Gilead

I just finished reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which won the Pulitzer. Her point-of-view character is Congregationalist minister, John Ames, an older man who lost his first family in his youth, endured many lonely years, and then in his sixties married a much younger woman. They had a son, and the book is the letter John writes to him. Because John has a heart condition, he wants to be sure his child grows up knowing who his father was and what wisdom he wants to pass on.

Unlike Kite Runner, which I tore through, I could put down Gilead. But that was because it made me want to stop and think. To meditate and consider. To ponder. You may recall several months back I shared how John Gardner in his work of genius, On Becoming a Novelist, outlines the standards of good fiction: creation of a vivid and continuous dream, authorial generosity, intellectual and emotional significance, elegance and efficiency, and strangeness. It was that intellectual and emotional significance that got me.

Here’s a sampling of what I mean. Near the end of Gilead, the wise minister has a conversation with a man who looks down on his town because it’s so insignificant, so average. John’s response? “All he accomplished was to make me homesick for a place I never left.”

It reminded me of something our daughter did a couple of weeks ago as she was packing to leave for summer camp. She typed “I miss you” on her computer and printed it out, then cut out the words and taped them to the inside master-bedroom door handle. (She sized the words to fit perfectly.) Then she found some pink mesh and tied a big bow around the handle. Notice she did not write, “I will miss you.” But I miss you. The missing had already started.

Several years ago my father was reading Michael Mason’s deep and thought-provoking work, The Mystery of Marriage, and something moved him. I’m the fortunate soul who was there to listen as he read me the passage that had made his eyes moist. It was about how couples sometimes weep at the very thought of the day coming when they will be bereft of one another.

Love can be like that sometimes. It can make you homesick for a place you’ve never left.