Tuesday, June 14, 2005
DeVriesian
The ever estimable Whisky Prajer pointed out this article which subsequently directed me to Maud Newton. What's the point of all this pointing?!?"Blood of the Lamb" by Peter DeVries is being re-issued!!
(Going to that amazon.com site listed, it's interesting to see the pairing that they've come up with for their usual "Buy this!...and..This!" matchings. It's Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead". The connection between the two, I'm assuming besides the exquisite writing, is the crisis of faith the characters struggle through.)
It's just fabulous that Mr. DeVries has been brought back from the dusty Bin of Past Masters. His incisive wit makes one giddy while reading. He has an empathy for his characters and does not stoop to ridicule unless forced to; sometimes a fool, even a fool of one's own creation, needs to be placed into their proper life's station. His stories do not deal with good and evil in a black/white dichotomy, except for perhaps (my personal favorite)"Blood of the Lamb". The grey areas of love, goodness, temptation, and ego's folly are his bailliwicks. You'll keep a pen and paper handy when reading any of his novels, to record the turns of phrases, the new words, and the pithy remarks that you'll be sure to use at one point or another when dealing with the vast diversity of humans amongst us. To me, his writing style fits in that hidden pool of writers/poets; poets who have taken to writing a novel or two. Nabokov, Pasternak, Ondaatje. There is evident a love and a care for words. No slight to the other three mentioned, but DeVries is the only one guaranteed to have you laughing. Loudly.
Being a lapsed Catholic (way before all the Boston nonsense and the new pope derby), shelter in a storm brought me to DeVries about 20 years ago. If someone were to ask me what religion I practiced, I'd say the closest I could claim a membership to would be DeVriesianism. It's a positive & affirmative view of life's lunacies. In these jaundiced times, that's all I can hope for.
For those blog readers who want to get an idea of DeVries without putting in any reading, check out Reuben, Reuben , with Tom Conti in the lead role. If this whets your appetite, grab a book for Christ's sake!
Thanks, again, for the great news, WP.
Comments:
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So you recommend! I have never read any of his books, but will now.
# opined by 
: 4:52 PM, June 14, 2005
: 4:52 PM, June 14, 2005
Pairing Blood of the Lamb with Gilead seems incredible to me, unless the Amazon generator has been infected with a Taoist bug of some kind - the tempestuous yin balancing out the placid yang (or is it the other way around?). My impression of Robinson is she's quite sympathetic to Calvin; DeVries, on the other hand...
I, too, am gratified to see DeVries brought back into circulation - his prose should provide some comfort to thinking people trapped in unthinking times. And I find the new cover art stunningly evocative of the novel's closing heartbreak.
I, too, am gratified to see DeVries brought back into circulation - his prose should provide some comfort to thinking people trapped in unthinking times. And I find the new cover art stunningly evocative of the novel's closing heartbreak.
Now I'm going to hasve to read these books. Actually I'm kind of like the old Spanish Civil War joke, the Atheist tells the Baptist (Insert favorite non-Catholic Christian denomination here) "I don't believe in the True Church, so why the Hell should I believe in Your church?!!
The nonsense has even struck our usually pleasantly isolated gulag...
Plus I need to see more effective behavior modification to take anyone's religion seriously. If any religion manages to control instinct in humans effectively without fanaticism takeing hold, I might be interested. Until then fuggedaboudit!
The nonsense has even struck our usually pleasantly isolated gulag...
Plus I need to see more effective behavior modification to take anyone's religion seriously. If any religion manages to control instinct in humans effectively without fanaticism takeing hold, I might be interested. Until then fuggedaboudit!
Just making sure you got the Maud Newton follow-up. She has a snippet of her post-reading exchange with Teachout here:
I devoured it last week in two sittings and then emailed him to say:
It has its defects -- not least of which are pacing issues in the middle -- but it is a remarkable achievement.
He said:
Yes, it's by no means perfect -- he's way too close to the material, it's too raw and hurtful for him to control it -- but it works anyway, doesn't it?
He's exactly right. When reading, you understand that the author has all but sliced his wrists to let personal sorrows run right from his veins onto the page. In this immediacy lies the book's power, but also its sloppiness and unmitigated rage.
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I devoured it last week in two sittings and then emailed him to say:
It has its defects -- not least of which are pacing issues in the middle -- but it is a remarkable achievement.
He said:
Yes, it's by no means perfect -- he's way too close to the material, it's too raw and hurtful for him to control it -- but it works anyway, doesn't it?
He's exactly right. When reading, you understand that the author has all but sliced his wrists to let personal sorrows run right from his veins onto the page. In this immediacy lies the book's power, but also its sloppiness and unmitigated rage.
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