The Brunist Day of Wrath

By Robert Coover

The sequel to Coover's award-winning The Origin of the Brunists, takes a look at religion, cults, myths, and how small towns relying on slowly dying businesses mesh together with an amazing cast of characters, varying points of view and the usage of language that Coover has been renowned for these past nearly fifty years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dzanc Books
• Release date: Dec 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781941088104

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Tuesday 7 July

Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so… The young Reverend Joshua J. Jenkins, candidate for the West Condon Presbyterian ministry, whushing along through the rain-drenched countryside, the bus nosing out of lush farmlands and dark wet forests onto the gently undulant and somewhat barren coal basin that is to be, if his interview goes well, his new home, finds himself meditating upon his church’s Great Awakening—a great disaster, as he was taught (he himself is just awaking from a thick early morning doze, his head fallen against the bus window, muddled dreams of collegial dispute)—and upon the sequence of disruptive church schisms and rationalist heresies that followed upon the Awakening’s excessive evangelism through the convulsions of the American nineteenth century, so shaped by Presbyterian thought (and, one might say, confused by it as well), out of which musings he hopes to craft his inaugural sermon, and humming meanwhile that children’s hymn of simple faith…Little ones to Him belong, They are weak, but He is strong… He does not know why this old Sunday school tune has sprung to mind, but perhaps it is a subconscious reminder that he will not be addressing fellow intellectuals in this remote little coaltown, and must therefore keep his message, however profound at the root, simple and direct in its expression. Not his forte, as his professors have often remarked. He has the ability, which he perceives as a virtue but others more often as a fault, of holding several contrary ideas in his head at the same time, acting on each as if they were independent, even while being fully aware of their relative veracity or utility. On the one hand, for example, the Biblical account of the creation of the universe some six thousand years ago, and, on the other, what we know about the half billion years it has taken to produce the landscape the bus is now rolling through (a landscape, as seen through the smear of streaming rain on the window, increasingly scarred by the grotesquerie of strip mining: man’s impact on nature is more dynamic than geological processes, about which he also holds various conflicting views). Glaciers left their mark on this area as recently as some twelve thousand years ago, but the primordial swamps that nourished the vegetation which ultimately became the coal now being mined here, powering a nation but fostering much local violence and misery, existed at least three hundred million years ago, he knows that; yet he also knows that God, in His omnipotence and wisdom, can play with time as man might play with a ball of string, so that such so-called scientific facts do not exclude, even if they superficially contradict, the sacred stories in the Bible. There are various modes of discourse, Joshua believes—narrative, analytical, rhetorical—and each proceeds toward a truth of its own kind. He personally prefers (usually) that which leads, not to further disputation, but to action, the social or moral mode, as one might call it—Jesus loves me when I’m good, When I do the things I should…—and it is that way of thinking that has brought him aboard the bus this morning. He was in fact contemplating missionary work in Africa or in the poorer nations in Latin America when the offer of a pastorate in an impoverished and depressed coalmining community came along, thanks to a professor who had not previously been very supportive (Jesus loves me when I’m bad, Though it makes Him very sad…), and he recognized it as the perfect challenge with which to launch his ministerial career, though the professor may well have thought of it as a way of getting rid of him. Joshua has a deep instinctive sympathy with the unemployed, with the less privileged, the minorities, the illiterate, the maimed, and not excluding overworked and underpaid coalminers. Not many of whom are apt to be Presbyterians, of course, but still there is a mission here. He understands that currently there are divisive eschatological issues in this community, and he believes he will have something constructive to contribute to the discussion of them, having both an ecumenical tolerance for confused and heretical beliefs and an unbending faith in doctrinal orthodoxy, not to mention a profound distaste for emotional revivalism such as that which characterized the Presbyterian Great Awakening—a distaste, as he discovered in a telephone conversation, that he shares with church elder Theodore Cavanaugh, chairman of the Board of Deacons. Yes, this will be the right place for him. Intellectually engaged and socially concerned though he is, however, ultimately it is his simple love for Jesus that is his mainstay. Jesus is his master and his guide, but he is also his friend, a friend he has talked with daily ever since his earliest days in the Sunday School Brigade. Young Reverend Jenkins has few friends, but he does not need them, for his is to be—as designed, he believes, by God Himself—a lonely, austere, and singular passage through life’s mazy uncertainties. He has a friend in Jesus, and that’s enough. Which is why, in reality (whatever that is; many possibilities), he is humming this simple song. Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me…! In his zeal, he is singing aloud and, to his embarrassment, someone at the back of the bus joins in: The Bible tells me so!

