Reading21: Gilead

 

The cover of my kindle edition.

Note:  This is the start of a new sub-series.  Fiction in the 21st century.  There will be plenty of this in the near future.

Before I finished Proust (see here and here) I read a couple of other books, one of them was a foray into 21^st century literature.  Being limited in my fiction interests and preferring classics, I haven't read much published in the this century, other than Gunter Grass' Crabwalk. I felt I should broaden my horizons. I perused several online sources for “the best novels so far in the 21^st century,” noted some commonalities, and placed them on my amazon wishlist. After monitoring them for a few weeks one dropped to $3.99 and I immediately bought it. So, this first choice was purely economic though it was no less fortuitous.

Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead unexpectedly captured my attention with a story that unfolds with such gentle patience yet contains moments of profound revelation. What struck me initially was the deceptive simplicity of its premise. An elderly pastor is writing a sort of diary to his young son in 1956. But as I moved through John Ames' careful, measured prose, I discovered something quietly devastating in its honesty. The novel doesn't announce its importance or overwhelm with dramatic events. Instead, it whispers truths you are not expecting.

This is a story soaked in light, sunlight through windows, the inner light of conscience, but also shadowed by mortality, generational trauma, and the slow passing of time in a small Iowa town. In Gilead Robinson meticulously creates this sense of intimacy that borders on confessional without ever slipping into melodrama. There is no real action anywhere in the novel. Instead, there are a collection of characters and the diverse dynamics between fathers and sons. But initially, as gently and poetically as it is all told to us, you really don't know what the point of the story is going to be. Gradually, Jack Boughton, a minor character for half the narrative, emerges to take on great weight in the last third of the novel, and with him comes the novel's most profound insights about forgiveness, faith, and the unexpected beauty found in the most unlikely places.

John Ames is fascinating. He is a Christian pastor through and through but absolutely not in the hellfire and brimstone category. His faith is reflective, introspective, and profoundly personal, shaped far more by grace than judgment. He is principled yet cautious. We never really see the "passionate" side of him though he apparently had one until recently. Perhaps, after his first wife and child died, his passion became subdued.

Ames embodies the notion that faith is a lived experience, not something just to be preached from a pulpit. His Christianity is one that's rooted in a deep, almost fragile, humility and it's what makes him such a compelling character. He doesn't shy away from life's hardest questions, and his faith is ultimately about grappling with those questions with compassion and grace.

At 67 years old, he fathered his son. Now, seven years later, Ames writes his long letter with the knowledge that he will not likely live to see his boy grow up. This creates an urgency in his reflections, not a frantic scrambling, but a diligent, deliberate effort to distill the wisdom of his life. There's this deep melancholy in the fact that he's writing to someone who can't yet understand any of it, and perhaps never will, because who knows if the letter will survive, or be read the way he intends. But he keeps going, writing about his grandfather (a radical abolitionist), his father (a pacifist), the Civil War, Kansas, sermons, visions, baseball, burned-down churches, personal relationships, whatever floats to the surface of his memory.

The world Ames describes has much in common with my own childhood. He lives more in the 19^th century than the 20^th as did I when I was a child. I could relate to slowness and simplicity of the life style and events as he tells them, the simple daily chores and kindnesses and conversations with neighbors. This is the way my childhood was, how the world used to be brought vividly to life by Robinson. To begin with this was enough to hold my attention, though I had my doubts I would ever actually connect with the story.

As the narrative slowly unfolds, Ames offers us a vision of faith that is about living honestly with doubt and finding beauty in the small, ordinary moments of life. His willingness to listen rather than constantly preach, to inquire rather than proclaim, makes him not just a compelling character, but a profound spiritual guide, one who leads by example. And it is this quality that makes his eventual transformation in his view of Jack so powerful, his faith doesn't remain abstract or theoretical but becomes embodied in how he comes to see beauty and humanity where he once saw only meanness and rebellion.

The novel spans three generations of ministers, and in their differences we see a microcosm of American history and the evolution of faith in response to national trauma. John Ames' grandfather is quite the character with one eye shot out in the Civil War and basically stealing from the family and giving everything away, a true holy fool, likely afflicted with dementia although that is never revealed, or even pondered. The reader is given three generations of pastors, to consider, each wrestling with their faith in fundamentally different ways.

