Home v. My Revolutions
presented by
ROUND 1, MATCH 8 of the JOHN UPDIKE REGIONAL
Home
v. My Revolutions
Judged by Witold Riedel
Witold Riedel is a draftsman, photographer, and writer who explores the often-unfamiliar corners of the seemingly familiar universe. He was born in Poland, lived in Germany (in the city where the Grimm Brothers were born, actually) for many years, yet is a New Yorker by choice. He recently moved to Kensington, Brooklyn. Known connections to this year’s contenders: “No conflicts. I do not know authors.”
Home, by Marilynne Robinson, and My Revolutions, by Hari Kunzru, are two very different books about coming home, faith, and the moldable nature of time.
Home is set during the summer of 1957 in Gilead, a little town in Iowa, a place that has before been explored as the backdrop for Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by the same name.
We look at the events through the eyes of 38-year-old Glory Boughton, a former teacher who has come back to her hometown to care for her aging father, pastor Robert Boughton, a man whose needs become more basic with each passing day. Jack, Glory’s unreliable brother—a sinner, alcoholic, thief, and beloved prodigal son—soon joins them and the space around them shrinks a bit, as they are joined by the ever-present, almighty presence of a beloved God.
The novel displays elements of the biblical parable of the prodigal son, this time set in the claustrophobic environment of a house whose inhabitants seem to be more concerned with their conversations directed towards the heavens than with an information exchange with each other. The reader is left starved for explanations. It is a bit painful to watch the characters develop and also fade in an environment where so much could be solved by a few simple, yet honest conversations. There might be a little comfort in some of the repetition of actions here. I just wish that Glory cried a little less and that Jack had been in some way opened up by his apparently quite intense experiences in the world outside of Gilead. If prayer is a conversation in which one can’t expect a direct reply, Glory’s Home is wrapped in a helplessness grown from lives spent without much unsweetened dialogue between humans.
I imagine the book can feel comforting to some, especially those who understand how calming it can be to cry and pray and to make sure that those around them are not exposed to that dirty unholy truth inside. (He knows who you are.) But those who feel that their lives are enriched because they are able to share more or less genuine secrets of themselves with other human beings will find the novel very challenging, at times barely moving, and pretty frustrating to read.
My Revolutions is the story of a Brit on the brink of his 50th birthday who is forced to reflect upon his slightly violent past by a series of events that enter his present life almost like spores of mold. Michael, whose name is actually Chris, finds himself driving his wife’s BMW towards southern France, on a panicked mission to reconnect with Anna, a woman who became his saint in 1968 London, about 30 years prior. He would probably not be so determined were it not for another character from his past, Miles Bridgeman, who’s just begun to blackmail him and force him back into a political space Michael thought to have left behind (he was a member of a terrorist group in the early ‘70s).
The tempo in My Revolutions has an appealing beat. There are several stories overlapping here, and the reflective mind of a middle-aged man given a new lease on life can be quite honest, funny, and not very clean. Michael retraces the steps of his former identity in a parallel and yet chronological set of memories and conversations with people he can trust, and some others whom he should not. The reader is allowed to agree that insecurity can lead to violence and that love is not always simply a happy place. (Especially not that famous “free” kind of love.)
Anna, whom Chris imagined he loved, seems on an ever-narrowing path to martyrdom.
She begins her journey in a place of privilege, and works hard at shedding everything connected to it. Chris, for her, is a character she encounters on her journey of what seems to feel like purification. And though other characters around Chris are drawn less clearly, it’s very forgivable—it’s plausible they’d fade in the memory of a man who’s driven by hope that his love did not end up as a burned corpse in a conference room of a stormed embassy in Copenhagen.
Home is very obviously a partner book to a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and also a partner publication to that much Bigger Book, translated by bright minds the like of Martin Luther. The connection is very clear and it is pointed out by commentary surrounding the publication, even by this sentence here. My Revolutions is also a story of faith and homecoming; it’s just dressed up in a staccato of memories and reflections coming from the mind of a man behind the wheel. And while Home feels at times claustrophobic and contained, My Revolutions appears as if it were a room in an occupied building, most of the floor boards missing, the door kicked in, a strangely painted altar for confrontation at the other end of the room, nailed to a smelly wall, and an open door leading to other rooms for thought, none of them really comfortable—a non-protected labyrinth in which the walls are made up of false hopes and beliefs. In it Kunzru’s placed families that do not embrace but interrogate, deceptive human recorders, private saints throwing stones, monks who comfort by offering buckets for vomit. My Revolutions may seem to have a certain lightness and inexactness compared to Home, but in many ways it is a book that treats faith as a much more living, breathing, uncomfortably smelly thing, yet at times the only thing left to hold on to.
I would like to recommend both books; they seem to belong together in some ways. But I can choose only one of them, and my pick is Hari Kunzru’s My Revolutions, for its rawness, perhaps. Perhaps also because of the slightly comforting uncomfortable space it leaves for the attentive reader.
Advancing:
My Revolutions
Match Commentary
with Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner
Kevin: Here we have a couple of books I quite liked. Home is beautifully written and the characters, especially the narrator, are achingly drawn. Marilynne Robinson has serious chops. Nothing really happens here, though. Days pass and people do all the things they need to do to survive, like eating. They get in and out of bed a lot. I would challenge you to name another book where the characters get in and out of bed more than the characters do in Home. I think someone either goes to bed, gets out of bed, or helps someone get in or out of bed on almost every page. As Witold points out the conversations are almost Beckettian (Beckettesque?) in that they frequently go nowhere and then repeat themselves. That’s not always bad. Glory and Jack are adult siblings who hardly know each other and their overly-formal, futile conversations are heartbreaking. The family discussions about religion are especially provoking.