After bus stops at a progression of small wet towns, eerily empty and haunted by the skeletons of abandoned mine tipples, Joshua arrives in West Condon at last. The rain has stopped and the sun is surging from behind the clouds, welcoming him to his new life. One of his companions on the bus, perhaps the one who had sung along with him earlier, asks as he steps down behind him: Are you a defender, brother? A big man in a billed cap, plaid shirt, and hunting boots. Of the faith, you mean…? Yes, of course. Better git a gun, then, he says and lifts his rifle in demonstration. The man and his two friends rattle off in somebody’s pickup truck before young Reverend Jenkins can reply (repartee is also not his forte) that, no (though why did he ask?), he is a man of peace. It is the message of the New Testament (one of them; militancy is another of course, though a peaceful militancy, mostly peaceful), a message he will try to incorporate in his inaugural sermon. So that they will know who he is, what he stands for. Peace. Faith. Charity. And so on.

The bus pulls out with a gassy wheeze, leaving him standing alone on an empty street. He is surprised that no one has come to meet him. In the inside jacket pocket of his new three-piece corduroy suit he bears the flattering letter from Mr. Cavanaugh and the First Presbyterian Board of Deacons, which suggested that Mr. Cavanaugh himself would be waiting here for him. Inside the little one-story corner bus station, he finds the manager complaining about a power outage. You get a half sprinkle in this damn forsooken town and ain’t nothin’ works, he says, adding an unnecessary vulgarism or two. When Joshua inquires, he is told that, no, no one has been asking for him. Impatient fellow, rather rude and rough of tongue. Almost certainly not a Presbyterian. Joshua supposes Mr. Cavanaugh’s bank cannot be far away, but he decides, now that the sun is coming out (he is perhaps a bit overdressed for July, but he knows the importance of first impressions), that this might be a fortunate opportunity to examine his prospective new town and church on his own, without a local booster at his elbow. As the four beasts of the Apocalypse say: Come and see. So he shall. He has the bank’s phone number; he will call later to explain why, having been forsooken, he chose not to bother Mr. Cavanaugh but to make his way on his own. According to the map Mr. Cavanaugh sent him, the town, though free-form in shape, is laid out on a simple grid, numbers running one direction, trees, flowers, and American and local patriots the other; the church—soon to be his church—is marked on the map with red pencil and should be easy to find. He deposits his heavy bag, overweighted with his cherished books, with the station manager, who drags it disdainfully behind the counter, kicking it back against the wall, and he sets off on his exploration.