The grandfather emerges as the most mythic figure in the book, like someone out of the Old Testament dropped into 19th-century America. The one-eyed prophet type, literally scarred by war, wandering through Kansas with a pistol and Bible, convinced he's an instrument of divine justice. The tale about him robbing his own family's provisions to give to the poor or to fugitive slaves might seem wild to anyone not familiar with the fanatical aspects of mental health but it also feels strangely true to his calling. He has this remarkable combination of zealotry and generosity, taking food from his own family to feed strangers, giving away possessions that weren't his to give. He saw the Civil War as an extension of God's will, and lived like a man possessed by righteousness. He's not likable exactly, but unforgettable.

His eccentric ways, this compulsion to give everything away, to live as though material possessions were an impediment to spiritual authenticity, becomes one pole of the religious experience that John inherits. There's something both inspiring and troubling about this grandfather's radical faith, the way it prioritized moral certainty over family obligation, the way it blended violence and charity into a singular vision of righteousness. He was a man who would literally give you the shirt off his back, but might also burn down your church if he thought God willed it.

In stark contrast, John's father represented pacifism and restraint, a contrast to his own father's fiery violence. And then there's John himself, caught between these opposing legacies, trying to reconcile the radical and the moderate, the passionate and the contemplative. That tension between three generations of Johns (all have the same name) is subtle but potent. Each one embodies a different vision of what it means to live a life of conviction.

The generational dynamics extend beyond John's direct lineage. You get caught up with his relationship with Jack's father, Robert Boughton. That friendship between Ames and Reverend Boughton is one of the novel's solid structures, a bond of lifelong loyalty, full of mutual respect, shared vocation, and unspoken tensions. They're both pastors in Gilead, Iowa. There's this deep affection between them that's been tempered by decades of shared life.

Boughton loves his son unconditionally, almost blindly, but Ames just can't manage it. He wants to, or thinks he should, but Jack rubs against everything Ames values: sincerity, responsibility, transparency, moral effort. That tension starts to leak into his friendship with Boughton. There's a heartbreaking moment where Ames sees the pain Jack has caused his father, and he has this mixture of pity and distance, like he mourns for Boughton, but also can't quite join him in his love for Jack.

The naming patterns in the novel create another layer of meaning. John's father and grandfather were also named John Ames. As if that weren't enough, Boughton named his son John Ames Boughton (Jack) after his best friend, which adds an emotional complication. Essentially, Ames is Jack's godfather. Imagine naming your son after your dearest friend, and then that son grows up to be the black sheep, the source of so much sorrow. And now the real John Ames has to look at this namesake, Jack, and deal with all the fraught feelings that come with it: resentment, confusion, guilt, maybe even affection. That name feels heavy. It's a kind of unwanted inheritance, really, a legacy Jack doesn't live up to, and Ames isn't sure he wants passed down.

What Robinson has created in these generational and relational patterns is a profound exploration of inheritance, not just of beliefs or names, but of moral struggles, doubts, and the capacity for grace. Each character seems to be grappling with what they've received from those who came before and what they will pass on to those who come after. In a novel so concerned with legacy these relationships become the primary vehicle for understanding how faith, morality, and love are transmitted, rejected, and transformed across time.

For me, the most moving part of the narrative is when the young Boughton, who Ames has always taken to be full of "meanness," becomes "beauty" in John's eyes upon his "confession" of having fathered a child with his interracial wife in another town. What is it about this moment that carries such weight? More than a shift in perception, it's a complete reversal of understanding, a kind of spiritual breakthrough that has nothing to do with religious doctrine and everything to do with recognizing humanity.

Ames spends the whole book writing to his son, mostly about remembrances and acts of faith, but it turns out a huge part of his emotional and spiritual energy is tangled up in this wayward, troubling surrogate son. Race, sin, grace, forgiveness, these abstractions become concrete in their exchanges through what remains unsaid.

It is interesting that Jack never actually repents of anything, he is merely confessing to John as if they were Catholic, which they certainly are not. His first confession is remarkable in its ambiguity. He merely asks John's forgiveness, repeating “I'm sorry” without ever specifying what he means. What kind of confession is this? Not one seeking theological absolution, but simply human acknowledgment. And John, despite his Protestant worldview, becomes a kind of priest, offering reluctant understanding without requiring the formal rituals of repentance.