As I was reading I told you I was puzzled that the jacket copy described Jack Boughton as “one of the greatest characters in recent literature” when all he really does in this book is get in and out of bed and go out to the porch for a smoke. He plays a little checkers. You reminded me (as Judge Riedel does again) that Home is a companion book to Gilead, which I haven’t read but where Boughton apparently earned that title. In this novel I think he’s kind of coasting on his reputation. I guess in Gilead Jack Boughton must have been like Mickey Mantle as Hall of Fame center fielder, and in Home he’s more like Mickey Mantle as casino greeter.
Lots happens in My Revolutions. The stuff in flashback is really terrific, even if you always feel sort of once-removed from it. The stuff in the present feels like it should have more tension than it does, given that it’s wrapped up in secrets and blackmail. It’s an interesting contrast with A Northern Clemency, which covers roughly the same span of time and touches on many of the same events and themes. A Northern Clemency received some criticism for being old-fashioned, and you can’t say that about My Revolutions. I sort of wish it had been a little more old-fashioned, though. I’d have liked to have been immersed in the old bomb-throwing days instead of held at arm’s length from them.
Still I think Judge Riedel gets this one right. I like what he said here: “My Revolutions may seem to have a certain lightness and inexactness compared to Home, but in many ways it is a book that treats faith as a much more living, breathing, uncomfortably smelly thing, yet at times the only thing left to hold on to.”
My Revolutions it is.
John: I can’t really add much to what you and Witold Riedel have to say about this matchup other than, I agree. Two strong books, both with some shortcomings that I think you nail. After the first 60 pages of My Revolutions I was thinking it might become my favorite of the tourney, the secret past, the sudden appearance of an old “friend” put Michael/Chris in sudden jeopardy and I was reading with anticipation to see how that jeopardy would unfold as we were filled in on those past events. But, as you note, the present lacks tension and drive, mostly functioning as transitions to the next flashback. A more than credible effort, but it barely snuck into the top half of my personal list.
Those of us who are fans of Marilynne Robinson are grateful that the gap between Gilead and Home was much shorter than the one between Housekeeping and Gilead, but reading Home reminded me of the “additional angles” feature you get on some DVD’s. Without having read the “original” (Gilead), I’m not sure I would have enjoyed Home as much as I did. I’m glad for the time I spent with it, but I can’t put it on the same shelf as Ms. Robinson’s other books.
Both Home and The Dart League King went down, which is sort of sad because in the ToB’s initial seeding, modeled after the NCAA tournament committee where they do something like put a Rick Pitino-coached Louisville team and his former employer, Kentucky, in the same half of the bracket, we were hoping for a hypothetical matchup between Robinson and Keith Morris, the two most well-known writers from Sandpoint, Idaho. (Both of them have a ways to go to catch the most famous native of Sandpoint.)
With the first round in the books (get it?) we have three #1’s making it through, but overall, the lower seeded books took half the contests. (The ToB #2 seed is like the NCAA tourney #5 seed, apparently.) To be honest, I’m half-regretting that we did all this reading this year because, for the first time, I have rooting interests for my favorite books and my personal top 3 (Unaccustomed Earth, Frankie Banks, and The Dart League King) have all been sent packing. It really is like the end of that first weekend of the basketball tourney where your favorite team lost on a buzzer beater and your office-pool bracket is in tatters and you’re wondering what’s left to watch for.
Thank goodness for the Zombie Round.
Kevin: My favorite six novels in this tourney were The Dart League King, City of Refuge, Unaccustomed Earth, The Northern Clemency, The White Tiger, and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. Five of the six (five of six!) have been knocked out in the first round.
I haven’t read Netherland and I’m still not finished with Shadow Country, which is right on the bubble of that list. Still, my only consolation is that you and I are in the same pool.
Maybe this will make you feel better (or maybe not), but like American Idol we’re making a surprise, mid-season change to the way we present the tourney. I happen to be one of the few people (outside of a few trusted accountants) who know the results of the Zombie voting, and we’d like to tease those results a little bit. (For those of you who are not familiar with the Zombie Round, here is how it works: before the Tournament started, we asked readers to vote for their favorite contenders; the top two books that have been booted from the Tournament prior to the semi-finals [the Zombie Round] are re-entered, getting a second chance at life.)
Going forward, after every match I will update a list of the four eliminated books that received the most Zombie votes from readers, but I won’t reveal in what order they rank or how many votes each title received. As more books are eliminated, some of them might bump titles out of the top four, but the bottom line is this: If your favorite book has been eliminated and it’s not on this list, it’s not coming back, my friend.
So, through today’s match, the Zombie leaders among the eight books so far eliminated from the competition are (in alphabetical order):
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Netherland
Steer Toward Rock
Unaccustomed Earth
Like I said, maybe it makes you feel better. Maybe not. I’m going outside now to cry for The Dart League King.
(Sniff.)
Reader comments
No response from Marilynne Robinson's fans for now. They're going to take about 10 years to meticulously craft it.