Joshua has hardly left the bus station before he is out of the commercial district, there being so little of it, though the residential neighborhoods are not free of the occasional shop or repair facility as well as small homespun enterprises announced by hand-lettered signs in the windows. An unzoned blurring of private and working lives, profoundly American. The wet street is aglitter with the sun shining on it and, though people are beginning to emerge from their doors, it is peaceful yet, as if newly created, and largely free of traffic. He had expected to feel out of place, but he does not. He can make a home here. The town is not as impoverished as he had imagined, though of course this is the Presbyterian side of it, so to speak (he is passing a quite monumental Baptist church even as he has this thought), and probably not where most of the miners live. He will visit those neighborhoods and discover their needs and bring the power of Christian love and the charitable weight of his own church to bear upon them. Here on these dripping tree-lined streets (he walks on the sunny side) there is the charm of the ordinary: brick houses with broad porches bearded with flowering shrubbery, white frame houses with mock shutters and screen porches and carports, others brightly painted, yellow, pale blue, rose. American flags fly, and in many of the yards there are portable barbecue grills and cedar picnic tables, bejeweled still with raindrops, poised for homely smalltown family pleasures. There are no fences; the yards are one shared yard. People greet each other from their porches. Are your lights working? a woman calls to another. No, they must be out on the whole street. I hope my freezer don’t melt! Some have well-tended lawns and colorful flower gardens, others are scruffier with balls and toys and tricycles in the front yard, rusting bicycles leaning against porch posts, a tire swing hanging from a tree branch, a dented pickup truck on cement blocks. Dogs have been let out and are chasing each other. In a house somewhere, a child is being scolded. Dandelions proliferate between the sidewalk and the street. Where a bent hubcap lies in the gutter near a clogged drain. Is all this beautiful? It must be. God is the first author of beauty and all his handiwork is a priori perfect, and thus good and true and also necessarily beautiful. It cannot be otherwise. Instead, one asks of all one sees: wherein lies its beauty? His inaugural sermon, as yet unwritten, is entitled An Old Evangel for a New Day, and perhaps that will be the theme, one of them: Seeking the extraordinary in the ordinary, the uncommon in the common. He feels quite wise and rich with insight, touched as it were by something holy (Just a closer walk with thee, he is humming as he strolls, grant it, Jesus, is my plea…), the world behaving as a theater for his inmost thoughts.

A block before the Presbyterian church, a convoy of three Army trucks full of soldiers comes rolling by as if conjured up from the puddles in the street. They are certainly not conjured up from his thoughts; they surprise them. The trucks pause and the driver of the lead vehicle leans from his window and calls out: Hey, chubby! Can you tell me how to find the high school? I’m afraid I am not yet from here, he replies, then realizes that will not be easily understood. But I have a map. He hands it up to the driver, who studies it. A young officer is sitting beside him, staring straight ahead. There are impolite comments from the back of the truck about the manner of Joshua’s dress. Right, says the driver. Mind if I keep this? Well— Thanks, chief. And they go rumbling on down the street, spewing black exhaust and rude remarks. A curious and, given his present transcendent state of mind, somewhat jarring apparition. Perhaps it was to remind him that that peace in the valley he longs for is not without its obligatory sacrifices. That there are those for whom peace is not a first priority. He knows them; they were the bane of his childhood. He is reminded of the line from Luke: And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. But he, young Reverend Joshua J. Jenkins, is a man of peace, yes, he is, through and through. He would outlaw all the world’s armies, if he could; he will never ask his congregation to sing Onward, Christian Soldiers. A man of peace like Christ Jesus and his Gospel of Love. His friend. His best friend. Yes, what a friend I have in Jesus! He is humming to himself again. Again, an old Sunday school song. In spite of his aptitude for abstruse and complex thought, so convoluted at times that he baffles his listeners and even sometimes gets lost himself, it is the simple songs that Joshua loves most, songs like the one he is humming now, standing before the church that is to be his home, his platform, his testing ground, and his awesome pastoral responsibility, tunefully murmured like a kind of prayer to Jesus: Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on…

The church is less impressive than in the photograph they sent him, a modest brick structure, vaguely modernist in style, far less grand than the Baptist church near the town center and not so classic a house of worship as the stone Lutheran church he passed a couple of blocks back with its solid square bell tower and big double doors; but just as Joshua loves the simple songs, so does he love the simple Christian virtues, which people in this country in their ignorance think of as American virtues, and this church in its honest friendly dignity stands as a quiet monument to them. It suits him. It suits Presbyterianism and its democratic community spirit.

As the church is presently without a minister, he fears the doors may be locked, but they are not. He removes his felt hat and wipes his brow. I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m alone; through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light, take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home!

"You have arrived, Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Joshua J. Jenkins."

Why, yes—! He has been thinking so much about his friend Jesus that young Reverend Jenkins is not altogether surprised to see him standing at the pulpit. Sunlight enters the church through the high windows in clearly defined beams. Jesus is standing in one of them, exactly as he appears in the frontispiece of Joshua’s favorite book of Bible stories for children. It is an astonishing sight. Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, Joshua is thinking, somewhat madly, the melody tinkling in his head as if played on glass bells. But how did you—?

Your résumé, Mr. Jenkins.

My résumé—?