Later comes the second confession, the revelation of his wife and child, a tabooish secret. This isn't asked with a request for forgiveness, it's simply truth laid bare. And in this moment of honesty, something transforms in Ames. What Jack reveals, his marriage, his child, doesn't just shift Ames' perception of Jack's actions; it redefines who Jack is in his eyes. The meanness becomes beauty because Ames finally sees him completely rather than because Jack has changed.

Near the end of the novel, John and Jack discuss atheism. "Categorical unbelief" is the truly marvelous little phrase that Jack uses to describe his secular theology. "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean," he tells Ames. This is something more honest, more vulnerable than mere rebellion. Jack isn't standing in opposition to faith; he's standing outside of it entirely, neither believing nor disbelieving.

In many ways, Jack becomes the novel's moral center because his struggles force Ames to confront the limits of his own understanding. Through Jack, Robinson asks: What does grace really mean when extended to someone who doesn't fit our moral framework? What happens when forgiveness isn't granted in exchange for repentance but offered freely without conditions?

These aren't abstract theological questions in the novel, they're embodied in the tension between these two men, one filled with moral certainty, the other with categorical unbelief. And when Ames finally sees Jack's beauty as a human being, we witness his capacity for growth and the novel's deepest insight: that transformation doesn't require dramatic conversion or moral perfection, just the willingness to see another person clearly, completely, without judgment.

Robinson weaves profound philosophical and theological threads throughout Gilead, but they never feel imposed or didactic. Instead, they emerge naturally from the characters' lived experiences and reflections. This isn't theology as abstract doctrine, but as the framework through which human beings try to make sense of their own existence.

John is a remarkably well-read old man and relates to The Essence of Christianity, a theological classic by Ludwig Feuerbach, a famous atheist, which is unexpected. But it turns out to be important as John gives Jack his dog-eared copy to take with him at the end of the novel. This reference to Feuerbach is fascinating in a novel where faith and religion are so central. I own the book and read it before I went to India. In it, Feuerbach argues that the concept of God is essentially a projection of human qualities, that human beings create God in their own image. That philosophical thread stands in stark contrast to the more traditional Christian theology that Ames espouses. Yet, it also strangely reflects John's curiosity, open mindedness and compassion.

What does it mean that Ames gives Jack this particular book? He's not handing over a Bible to save Jack's soul; he's giving him something that challenges and questions, that opens a door rather than closes it. It's a moment of intellectual and spiritual generosity, a final act of love from a godfather who understands that grace is about offering the tools to navigate uncertainty.

Forgiveness emerges as one of the novel's central theological concerns, but not in the way we might expect. Jack's confessions don't follow the traditional religious pattern of sin, repentance, and absolution. He asks for forgiveness without specifying his transgression, and later reveals his marriage and child without asking for forgiveness at all.

Ames, despite his theological training, finds himself approaching forgiveness as a deeply personal struggle. His eventual shift in perceiving Jack, from seeing malice to seeing the boy's humanity, represents forgiveness as a transformation in vision.

The novel contends that the most profound theological truths aren't found in doctrines or creeds but in the quality of attention we bring to each other. When Ames finally sees beauty in Jack because Ames has learned to see beyond his own limitations, to recognize the humanity of someone fundamentally different from himself.

Robinson never reduces these theological questions to simple answers. Instead, she allows them to remain open, complex, as messy as human experience itself. The novel doesn't resolve the tension between Ames' faith and Jack's unbelief, between tradition and doubt, between moral certainty and moral ambiguity. It simply creates a space where these tensions can exist together, where different ways of being human can be acknowledged with dignity and care.

The author's prose moves at the pace of thought rather than action, creating a meditative space through subtle shifts in perspective rather than dramatic events. This is literature that asks you to slow down, to attend to the quiet moments where meaning emerges from how it's perceived.

The narrative technique Robinson employs, having the entire novel take the form of a letter from father to son, is not original by any means, but it's highly effective. This epistolary approach creates a unique intimacy between narrator and reader. More than just a story, we are reading something never meant for our eyes, a personal communication between father and son. We're given access to Ames' most private thoughts, yet reminded constantly that we're outsiders to this relationship, overhearing rather than being directly addressed.

