The currency of the Weans consisted of the grand, the fin, the buck, the bit, and the payola.
Ever read a book about archaeology, and wonder how accurate the scholars’ guesses, based on very partial information, are? Robert Nathan had fun with that question in his 1960 short novel, The Weans.
The idea of The Weans is that it’s a book written thousands of years in the future, about what archaeologists have learned in “the Salt Continent” (North America) based on meager findings from their archaeological digs.
Much of the humor rises from the archaeologists’ assumptions. Too many artifacts are assumed to have religious significance, for instance. The book also includes a number of puzzles for the reader, which said reader only figures out gradually (I may have missed a couple, I fear): we wonder why the Americans are known to history as “Weans.” Or why our capitol city is remembered as “Pound-Laundry.”
An amusing book. It contains one gag about underage sex that didn’t age well. But all in all, fun to read.
What had he thought about at that age? – at eighteen, at nineteen? Life . . . . the leap of spirit, like a salmon bent upstream, the wish blown into the wind like dandelion seed . . . . the shaken heart, the running joy . . . . And what was he thinking about now?
Death.
Some Robert Nathan books are heavy on the fantasy. Others downplay that element, or omit it almost entirely. Mr. Whittle and the Morning Star is one of that latter group. It’s a literary story that borders on earth-bound fable.
The time is 1947. The war is over, but a consumer goods shortages persist. The thrill of victory has subsided, while everyone worries increasingly about the atomic bomb.
Robert Whittle, a mild-mannered college professor, is suddenly absolutely convinced that the world about to end. Very soon. He mentions this to his family, to his friends, to his classes. He states it flatly to a ladies’ group that has asked him for a lecture. The ladies are not pleased.
When his wife Amanda learns of this, she’s very upset. She’s been a good wife and mother. She appreciates her standing in the community. Why would Robert make them a laughingstock this way? Her distress leads her to seek comfort with their best friends, and she finds herself kissing the husband.
Robert happens to see that kiss. He rebounds into the arms of an attractive student – they see a movie together and kiss too. But he does not want this girl. He wants his marriage. For him, the world has indeed ended.
But has it?
The only fantasy element in Mr. Whittle and the Morning Star is a couple conversations Mr. Whittle has with God – but we understand this God to be just his own imagination of the deity. The novel seemed to me to be a sort of a thought exercise, a way of contemplating our lives and our mortality and the things we value most.
Mr. Whittle and the Morning Star does not leave us with a moral. But it’s an intriguing story.
If Manuel says that a dory’s canvas will hold the waves, it will hold them. If he were wrong, someone would be drowned. Only a writer can talk about what he doesn’t understand, without harming anybody.
We were working on my boat together, in the vinegar sun of early spring….
Yet another Robert Nathan book to review. They’re original and various, and they don’t cost much. I was very pleased with Long After Summer.
The book’s narrator, who never gives his name, is a writer, and he has a summer home on Cape Cod. There he lives among the fishermen, who have accepted him as part of the community. When he asks around for some woman to clean house for him, young Johanna finally shows up. She is an orphan, a relation of Manuel the fisherman. She is a girl who has never known love in her life, who has never had anything of her own. The author, pitying her, gives her one of his dog’s puppies, which she adores. But when she falls in love with a local boy, she gives the puppy to him, in the purity of her love.
Then tragedy strikes. Johanna’s reaction to her unthinkable loss unmoors her from time itself (that’s the fantasy element in this story, and it might not be fantasy at all), threatening her very life. The narrator, along with the sympathetic local Catholic priest, take great risks and bend the law to save her. The book’s ending – in familiar Robert Nathan style – is open-ended.
Long After Summer is now one of my favorite Robert Nathan books. The story is touching, the prose gorgeous. I recommend it highly.
What sudden glance or silence, what lifted hand or piteous look, fragrance, light upon flesh, unspoken promise, knocks on the door of memory, lights the warm lamp of seeing, opens to hunger again, to the Thou-art-mine of the spirit, the I-am-thine of the heart?
Robert Nathan was a fantasy author, but he was far from formulaic in his fantasizing. His tales might involve angels or magic, but they also might rise just from unusual human kindness or – as in The Enchanted Voyage – from a slight alteration of the laws of man and nature.
Hector Pecket is a carpenter, and not a very good one. He has a house in the Bronx, and his great joy and comfort in life is the boat he built in his yard, in which he loves to sit and dream of adventure. He never intends to put it in water.