And what does the middle ‘J’ stand for, Mr. Jenkins? Not my name, I hope.

No! He has been anticipating this visit to his new church with such excitement, perhaps he is only dreaming about it and the bus not yet arrived. That would explain the nightmarish army trucks. He touches his breast pocket; no, the map is gone. But dreaming is another mode of discourse, similar to the narrative mode but freed from some mimetic conventions. The map, for example, can be there and not be there at the same time. When he wakes, he will take notes. They will make for an interesting sermon. Perhaps his inaugural one. What happened to me on my way into West Condon. On the other hand, if he is not dreaming, and he probably is not, it can’t be Jesus, and in the realization of that he understands the terrible shallowness of his faith. Though in one part of his mind, that part he takes most comfort in, he is having a personal encounter with Christ; in the larger part, wherein his reason resides like the house demon, he knows it is not possible. It’s…it’s Jehoshaphat. My grandfather…

Jehoshaphat! A king! ‘I am as thou art, my people as thy people, my horses as thy horses!’ Hah! What a memory! Not all of us are so lucky to have such a grandfather. Or even a grandfather at all. On my paternal side, it is something of a mystery. Joshua is nodding at all this, hat in hand, but he’s not sure what he’s affirming. Yes, I know you wrote a paper on it. I thank you for your contribution.

Pardon? Paper—?

He was reminding me that he wrote an essay on the old fellow, your namesake, getting diddled by the king of Israel. He got a B-plus for it. I was acknowledging that.

Oh yes, I see. But he doesn’t. Who got a B-plus? He feels as he often feels when lost in his own theological conundrums, and wonders if he should go out and come in again.

Who, Mr. Joshua Jehoshaphat Jenkins, do you say that I am?

"Well, hah…you look a bit like Christ Jesus, but—!"

Looks, Mr. Jenkins, are not always deceiving. The man smiles benignly down upon him, stroking his beard. We were talking, I believe, about the end of the world.

We were?

Everybody is. It is, I am afraid, the topic of the day. By many it is expected imminently. Perhaps before lunch. But the end of the world, Mr. Jenkins, is not an event. It is a kind of knowledge. And therefore, at least for those in the know, it has already happened. And those who are not in the know are living in sin, for ignorance is sin—the worst sin, am I right?

Well…

Of course I am. As soon as it was imagined, it was a done deal, I told you that millennia ago, don’t you remember?

I-I wasn’t—

‘But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out the devils,’ I said, he says, pointing a finger down at Joshua as if probing for more demons, "‘then be sure the Kingdom of God has already come upon you.’ That’s what I said. ‘Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.’ My very words, repeated hundreds of times. They wrote them down. ‘But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.’ You’re a man of the Good Book, as it is called in the trade. You have read it. Would I lie to you?"

No! But—

Shut up! Apart from me you can do nothing!

I-I’m sorry—?

He was telling me I lie all the time.

He—?

That business of driving out devils like chasing hair lice, for example, he meant. Not exactly true, I admit it, but it was the way we talked back then.

A lady enters. Like Jesus, she is also dressed in a flowing gown. A flimsy thing the color of fresh peaches. She seems almost to float. Is she walking on her toes? "Jesus! Those awful people are marching up that hill again! And they all have guns! I was watching it on TV until the lights went off. I don’t know what’s going to happen! I heard some very loud noises! I think we should excuse this gentleman and hurry back to the basement!"

On the contrary, my dear. We too shall proceed to the infamous hill. I believe they are waiting for me.

"No! They don’t know what they are waiting for! They’re completely crazy! Come with me now! Please!"

Jesus, or whoever he is (she called him Jesus!), only smiles calmly and raises one hand in a kind of blessing. Which would be completely convincing were he not scratching himself with the other. We shall take Mr. Joshua J. Jenkins with us. He is the grandson of a king. He will protect us. He winks at Joshua. Is he supposed to wink back? What people is she talking about? What infamous hill? Why do they need protection? Perhaps he should have waited for Mr. Cavanaugh at the bus station. Come! Follow me!

