Gilead

Hello, friends. To those of you who have been faithful participants in our very special book club: thank you. I'm having a lot of fun reading and talking books with you, and I very much hope you feel the same.

My number has come up in the book selection process, and as I've previously stated I would like us to read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. She's an author I've been meaning to get to for some time now, and I figured there's no better place to start than with the novel that earned her a Pulitzer.

Gilead is written in the form of a letter from John Ames, an aging Iowa preacher who believes his time is this world is running short, to his young son, a product of a late marriage. The New York Times describes it as "religious, somewhat essayistic and fiercely calm. Gilead is a beautiful work -- demanding, grave and lucid," and The Washington Post says it's "written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it." We've read a lot of different things so far in this club, but we've yet to read anything by a female author, nothing that could be classified as spiritual, nor anything that can safely be called "beautifully ruminative." I say it's time.

Random Notes

I thought that this was an enjoyable read, but still covered a serious topic. I found a more serious tone to this novel compared with some of Vonnegut's other novels, but maybe just because I was reading more critically than I sometimes do.

Symbolic Names

What does everyone think of the names? Campbell as American as the soup? Krapptauer=Crap Tower? What's the deal with "the Black Fueher of Harlem?"

Destiny vs. Choice

Is there a stronger argument for free will or free will? Which one wins? If Campbell had all of these events fall into his lap, was this his destiny? Did he "choose" free will in the end by hanging himself?

Innocent?

Even if the story were true, is Campbell really innocent? Are people who allow themselves to manipulated in such a way innocent of the crimes that they commit? Were the German citizens not guilty of the Holocaust in some way?

Hoax?

Are we supposed to think that this whole story is a hoax, somehow thought up by Campbell to prove his innocence? If not...is this a plausible story? Could there really be a vast conspiracy with the Americans, the Russians, and the Jews? Did Resi really fall in Love?