The Son of Laughter.

Although Frederick Buechner has written twenty-six books, half fiction and half nonfiction, he has not received the critical attention he deserves. It is the right time now to recognize that he is one of our significant artists--one who is at least as important as Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy.

Buechner is a religious novelist, but, as he writes in The Clown in the Belfiy (1992), he refuses to be dogmatic or propagandistic. He, indeed, compels us to define exactly what a "religious novelist" does. Buechner knows that he cannot simply offer fixed messages. He believes that faith, like fiction itself, is surprising, edgy, always elusive.

The question of belief is at the heart of Buechner's work. How can he surprise secular readers? How can he make us wonder about the relation of language and faith? How can he express ambiguities that disturb believers and nonbelievers? His novels are alarming because they walk a thin line; they disturb us in the same way works by Spark and Greene do. Perhaps the clue to all of Buechner's books is that he makes us wonder about how we can find spiritual truth in the comic incident; how we can move from easy interpretations to sudden revelations; how the mystery offalth is found in the faulty language we use repeatedly. His books offer coincidences, secrets, and dreams which resist fallen words.

I want to stress Buechner's methods by offering examples of his comic interpretations of interpretations, of his surprising new hermeneutics. Please excuse the following series of examples; it is merely a way to demonstrate that Buechner's artistic method relies upon the uncertainty of how we "know" meanings.

In his first novel, A Long Day's Dying (published at the age of twenty-four in 1960), he gives us a Jamesian style--he has not yet found his true voice--which attempts to demonstrate that human understanding is limited. The style, if you will, is elaborately constructed to deconstruct our confidence as interpreters:' 'The extend of Bone's [the spiritual guide of the novel] monkey's knowledge or, more exactly, of his ability to retain or to assimilate what he saw was a matter for much conjecture and a question often considered but seldom expressed as if from fear, that once asked, it might be answered."

Although critics condemned the novel as precious and contrived, they didn't notice the playful aspects of Buechner's method. Surely the mixture of late Jamesian style applied to the interpretation of a monkey' s "understanding" is amusing. If we can't know--or don't want to know-- the ability of a monkey to "think"--then how can we dare grasp human and superhuman messages?

In the "wonderful"--a pun intended-- Book of Bebb (a series of four novels about Bebb) there are again many references to misunderstandings, to linguistic inadequacies. Bebb is mysterious; he offers earthy, crazy words which can be taken in many ways. In the following passage the ambiguities signify that his words are both loony and profound. Note that the narrator's voice, from Treasure Hunt (1977), is different from Bebb's and from the voice in A Long Day's Dying. The passage, I think, startles us and makes us think about the value of words and of the Word. He surprises us with the suggestion that Bebb may hold "secrets" from "another world." "As for the tape itself, to me it was all fascinating even the lists, the pauses, the unfinished scraps of things--because it was all Bebb, and Bebb speaking from another world, and Bebb speaking to himself, which meant that for all I knew he might at any moment lay some secret bare, some shadowy comer of those last days of his life when he recorded it" (my italics).

An odd passage from The Clown in the Belfry, a collection of Buechner's essays about "faith" and "fiction," is instructive. In the introduction he writes: "It is bats that are supposed to be found in belfries, but for a few incandescent moments in 1831 a man named Lyman Woodward was to be found in one that is still higher than any building in Rupert, Vermont. The event is described in its proper place. Suffice it to say here only that one day he climbed up and stood on his head in the belfry. Why did he do it? Was he drunk? Was he crazy? Who knows? Who even cares? The point is that it was a gorgeous, clownish, inspired, and inspiring thing to do. It was a radically new way of looking at the mysteries of earth and heaven. It is Saint Paul writing, 'We are fools for Christ's sake'" (my italics).

Note that the commonsensical style suggests that such words as "crazy" or "drunk" are insufficient--that they are meaningless in defining all the "mysteries of earth and heaven."

In The Son of Laughter, Buechner dares to retell the biblical story of Jacob. Indeed, he dares to enter the complex, bewildered consciousness of a revered ancestor. He uses simple sentences which, in effect, mirror the Hebraic style. Jacob throws away the idols of the heathens and he says "simply": "Who knows about gods? Maybe they have seen every step I have taken ever since. Maybe they are still waiting for me to call once again their queer and temble names."

Once again, it seems to me, Buechner is questioning the nature of interpretation. We have come a long way from the circumlocutions of Henry James and the monkey, but we still recognize that words are "queer" and "terrible" because they can't hold the mysteries of even everyday events.

The Son of Laughter reinforces this understanding of the limitations, the fallen ghostly nature of words. Jacob comes to realize the inadequacy of language. "He [Isaac which means "he will laugh" in Hebrew] would pass among his people with his sad smile and liquid eyes trying to say things to them that would raise their spirits, but it didn't matter what he said to them. What raised their spirits was just the sight of him."

Jacob speaks as the novel progresses. However, his conversational style unsettles us because we don't expect Jacob to be so "down to earth." His talk is startling-more and more about dreams, visions, and signs, and his emphasis upon these reinforces the point that the "uncanny" is beyond language. This is how Buechner imagines Jacob's confronting the angel and wrestling with this being: "We were both of us whispering. He did not wait for my answer. He blessed me as I had asked him. I do not remember the words of his blessing or even if there were words. I remember the blessing of his arms holding me and the blessing of his arms letting me go."

The Son of Laughter is a re-creation of Jacob (or "Israel" as he is called after his love-battle with the angel) but it refuses to settle for closure. It ends, in fact, with uncertainty: "Who knows the full meaning of words?"

I'm afraid I have used many words to convey that Buechner is a master stylist-- a stylist who moves easily from late James to Hebraic simplicity. He recognizes, despite his brilliant words, that language cannot capture those extraordinary, wordless, "radical" moments (or eternities) which transfigure us. Perhaps he should have the last word: "Faith and fiction both journey forward in time and space and draw their life from the journey, are in fact the journey. Fiction can hold opposites together simultaneously like love and hate, laughter and tears, despair and hope, and so of course does faith which by its very nature both sees and does not see and whose most characteristic utterance perhaps, is 'Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief."'