BOOK I

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals,

and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder,

one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

And I saw, and behold a white horse:

and he that sat on him had a bow;

and a crown was given unto him:

and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

—The Book of Revelation 6.1-2

I.1

Easter Sunday 29 March

It is the hour of dawn, but the skies are black and stormy, curtaining the sun’s emergence from the catacombs of night. A small party of climbers is struggling up the muddy slope of a steep man-made hogback ridge toward the pale wet light at the top, ghostly figures wrapped up against the elements when viewed from atop the ridge, black featureless silhouettes when seen from below against the dull nimbus, ribboned with rain, at the crest. Some lose their footing, drop to their hands and knees in the mud, swallowing down the curses that rise to their throats, mindful on this most holy morning that the stakes are high: nothing short of everlasting life. The source of which is death. That is the message of the day. For on this day, they say, exactly at dawn nearly two thousand years ago, one who died arose and walked again, promising a similar reward for all who would follow him, an easement against the anguish of death’s hard passage. For as in Adam all men die, so in Christ all will be made to live. Stirb und werde, as the Trinity Lutheran pastor intends to put it up here in the opening prayer he has been invited to deliver. Die and come to life—die and be—the meaning of this moment.

This the incentive for the community’s long tradition of witnessing at a prayerful sunrise service the breaking of Easter’s dawn, though never before from such a place as this: a high artificial ridge of disturbed heaped-up earth at the South County Coal Company strip mine, the easternmost of a parallel set of such ridges. For nearly half a century, the Presbyterians have held their Easter sunrise service on Inspiration Point at their No-Name Wilderness church camp, gradually expanding it over the years into an ecumenical occasion as the town population and church memberships declined; but this year, the camp was mysteriously unavailable, rumored to have been sold to a developer, and this site was chosen in its stead by the West Condon Ministerial Association as the setting for the annual celebration of the Dawn Resurrection. The light at the top of the ridge is provided by battery-operated mine lamps mounted on stanchions, which do not so much light up the area as cast a pale otherworldly glow upon it, through which the rain falls as if upon a rubbly forsaken stage, one seeded with coal chips and bits of gravel, and barren except for weedy grasses that have taken root here and there. The giant claws that sculpted this strange terrain lurk in the pooled black waters below like skeletal creatures of the netherworld, mute witnesses to the sacred ceremonies at the top.

The pastors of several different denominations are clustered under umbrellas up here, each with a few brave members of their congregations, though the minister of the First Presbyterian Church, traditional host of this event, has not yet arrived; they await him with what patience they can muster, as the remaining stragglers slowly make their way up the slippery slope to join them, feeling somewhat martyred by their own righteousness, many with hands and knees muddied and umbrellas broken. To fill the time, the Presbyterian choirmaster, huddled with his wife under a large striped umbrella with a handkerchief at his nose, is leading them all through some Easter morning hymns that no one can hear, the voices, even their own, drowned out in the lashing rain. His Cheering Message from the Grave. A Brighter Dawn Is Breaking.

When Inspiration Point at the Presbyterian church camp became unavailable, alternative locations for the sunrise service were few, the land around here being generally flat and uninspiring. One of the highest points in the area is the mine hill out at the Greater Deepwater Coal Company, an old slag heap from earlier in the century, now part of the landscape, but since the terrible disaster out there five years ago and the Brunist cult’s temporary appropriation of it for its own heretical purposes, it has acquired an unholy aura, for which reason it was not even considered. The rise at the sixth tee at the country club golf course was proposed, but not only was it deemed a secular and elitist location, there was also drinking out there and dancing and card playing and other even more un-Christian behavior. So when the wealthy owner of South County Coal and former member of the Church of the Nazarene congregation offered this ridge, it was hastily and gratefully accepted. There was some talk about canceling the event when foul weather was predicted, but as several pastors declared: What if Mary and Magdalene had stayed home on the day of Christ’s rising merely because of a few showers?