He named it the Sarah Pecket, after his wife, despite the fact that she hates the boat. She has a strong sense of entitlement, and she feels that the boat diverts Hector from useful work that would enable him to provide for her better. So one day she sells the boat to a butcher, for use as a lunch stand. Preparatory to moving it, they place the boat on a trailer.
Hector is devastated. He insists on spending one last night on his beloved boat. That night, a fierce storm arises. The sail catches the wind, and Hector finds himself coursing down the street, using the trailer’s tongue as a tiller. By morning he’s miles away, and he just keeps going. Along the way he picks up a young waitress who feels stuck in her job, and a young itinerant dentist with no prospects. The two young people misunderstand each other completely, and so fall in love. The story sails on through one implausibility after another, until the final crisis.
I’ve complained that Robert Nathan books often kind of wind down at the end, without a proper climax. There’s a climax here, but I didn’t find it entirely believable. (Unlike the stark realism of the rest of the story, ha ha.) I think people less anxiety-prone than I am would find reading it less stressful. The Enchanted Voyage is a charming tale, though, and even got made into a movie in 1946. (Nathan didn’t like it much.)
“For the artist,” said Mr. Freundlich, “the problem of immortality comes second only after the problem of staying alive. Of all people, the artist is the one most horrified at the thought of a catastrophe which would end everything, including music, poetry, ceramics, art, and making mobiles out of chicken wire and bits of string.”
Robert Nathan published his novel, The Train in the Meadow, in 1953. I have to wonder if he ever read C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, which came out in 1945. Because there are few novels as similar as those two, though they have very different conceptual foundations.
In a meadow in a high mountain pass, a railroad train rolls to a stop. After a while, another train, headed in the opposite direction, pulls up next to it. As they wait for something to happen, the two groups of passengers are supposed to stay apart, but there are some interactions.
The passengers in the first train are a mixed lot. There’s an old Jewish couple, one of them a famous art critic. They’re rather dejected to have been summoned in the middle of the night and expelled from their home for the second time in their lives. There’s a salesman, and also a waitress with whom he once had a one-night stand. There’s a Catholic priest, and a former president of the United States. A hard-working, embittered woman who was abandoned by her daughters. And a little orphan boy, worried because he doesn’t have any “papers” to present at the border. Before long we suspect – and then we know – that these people are all dead, on their way to the next world.
After a time a table is set up in the meadow, and two officials take their stations there. This spot is, apparently, the border. A long line forms, and each person presents his or her papers and gives an account of his or her life. (Though each of them is worried about not being allowed to enter, it doesn’t appear that there’s anywhere else to go.)
It should be no surprise that The Train in the Meadow handles such matters differently than The Great Divorce. Author Nathan did not subscribe to Christian doctrine, as far as I know. His concept of eternity seems to be based on mercy, which is pleasant to read (sometimes heartbreaking, too). His Catholic priest seems to me a pretty poor Catholic, as his hopes for eternity seem to rest on the authority of his office, rather than the grace of God.
The Train in the Meadow is a charming book, and comforting. Theologically, that’s not a great thing, but it was enjoyable and moving to read.
“However,” he said, “if you will not enter the tournament, promise me that you will stay for the banquet afterwards, when there will be some very interesting discourse on love, in which I would be glad to have you join.” “I should be delighted to,” said Sir Henry, “though I do not think I can add anything to the general knowledge on the subject.” “No matter,” said King Anselm, “for no one else knows very much about it anyway.”
Robert Nathan was an eccentric author; I suspect he reveled in that quality. In Sir Henry, first published in 1955, he provides us with a medieval romance – of a sort.
The titular Sir Henry is a middle-aged knight of no great distinction, riding about seeking chivalric adventure on his horse Ponderer, accompanied by his hound Manfred. (Charmingly, the animals talk to one another.) He comes upon a fiery dragon and slays it pretty much by accident. Thereby he frees the dragon’s captive, the lady Alisane, a practical-minded maiden who immediately starts discussing their future home and domesticity.
Further along, they encounter another knight who insists on combat, and Sir Henry slays him as well, again by mischance. This leaves that knight’s companion, the lady Meghan, in his care as well. Sir Henry has a carriage constructed to carry the three of them, and they proceed to various adventures, most of them bloodless.
Alisane is focused on establishing a home. Meghan, on the other hand, is keen for adventure and glory, and finds Sir Henry rather a disappointment. Eventually they do find a home and start constructing a castle, but the upshot of that arrangement will be a total surprise to Sir Henry.