This technique also allows Robinson to move freely between past and present, between memory and immediate experience. Ames' reminiscences about his grandfather and father feel natural within the letter format, he's trying to pass on family history to a son who will never know these relatives. The digressions, the circling back to certain events and images, the associative rather than linear progression, all these feel authentic to how memory actually works, especially when we're trying to make sense of our lives for someone else's benefit.

Robinson's ability to create profound emotional impact through seemingly mundane details is striking at times. There are several moments in the novel where one character grasps another's hands, and these simple gestures carry immense emotional weight. Hand-holding is about presence, it's a gesture of being together, of sharing space and time in a way that doesn't need to be verbalized or even physically intense. For Ames, who is coming to terms with his old age and mortality, these moments of contact are deeply meaningful. They symbolize the connection he longs for, one that is not based on words or grand gestures, but on something simple and enduring.

Robinson's approach to religion in fiction deserves special mention. Most contemporary novels either ignore religion entirely or treat it as a problematic sociological phenomenon, something characters might practice but not something that shapes their inner lives in any useful way. Robinson does something far more difficult: she takes religious experience seriously as a mode of perceiving and engaging with reality. Ames' Christianity is more than just a set of beliefs he holds. It's the lens through which he sees the world, comprehends beauty, wrestles with moral complexity. Yet Robinson never allows this perspective to become exclusionary. Even as she honors Ames' faith, she creates space for Jack's unbelief. The novel doesn't advocate for a particular theological position so much as demonstrate how different ways of being in the world can coexist, can even illuminate each other.

In an era when novels often seem desperate to entertain, to grip readers with plot twists and constant stimulation, Gilead trusts readers to value thought as much as action, to find drama in the quiet transformations of consciousness rather than in external events. When Jack finally reveals his marriage and child to Ames, the moment is powerful of how it changes Ames' perception, how meanness becomes beauty through the simple act of understanding.

This patience extends to how Robinson handles moral complexity. She never rushes to judgment, never reduces her characters to simple heroes or villains. Even when Ames is at his most judgmental toward Jack, Robinson ensures we see the limitations of his perspective, the ways his own fears and jealousies color his perception. And when Ames finally sees Jack differently, as a hard-won insight, earned through struggle and attentiveness.

Gilead is remarkable literature due to its fundamental generosity, its willingness to create space for complexity, to resist easy answers, to honor the difficulty of being human without ever surrendering to cynicism or despair. Robinson's technique is skillful, morally significant, embodying in its very structure and style the kind of attention and care it suggests might save us.

There's a revealing moment early in the novel when John and his father go to Kansas to tend to his grandfather's grave. As his father prays, the sun is setting and the full Moon is rising on opposite horizons in perfect synchronization. Young John thinks it is a "miracle" but his father tells him that everybody in Kansas saw what they saw, meaning that it was not so special to them as the boy might have thought. This exchange seems to have entered John's personality as narrator in the novel, this tension between seeing the miraculous in the ordinary and recognizing that such moments, however profound to us personally, exist within the common experience of humanity.

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, among other awards. Gilead is the kind of novel that sneaks up on you through a sustained, meditative richness that feels both intimate and immense rather than dramatic. Robinson's achievement creates a profoundly moving narrative from elements that seem, on the surface, unsuited to holding your interest, an old man's reflections, little or no action, theological questions, the quiet dynamics of family relationships and secrets.

What stays with me most about Gilead is its vision of grace, the human capacity to see each other fully, beyond judgment. When Ames abruptly and unexpectedly perceives beauty in Jack at the end of the novel, he powerfully demonstrates the ability to recognize the worth of someone who challenges everything you believe, who makes you confront your own limitations and prejudices.

Gilead reveals the beauty to be found in simplicity and in unexpected places. It suggests that transformation doesn't require earth-shattering conversion or moral perfection, just the willingness to see another person without dismissal or castigation. As I said, the slow pace of life it depicts, allowing the power of small acts to revealed, captures so much of the way I was raised as child. It was a pleasure to connect with that as the surprising plot gradually took form.

In a world increasingly divided by theological and political differences, Robinson offers a vision of connection that transcends these divisions without diminishing their importance. She shows how profoundly different people can still recognize each others humanity, can still offer understanding if not agreement in a quietly devastating way. This was a great first step in widening my exposure to 21^st century literature.

(Assisted by Claude.)