Easter sunrise services being a modern invention of American Protestant churches, there are no Roman Catholics in attendance—indeed, they have not even been invited—but there are also many Protestant denominations whose spiritual leaders oppose the very idea of ecumenism as a dilution of the true faith and a liberal corruption of the Word of God and who have discouraged their congregations from participating in this service, offering them pancake prayer breakfasts in their church basements in its stead. One world, one church: this is not the American way, and it is not God’s way. There are those who are with God and those who are not, and there always have been and always will be until Judgment Day. It is by our differences that we know one another, and those differences divide and cannot be denied. Some will be welcomed into the Promised Land, but most will not, and that’s a plain fact, the Bible says so. It’s either/or: step up and take your pick, brothers and sisters. It’s your eternity. A sign outside the First Baptist Church says as much.

Others, however, including the Presbyterian hosts, take a more generous view of their fellow religionists and welcome these opportunities for interdenominational Christian fellowship. Chief among them is the pastor of Trinity Lutheran, whose grand vision is of a global one-world, one-church ecumenical order focused on social reformulation, a contemporary articulation of meditation, contemplation, and prayer, and a recovery of the Holy Scriptures while embracing secular spirituality, for God is good and everywhere. He has written about this, though none here have read his writings, nor would they likely understand them should they try to do so. His parishioners have occasionally heard such thoughts expressed in the pastor’s Sunday sermons, but they have not understood them there either.

The black-bearded South County Coal Company manager, whose task it has been to prepare the site for the morning’s service at his boss’s request, detests this entire pagan event as an unholy abomination. He has stood sullenly on the shadowy slope in his black slicker, a lit cigarillo dangling under his rainhat, hands resting on the butts of his holstered guns, watching the fools slip and fall on their climb but helping none of them. They are the condemned; let them get used to falling. The so-called Christian church is not Christian at all; it is an evil and degenerate institution, infiltrated and controlled by Satan, who, as the Holy Book says, deceiveth the whole world. The whole world. Christ was not crucified on a Friday, did not rise on a Sunday. Can they not read their own Bible? Do they not have fingers on which to count? The very notion of Easter, absorbed into Christianity by the early church fathers, so-called, in their corrupt lust for power and named after a whorish pagan goddess, is obscenely ludicrous. Sunrise services, Easter parades, chocolate bunnies and colored eggs: all vile impurities, idolatrous humanist perversions. The Great Conspiracy, as he calls it. The church’s pact with the Devil. He loathes them all.

The Presbyterian minister appears on the slope at last, hatless, coatless, unshaven, floundering about in the mud. He is met partway up by the town banker, a Presbyterian stalwart, dressed in heavy boots and the sort of rain gear worn by hunters and fishermen, and helped up the rest of the way, the banker asking why he has only one shoe on. What? What? Am I not free? he shouts in reply. Where am I? There is a darkness on the land! The Lutheran pastor steps forward to lead them all in prayer, but he is interrupted by the Presbyterian minister who, upon reaching the top, plants his stockinged foot in a murky puddle and without prayer or preamble (Oh no! squeaks the choirmaster’s wife) raises his face to the downpour and, shaking his fist at it, cries out: Blessed are those who are free from the infection of angels! What? What are you saying? I know, I know! A people laden with iniquity! Woe upon them all! But what about me? I am filled with bitterness! Get out, damn you! Out! Whereupon, there is a sudden blinding flash and a ground-rocking blast of thunder and everyone flees, slipping and sliding urgently down the greasy slope.

Last down is the town banker, guiding the confused and increasingly incoherent Presbyterian minister, the banker picking his steps out carefully with the help of one of the mine lamps lifted from its stanchion, avoiding the slick tracks laid down by those who had lost their footing and, with yelps of alarm, feet flying, had slid down on their backsides. The Presbyterian minister, soaked through, stumbling unsteadily, one shoe off, one shoe on, babbles on. No! Not one jot or one tittle! Not an iota, not a dot! The sky flares again with lightning—Can you hear me? Who do they say that I am? the man yells at the storm, and his knees buckle and down he goes, nearly pulling the banker down with him. "God damn you!" the banker mutters under his breath, fully aware of the peculiarly precise power of such an oath on such a day. But too much is awry for propriety. He hauls the minister to his feet and, slapping through the ankle-deep water at the bottom, bundles him into his Lincoln Continental and heads in a fury, kicking up mud, for the church manse.