I’ve gotten used to not deriving clear lessons from Robert Nathan’s books (though I think I understand Portrait of Jennie to some extent). Sir Henry is a gentle (and well-crafted) riff on chivalric literature, and also an allegory, with a touch of psychomachia. It’s fun and likeable and bittersweet. I enjoyed it.
He was playing Bach, to keep his spirits up. The great German, who wasted nothing in his life, asks of the performer only attention and respect; in return for which his music, in which there is no evidence of self-pity, gives courage to those able to perform it.
I read several of Robert Nathan’s books back in the 1980s, and One More Spring was one of that number. I had fond – but vague – memories of it. Reading it again now, I found it very enjoyable, though I came away a little uncertain exactly what the exercise was in service of. (Which is probably the wrong question to ask in the first place.)
The year is 1933, the height or (low point) of the Great Depression. Mr. Otkar, an antiques dealer in New York City, has just lost his business. He sits for the last time in his shop, left with only a few cooking utensils and an ornate, carved bed he can’t find a buyer for. In wanders Mr. Rosenberg, a young, starving violinist. Mr. Otkar, sadly, gives him his last egg to eat. Then they join forces, piling the disassembled bed into a pushcart and taking it to the park, where they spend the night in the open.
The next day, playing for change in the street, Mr. Rosenberg meets Mr. Sweeney, a street cleaner who agrees to let the two men stay in the little shed where his cleaning cart is kept, in exchange for violin lessons. (Mr. Sweeney has great passion for music, but no talent.) Later they are joined by Elizabeth Cheney, a hungry young prostitute with nowhere to go, whom Mr. Otkar meets while they’re both out stealing food.
It’s a strange household they form. Mr. Otkar finds himself surprisingly carefree, liberated from the burdens of owning things. Mr. Rosenberg is tortured by finding no outlet for his art. And Elizabeth just wants love. In time they are joined by Mr. Sheridan, president of a failed bank, saved by Mr. Otkar from a suicide attempt.
Most of Robert Nathan’s books, in my experience (Portrait of Jennie is an exception) tend to fade out in the end, rather than having a dramatic climax. That happens in One More Spring too, though the plot is better resolved than the one in The Bishop’s Wife. This is a book without villains, where everyone means well, and salvation comes through understanding. Also, remarkably, there’s no fantasy element (unless you count so much human kindness as a fantasy). I had a good time reading it.
He discovered the wealthy lady in a small house near the river, furnished in the style of the last century, which is to say that everything was uncomfortable. She received the archdeacon in her library, in which there still remained a few books.
I approached Robert Nathan’sThe Bishop’s Wife with some hesitation. Fond as I am of Nathan, he was a Jewish writer, and I wasn’t looking forward to finding out how he dealt with the Christian church. In the event, it was indeed a little awkward, but that wasn’t the only awkwardness I experienced with this story.
The Bishop’s Wife was made into a movie in 1947, starring David Niven (as the bishop), Cary Grant (as the angel), and Loretta Young. It’s a minor Christmas classic, not as popular as “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but like the Capra movie it features Christmas and an angel. The movie isn’t bad; I was surprised to discover how far it veers from the book at the end.
Bishop Henry Brougham is a dignified, earnest churchman (one assumes he’s Episcopalian, but references to Luther and the Augsburg Confession suggest to me he might be Lutheran). His great vision is to promote the Christian home, but he believes (for some reason) that the way to nurture good homes is to build a cathedral. The challenge of raising funds is daunting to him, so he prays to God for an archdeacon gifted in fundraising. That’s when Michael appears. He informs Henry that he’s an angel, and that he’s here to do that job. Henry accepts him, but they keep the angel part to themselves.
Henry introduces Michael to his wife Julia, and Michael immediately falls in love with her. It’s a novel experience for an angel, except that it reminds him of the world before the Fall, when all was innocence and love. Julia is a frustrated wife – there’s no passion in her marriage, and she pours her affections out on her daughter Juliette. (I did not like Juliette much – her dialogue seemed very artificial to me.)
Both Michael and Julia are strongly tempted, but (spoiler alert) nothing more than a kiss happens between them. Unlike in the movie, where the angel (called Dudley there) helps the bishop to understand his deeper ministry and to appreciate his wife, the book ends with nothing much changed in that regard. Michael completes his assignment and returns whence he came, with a deep and tragic and new understanding he never had before. Julia gains one thing in her life, but her marriage is left pretty much the same.
