alarming because they walk a thin line...
...The Son of Laughter is a re-creation of Jacob (or "Israel" as he is called after his love-battle with the angel) but it refuses to settle for closure...
...Although critics condemned the novel as precious and contrived, they didn't notice the playful aspects of Buechner's method...
...GEORGE G. HIGGINS is an adjunct lecturer at The Catholic" Universio, qf America...
...Fiction can hold opposites together simultaneously like love and hate, laughter and tears, despair and hope, and so of course does faith which by its very nature both sees and does not see and whose most characteristic utterance perhaps, is 'Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.'" t~ A DECEMBER-DECEMBER ROMANCE DEAR JAMES Jon Hassler Ballantine Books, $21,438 pp...
...However, his conversational style unsettles us because we don't expect Jacob to be so "down to earth...
...What shape creative, centrist religiouspolitical action may take in the local community has yet to be defined...
...As Wuthnow and others in No Longer Exiles argue, this means that the focus for these contests will be local and state governments, not Capitol Hill...
...Paradoxically, the same is true for the Religious Left...
...In the introduction he writes: "It is bats that are supposed to be found in belfries, but for a few incandescent moments in t 831 a man named Lyman Woodward was to be found in one that is still higher than any building in Rupert, Vermont...
...Having deserted the Democratic party in the 1980s, they returned to the fold in 1992...
...In his first novel, A Long Day's Dying (published at the age of twenty-four in 1960), he gives us a Jamesian style--he has not yet found his true voice--which attempts to demonstrate that human understanding is limited...
...We have come a long way from the circumlocutions of Henry James and the monkey, but we still recognize that words are "queer" and "terrible" because they can't hold the mysteries of even everyday events...
...Perhaps the clue to all of B uechner's books is that he makes us wonder about how we can find spiritual truth in the comic incident...
...WORDS FAIL ME THE SON OF LAUGHTER Frederick Buechner HarperSanDancisco, $19, 274 pp...
...In the following passage the ambiguities signify that his words are REVIEWERS PATRICK JORDAN is managing editor qt Commonweal...
...If the Christian Left is to be an insider at all, it must do so within the paradox of salvation history, understanding that despite all appearances, God is on the side of the poor, weak, and outcast...
...Was he drunk...
...Once again, it seems to me, Buechner is questioning the nature of interpretation...
...Who knows...
...I do not remember the words of his blessing or even if there were words...
...It ends, in fact, with uncertainty: "Who knows the full meaning of words...
...he offers earthy, crazy words which can be taken in many ways...
...The Christian Left has always seen itself as an outsider with regard to American capitalism and materialist, consumer culture...
...In the earlier novel Agatha and James had become soulmates through their correspondence over several years...
...Surely the mixture of late Jamesian style applied to the interpretation of a monkey's "understanding" is amusing...
...Maybe they have seen every step I have taken ever since...
...In The Son of Laughter, Buechner dares to retell the biblical story of Jacob...
...This leaves the Center, often occupied by Catholics in their voting and politicalsocial attitudes...
...MSGR...
...It is too realistic to view itself as a Democratic party insider, though it does hope to find occasional welcome at the White House back door...
...JOSEPH HYNES teaches modern literature at the Universi O, of Oregon...
...Why did he do it...
...Was he crazy...
...He [Isaac which means "he will laugh" in Hebrew] would pass among his people with his sad smile and liquid eyes trying to say things to them that would raise their spirits, but it didn't matter what he said to them...
...Irving Malin lthough Frederick Buechner has written twenty-six books, half fiction and half nonfiction, he has not received the critical attention he deserves...
...they disturb us in the same way works by Spark and Greene do...
...The style, if you will, is elaborately constructed to deconstruct our confidence as interpreters: "The extend of Bone's [the spiritual guide of the novel] monkey's knowledge or, more exactly, of his ability to retain or to assimilate what he saw was a matter for much conjecture and a question often considered but seldom expressed as if from fear, that once asked, it might be answered...
...Perhaps he should have the last word: "Faith and fiction both journey forward in time and space and draw their life from the journey, are in fact the journey...
...He has written on such religious writers as 0 'Connor and Percy...
...To that end, Dear James restores to us as principals Miss Agatha McGee of Staggerford, Minnesota, and Father James O'Hannon of Ballybegs, north of Dublin, two who figured centrally in Hassler's A Green Journey (1985), when they were sixty-seven...
...It is the right time now to recognize that he is one of our significant artists---one who is at least as important as Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy...
...How can he make us wonder about the relation of language and faith...
...And Jon Hassler has set out, in his seventh novel, to put some moral zip, humor, and poignance into the bishop's soggily incontrovertible platitude...
...I remember the blessing of his arms holding me and the blessing of his arms letting me go...
...Bebb is mysterious...
...The Son of Laughter reinforces this understanding of the limitations, the fallen ghostly nature of words...
...I'm afraid t have used many words to convey that Buechner is a master stylist-a stylist who moves easily from late James to Hebraic simplicity...
...Note that the commonsensical style suggests that such words as "crazy" or "drunk" are insufficient--that they are meaningless in defining all the "mysteries of earth and heaven...
Vol. 120 • July 1993 • No. 13