It is in such browbeating weather that West Condon prodigal son (there is an army of them) Georgie Lucci steps down off the bus from the city on his first return in nearly five years to the scene of his youthful indiscretions, somewhat nauseous from the long overnight ride, having sucked up half a case of cheap beer en route and fallen dead asleep only an hour before pulling in. He hardly knows where he is, only that he is getting fucking wet. At this unholy hour, the old corner bus station, where once he reigned as pinball king, is closed (he decorates its doorway with a pool of vomit, just for old times’ sake: Ciao, bambini, Georgie’s home!), as is the rest of the downtown, which he examines in a brief futile stagger, seeking shelter and a bite of breakfast, wearing his duffel bag as a ponderous rainhat. Not a soul on the streets, everything dark as midnight and shut up tight, some shops boarded up as though forever, the cold rain bombing down, the thunder and lightning giving him a headache. Fuck off, he groans, though to no one in particular, being no blasphemer, at least not by intent. None of his crimes have been, they’ve just happened. He tries the door up to the Legion Hall above the Woolworths, hoping some old pal might be sleeping it off on a couch up there, but that door too is closed to him, so he pisses on it, adding his bit to the flow flooding the earth. There are a few cars parked on the street in front of the broken penny parking meters, their junky antiquity bespeaking the town’s present economic circumstances. He tries their handles, no luck, the mistrustful bastards, so he breaks into a rusty old Ford station wagon and crawls inside, strips off his wet clothes and wraps himself in the woolly blanket he finds in the back. He still has a couple of beers in his bag, so it’s hair of the dog for breakfast or as a nightcap, whatever. Not for the first time in his long and unkempt life.

That’s about all Georgie remembers of time’s recent passage when he is jostled awake by the police chief, Dee Romano, and asked what the hell he’s doing there. Ah, the welcoming committee has arrived, he growls froggily. You’ve unloosed some pretty unfriendly weather on me here in old Wet Condom, Demetrio, I had to get in outa the storm to save my life. Whose car is this, by the way? "It’s my car, you stupid stronzo. I shoulda guessed. Only you could own a blanket that smells this bad. It’s my dog’s. He won’t appreciate that remark. And what have you done, thrown up in it? Merda! I may have to turn him loose on you. Well, I’m pretty hungry, it might be an even scrap. Why don’t you do the right thing, compagno, and go bring your honored guest some scrambled eggs and coffee? C’mon. Outa there, Giorgio. I got no time for wiseasses; I got too many problems. We’re shorthanded with Old Willie gone, our cruisers are falling apart and no money from the city to fix them, broken streets full of drunks and thieves, the damn Brunists back in town, trouble at the school— A chi lo dice! The Brunists! Them rain dancers are back? Yeah, they’re setting up shop out in the old summer camp on the road to Tucker City. From what I hear, you should be dressed just about right for them. But here in town it’s against the law. So get them rags back on and haul your ugly culo outa there. Now!" Them rags is cold and wet, Dee. Listen, do me a favor. Arrest me and lock me up in a warm dry cell for a few hours. I deserve it. You want a roof over your head, Georgie, go to Mass. Mass? Is it Sunday? It’s Easter, you fucking cretino. Now move it! Okay, okay. Good idea, Dee. I’ll go to Mass. Easter. Whaddaya know. I’ll go confess to old Bags all the evil things I done, give him a rise. I got stories from the city that’ll burn his hangdog flappers off. But first gimme a lift over to my old lady’s so’s I can borrow her tub and clothes dryer.

