Henry james once said that America was too young a country to have any good stories in it. Perhaps he knew too little of New England (except for Boston). The rocks and walls, the steep mountains and hard winters alone make New England a natural setting for novels. Add to that people with high-pitched, clipped speech and sturdy—some might say rigid—religion. Complex characters rooted in rock and ground.
John Gardner, who lives in Vermont, takes us to this stubborn land and its people in October Light (Knopf, $10). Despite its mixed reviews, the novel was named by all publications that compile such lists one of last year’s most significant books (it was published in December). As its title suggests, the book hovers between seasons, not quite winter but no longer autumn. Not quite the future but no longer the past. A present unequally mixed of both. Eerie. Shadowed. A New England light in October is hard to see by; much of the action of the book takes place at dusk or evening.
Sally Page Abbott, eighty, lives with her seventy-two-year-old brother James, a crotchety beekeeper and farmer. He hates television—it spews immorality—and he shoots a hole in his sister’s set. That starts the quarrel. A few days later he chases her to her room with a log from the fireplace and locks the door behind her. At first he won’t let her out; then she refuses to leave her room.
Sally’s niece, her niece’s husband, her old friends, and her minister all try to talk her into what she considers surrender. To Sally the issue is not just a silly quarrel but a moral matter. James must recognize his sins, how he destroyed his son, his wife, and now his sister. Sally is the instrument of healing for James and his family.
While Sally stays in her room she reads a trashy novel about marijuana smugglers. And we read it along with her. Fortunately many of its pages are missing. As a satire on the pseudo-philosophical potboiler, it is nearly successful. But as a trigger for Sally’s memories of the past, it is farfetched. The everyday scenes and atmosphere that evoke James’s memories work much better.
The limbo-like quality disappears as the novel moves toward its close. Sally leaves her room; her niece Ginny undergoes a profound change; and James’s pain at his son’s suicide and his wife’s bitter death finds release. He too experiences a conversion of sorts. Winter rises, the past disappears. The novelist’s images of earth, the seasons, and farming unify and focus the story.
Gardner writes lovingly about New England and its people. His descriptions capture the country, his felicitous use of dialect, the people. Out of the decay of characters and country come repentance and forgiveness. Christianity is their anchor. Gardner understands what is true in life, and therefore what is holy. A dying man’s reflections on life near the end of the novel are worth the price of the book:
“I’ll miss that, this year, or ennaway take pot in it in a way I never did before. But I can’t complain.…
“James, how come you’re listening to all this?”
James thought about it. “Becauth,” he said at last, “ith true.”
Ed’s smile widened. “That’s what I tell my Ruth,” he said. “She’s got good poems and bad poems.… I explain to her only the good poems are exactly true.”
“Like a good window-thash,” James said, “or horth.”
By striving for truth, by doing good work, Ed and James and the others try to minimize the decay, which, says a painter, “most people hadn’t yet glimpsed.” As Catharine Marshall explained in a quite different way in Beyond Our Selves, Gardner shows how God releases the memories of the past to heal the present for the future. Or, in the words of Scripture, we must die to live.
The ‘Key’ Of Stevie Wonder
It took nearly two years of studio work to produce Songs in the Key of Life (Tamla, T13-340C2 $13.98), Stevie Wonder’s ambitious two-record set with an additional seven-inch extended-play disc. Many contemporary records suffer when producers spend excessive studio time working and reworking arrangements, but Stevie Wonder instills all twenty-one songs with color, variety, and a sense of spontaneity. The album is Wonder’s masterpiece, the apex of the maturation that began with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Inversion, and Fulfillingness First Finale.
Songs is a “concept album” loosely based on Wonder’s life history. “I Wish” finds the superstar longing for the carefree days of childhood. In “Sir Duke” he pays tribute to his musical roots and proclaims music the universal language. “Knocks Me Off My Feet” tells of the joys of first love, “Summer Soft” bemoans love lost, and “Ordinary Pain” recalls the hurt of love gone bad. The ecstasy of fatherhood is celebrated in “Isn’t She Lovely,” in which he rejoices in what God has made through love.
We hear Wonder’s philosophy of life from the first cut, “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” in which he warns that hate is destroying everything: “The force of evil plans/To make you its possession/And it will if you let it/Destroy everybody.” He calls on everyone to combat hate with love.
“Pastime Paradise” divides humanity into those who live for the past by “conformation to the evils of the world” and those who live for the future by “conformation to the peace of the world,” always looking to “when the Saviour of love will come to stay.” Although life is filled with troubles, he proposes in “As” that “God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed.”
Synthesized strings provide the background for “Village Ghetto Land,” a picture of grim ghetto life. The singer asks, “Tell me, would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land?” God is the world’s “only free psychiatrist,” according to “Have a Talk With God.” Aided by a classroom of children he chronicles the contribution made by non-white people in building America in “Black Man.”
The upbeat Songs in the Key of Life shows that purpose and meaning in life are found in living for the future. Although a few of the songs have excessive refrains or some awkward phrases and rhymes, Wonder’s performance overcomes these flaws. This album is a tour de force.
DANIEL J. EVEARITT
Daniel J. Evearitt is the assistant pastor of Tappan Alliance Church, Tappan, New York.