It’s hard to know what to say about The Bishop’s Wife. My orthodox Christianity made me an argumentative reader. The overarching theme seems to be that the joy and love of Heaven, which permeate Michael, are so much higher than Christian theology and morality that they render them rather irrelevant. (I’m sure that’s true in a sense, but it’s hard for a Christian to conceive of an angel being indifferent to the Son of God.) Henry is both a bad churchman and a bad husband, I think – he overspiritualizes his marriage and overmaterializes his ministry. It’s disappointing that he leaves the stage as clueless as he was before.
The Bishop’s Wife left this reader oddly flat. It’s remarkable to me that it’s one of Nathan’s most famous works.
“Well, then,” said Minerva at last, “what are we to believe?”
“Believe in what you do not know,” replied Mrs. Mortimer promptly. “Believe in your own ignorance.”
I wasn’t entirely happy with the last Robert Nathan book I read, but now I’ve finished The River Journey (published 1949) and it’s all right again. This novel is a sort of an allegory. I didn’t entirely understand it, but it raised the right issues.
Minerva Parkinson is a middle-aged housewife in an Iowa town on the Missouri River. When her doctor tells her she’s dying, she decides not to inform her husband Henry. Instead she intends to give him the adventure he’s always wanted but never reached out for. He’s always wanted to go down the river to St. Louis and New Orleans. So now she’ll cash in her stock certificates and buy a houseboat, and they’ll take that journey. She isn’t sure she’s made him happy all these years, but he’ll have this happy memory when she’s gone.
When they finally set out, she’s a little disappointed at first. Henry isn’t sure about this whole thing; it’s kind of frightening. He’s mostly coming along to please her. But the situation changes in Nebraska City, where they take on two passengers – a young woman named Nora and a mysterious, dark man named Mr. Mortimer. Mr. Mortimer, Minerva comes to realize, is Death. And Nora, like Minerva, is dying. When a flirtation begins between Nora and Henry, Minerva suppresses her jealousy, wanting to give them both a little happiness before she departs.
In terms of strict morality, I didn’t entirely approve of the plot of The River Journey. But I don’t think it’s intended to be taken on that level. This is a journey through the heart, a confrontation with mortality and the things we must leave behind.
The bottom line is that I enjoyed The River Journey very much. It possessed the full Robert Nathan magic.
He sighed, and shook his head. “The world has always been full of magicians,” he said; “they crowd the bookstore shelves, they fill the theaters . . . but they do not do anything with the heart, the way Benét did. They do tricks with cards, with a chicken in a hat . . . It is all sleight of hand, one can buy such tricks anywhere; even in a brothel. The true sorcerer deals with illusion; he does things with the heart.”
Another novel by Robert Nathan, the unjustly nearly-forgotten 20th Century urban fantasist. (He wrote Portrait of Jennie, which I recently reviewed, but he also wrote The Bishop’s Wife, which was made into a movie with Cary Grant and David Niven once upon a time, and more recently re-made with Denzel Washington.)
I’ve decided I’ll try to boost Robert Nathan on this blog. I picked up a later book, the 1967 novel Stonecliff. I wouldn’t say it’s his best work, though.
The narrator is a young writer named Michael Robb, who has gotten a coveted assignment, to write a biography of Edward Granville, a celebrated novelist, now old and beginning to be forgotten. To interview him, Michael drives to Granville’s remote home, Stonecliff, a cliffside dwelling on the California coast.
He finds Granville welcoming enough, but he’s surprised to find that the man’s wife is not present. Instead there is Nina, a lovely young woman who seems to occupy some undefined position in the household. Is she Granville’s mistress? Michael wonders about that increasingly, as he finds himself romantically drawn to Nina, who is distant and seems rather unhappy.
In between interviews, Michael roams the grounds, from the hills above to the beach below. He wonders about a treehouse he finds, where he’s sure he saw a serpent. He also believes he saw a cougar, perhaps – he’s not sure – walking in Nina’s company. His growing frustration and fascination with Nina leads to an inevitable confrontation and a shocking revelation.
I found Stonecliff less delightful than other Nathan books I’ve read. I wasn’t sure what to take away from the story, except that it’s about an artist growing old (a subject generally of keen interest to me). The specter of Merlin haunts this book, with echoes of the legend of Nimue, but Nathan uses that fantasy for his own purposes.
I also found the prose less lapidary than in Portrait of Jennie. There was not as much precise description of nature – though fog is described in a hundred ways.
Stonecliff wasn’t a bad book, but it may be that Nathan was losing some of his magic by that point.
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