The folks at Inside Catholic did such a superb job of presenting their discussion of Ron Hansen’s Exiles that I find myself at a loss for what I could add that would be of much value. Matthew Lickona, Amy Welborn, Bishop Daniel Flores and Joseph O’Brien squeezed a heck of a lot of good juice out of the book–and I’m not saying there’s not plenty more we could wring out of it–but maybe it’s enough to just head on over there and pay some close attention to their fine work.

I like the concentric circles of cooperative literary workmanship going on here: Hopkins working on the nuns’ tale; Hansen joining him in the effort while also working out the parallels with Hopkins’ own life’s saga; Lickona & Co. digging in to bring them all further out into the light. It reminds me of the communion of saints and how we are all fellow workers in the vineyard across time.

Well, OK, I’ll try to squish a couple of grapes and do my part.

I laid the book down a week or two ago and haven’t cracked it open since and now I’m sitting in the dark on our back patio typing this on a wireless laptop, smoking a cigar, drinking a glass of wine, our new puppy, Noam, lying at my feet chomping (pun intended) on something, probably one of Tink’s favorite toys. The book is resting on the table nearby but if I want to consult it I’ll have to either get a flashlight or jump around in front of the motion-detecting light above our garage, neither of which is beneath my dignity but I also have an ice pack on my knee because I went for a run about an hour ago and it started to hurt at about mile three. (The puppy just scurried off into the darkness beyond the garage as if in pursuit of a varmint of some kind, hopefully not a skunk.) So I’ll just wing it without reference to the text, like they do in many of the graduate seminars I’ve ever attended.

First of all, I’d like to say that ….

[We interrupt this blog entry to go to the grocery store, which I just remembered I promised Mrs. McCain I’d do, to get some milk, baby formula, and bananas. Sorry for the inconvenience. To be continued.]

KSRK: Parasite Edition

We’re jumping on the InsideCatholic Book Circle bandwagon reading of Exiles by Ron Hansen. Get the book, read it, join the fray.

A few jotted thoughts:

Not a bad opening chapter, but a little too reeking of research–to the detriment of story. I’m not sure I can pin down from whence the reek arises, but I smelled it wafting through the entire chapter: things that Hansen the researcher kept inserting against the better angels of Hansen the storyteller. Just enough of a whiff of it, like a skunk outside one’s bedroom window, to intrude on the proceedings. Perhaps it’s partly a matter of not anchoring us firmly enough in Hopkins’ point of view. We are anchored there much of the time, privy to Hopkins’ thoughts and perceptions, but then Hansen the researcher intrudes like a documentary voice-over and enforces our awareness that we are in a fictional world “based on fact.”

Hansen pulls off some very fine Hopkinsesque descriptions of clouds and such. For example: “The air smelled cleansed; the leaden sky was roped with cloud; a blue bloom seemed to have spread upon the distant south, enclosed by a basin of hills. And again he felt the charm and instress of Wales” (20). Nice use of Hopkins’ trademark “instress” there, too.

And he offers up plenty of erudite banter and wit in the English style. All good. (And yet we’ve seen these scenes so many times before.) The nickname “Hop” is an interesting detail, as against the other Hopkins who is dubbed “the genteel Hop” (9). And yet this sort of detail plays into that reek of research I’m talking about, maybe.

Then there’s the offhand suggestion that Hopkins is gay (11). Here I’m forced to wonder once again, in a different way, about the research. I’m forced to question whether there is evidence to support a gay Hopkins or whether this is idle speculation, based on … what? And how much will our knowing that Hopkins is attracted to “big, bluff, confident, manly sorts” advance the story? Maybe it will, but, again, it’s the oblique way Hansen introduces this detail that falls flat for me. OK, you’re going to advance the thesis that Hopkins was gay. Fine. Take the ball and run with it. Show us Hopkins’ view of it interiorly. We get a hint of that here–“Hopkins was vigilant in his vow of chastity”–but it’s the exterior narrative voice-over again.

So in sum: I’m not entirely pleased with how Hansen is handling his material in this opening chapter. It’s a pleasant enough read, as material for a documentary. But I think as a novelist Hansen should be a bit braver and make the leap into Hopkins’ skin a bit more profoundly, anchor the story in Hopkins himself as a fictional character–even if that fictional Hopkins is a gay Hopkins.

I wonder if Hansen will prove braver and less bound to his sources in his treatment of the German nuns in the next chapter–since there is far less material to be bound by.