Failed Mission
Hersey, John
Failed Mission THE CALL by John Hersey Alfred A. Knopf. 690 pp. $19.95. John Hersey's new book, The Call, is a fictional biography of David Treadup, a missionary from upstate New York who spent...
...To the end of his life, Treadup mis-writes etc...
...His strength quickly reveals itself to lie in demonstrations of the scientific method, which he performs, more like a magician than a missionary, for thousands of Chinese...
...This is a poignant and a strong conclusion to a story that makes many interesting and important points along the way...
...Unlike most missionaries, Treadup masters Mandarin miraculously early in his tour...
...While confined in a Japanese concentration camp, Treadup loses his religious conviction and in a way confirms the judgment of the YMCA bureaucracy...
...It is clear from the beginning that Treadup is a self-reliant American rebel whose obvious flaw is an unforgiving honesty...
...In delicate (and blurry) allusions, Hersey purveys her remarkable ability to satisfy her husband's strong sexual needs while remaining devout and pure...
...He asks that he and his wife be buried in the Shanghai cemetery where one of their children is interred...
...For his part, the narrator gives us gems like, "His eyes do a buck and wing...
...It is not the object of love America has lost, so much as the capacity for it...
...But the weakness of Hersey's reportorial style is best seen in the treatment of Treadup's relations with his wife, Emily...
...Treadup's son, however, is constantly refused the right to execute his father's will...
...as ect., and his only good lines are quotes from the Bible...
...The narrative is given through Treadup's diaries and an omniscient author...
...But that kind of insight requires a technique that can render shadings too complex for Hersey's broad brush...
...John Hersey's new book, The Call, is a fictional biography of David Treadup, a missionary from upstate New York who spent forty years of devoted service in China as a YMCA secretary...
...it is his only deep commitment, and he is destined to be frustrated in all of his endeavors to serve...
...It brings him into conflict with all organizations and finally results in his dismissal from the Y's roster...
...He engages in famine relief, literacy campaigns, medical and economic self-help programs...
...The Call has the makings of a major television series: a strong, uncomplicated story and the opportunity for exotic settings...
...For Treadup (and-Hersey, himself the child of missionary parents), it's the kind of world we live in...
...But by then it is too late, for Treadup has fallen hopelessly in love with China...
...But after an upbeat beginning, Hersey's tale of seemingly invincible conviction concludes with the total defeat and spiritual annihilation of his social-gospel hero...
...Hersey is one of our strongest storytellers, in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis...
...There is no avant-garde technique, no convoluted, poetic diction...
...But there's more...
...Repatriated by the Japanese, he finds his way back to China until, despite his legendary stature as a real friend of the Chinese peasants, the Maoists expel him as an enemy of the people...
...But even when he switches to programs aimed at obliterating illiteracy, they bring in few converts, and he begins to be perceived by the YMCA brass as a "secular humanist...
...She is the classic helpmate whose life is dependent entirely on her husband's mission and needs...
...Gene Bluestein (Gene Bluestein teaches at California State University, Fresno...
...The remainder of the book recounts his attempts to make a Christian contribution to a country so old and committed to its ways of life that the Gospel is as influential as a snippet in a fortune cookie...
...Even in death Treadup is frustrated...
...It is the final blow...
...Ironically, because they loved, and understood, the China we have 'lost.' So here's a paradox: The communists hound me, a neo-misBOOKS sionary, out of China and the American tiger hunters hound the 'mishkids' out of the State Department—me because I am un-Chinese, and them because they are un-American...
...he's driving out 'the China hands,' so many of whom are sons of missionaries...
...Finally, after exasperating struggles, he gains the right to bury the ashes, only to discover that the cemetery has been bulldozed out of existence...
...Treadup lives to hear the China Policy destroyed by McCarthyism...
...Throughout, the narrator emphasizes that these projects were to provide the communists with models for their successful programs...
...The Kuomintang, of course, are thieving bureaucrats, despite Chiang Kai-shek's nominal conversion to Christianity...
...But the more his commitment to the missionary movement diminishes, the stronger becomes his determination to help the Chinese in direct and uncondescending projects...
...There is nothing bright on the horizon for the author of The Wall and Hiroshima...
...In any case, Emily is reduced at the end to a weak and almost mechanical Christian piety which ultimately leaves her literally speechless till the end of her life...
...It is worth recalling that early in his career, Hersey worked as a secretary to Lewis...
...Treadup's education expands until he finally acknowledges that the charges of "cultural imperialism" leveled against the missionaries are accurate...
...While his prose clinks along, Hersey knows how to tell a compelling story...
...Treadup is converted at Syracuse University, then a small Methodist school, and ends up in Shanghai in 1905...
...Hersey supplies notes and documentary references to bolster the sense of verisimilitude and to highlight Treadup's story against the history of Protestant missionary activity in China, which began in 1807...
Vol. 49 • September 1985 • No. 9