So that’s how it is that, in due course, the explosive news about the Brunists detonates upon the broad well-worn steps of St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church on this Easter morning. Several of the worshippers have gathered there before High Mass during a break in the thunderstorm, grabbing a quick smoke and grousing about the economy, the kids, the corruption at city hall, the weather, what’s ailing them, what’s ailing West Condon, the rest of the world, the cosmos, etc., and what can be done about it; namely, nothing. The plagued town, still mourning its dead from the mine disaster of five years ago, is in a state of terminal decay and depression, so broke it can’t fix the winter potholes or pick up the garbage. It has been bypassed by the new interstate, all the deep-shaft coalmines are closed, the downtown is emptying out and the car dealers are shutting down, the only hotel is an empty derelict, subsidence is sinking home values as if they could sink any lower, strip mines have torn up the countryside and polluted the water, the high school basketball team has won two games all season, the old coal-burning power plant is unstable and blackouts are frequent, prices are up, wages down for those who have jobs (not many), families are breaking up, friends are dying, the local newspaper has folded, TV reception is poor and there’s nothing on it but protests, wars, assassinations, corruption, riots, quiz shows and beer ads. Sal Ferrero and one-armed Bert Martini have been out at the hospital this week visiting fellow ex-miner Big Pete Chigi, who’s dying of black lung or something worse, and Sal reports that he’s in a respirator now. Big Pete ain’t so big no more, says Bert. Damn coal dust, is another’s mutter. It’s not just the dust, it’s also them coffin nails, says Guido Mello, grinding his out under heel, and Sal, staring dolefully with baggy eyes at the cigarette from which he’s just taken a drag, says, I’m quitting tomorrow. Mickey DeMars, whose downtown sandwich joint is closed for the day (the high price of meat has been the subject of his previous discourse, which aroused some surprise among his interlocutors that his hamburgers actually contain such an ingredient), says he heard on the radio that fully one-fifth of the nation was living in abject poverty. That ain’t bad odds, growls Vince Bonali, wallowing a dead cigar in his jowls. Wish it was that good here. Vince has recently lost his wife, has long since lost his job, and it’s said he’s drinking more than he’s eating these days. There’s a rumble of thunder and, peering up at the black sky, Carlo Juliano says, It don’t stop. Better go home and build a ark. I would, says Bonali, but I can’t afford the mortgage.

Which is when errant native son Georgie Lucci is spotted (he gets a welcoming shout) hurrying their way over the puddly potholed street and broken sidewalk like a tall clownish bird, bearing glad tidings, bad breath, lurid tales of nightlife in the city, empty pockets (cousin Carlo, when pressed, reluctantly loans him a five-spot), and the news that the Brunists are back, reportedly up to their old tricks out at the edge of town. This evangel draws a large eager audience, so Georgie, always the crowd-pleaser, elaborates on it, describing the Brunists’ ecstatic and diabolical rites in fulgid colors, details supplied by a stag movie he saw up in the city about a secret orgy society, and using the chief of police as the horse’s mouth. The ladies in the crowd peel away to spread the word among the others (Monsignor Baglione must know! gasps Mrs. Abruzzi, hurrying off in her sparse orange hair and the black widow’s garb she has worn for thirty years) and Carlo says maybe they ought to hide the Pincushion, popular name for their statue of St. Stephen, so the Brunists don’t steal it again.

So they’re back. Vince Bonali, gazing off toward the rainsoaked streets as though pondering their bleak future, feels a stirring of something commingled of nostalgia, excitement, mortification, and anticipation. When that insane cult first started up here, he helped his old high school teammate and town banker Ted Cavanaugh create the Common Sense Committee to try to put the brakes on. After the mine disaster, West Condon was in deep shit, and that end-of-the-world lunacy was the wrong story to send out to the world—Vince said as much in his famous rockdusting speech at the first big rally, and Ted loved it. Ted runs this town, and Vince became his righthand man. He was at the center of things and welcomed all over town, his pals were even calling him the Mayor—except for his days as second-team all-state tackle, it was the proudest moment of his life. And, after his stupid fuckup, the worst. Total humiliation. From king of the hill to the bottomless pit. Thinking about it still made Vince sick to his stomach, and he feels sick now. He’s not happy to see Georgie back in town. Georgie was there for it all, witness to his most shameful moments. Georgie has no pride. Sooner or later all those old stories are going to get retold. Just for laughs. Sick jokes from the past. Even now they’re yattering on about that mad carnival out at the mine (At least we felt alive then, someone says), the day he sank the lowest. But he has changed since then. Stupidity sometimes has more to do with heart than head. His refound faith has centered him, put his reason right. Most know that and respect him for it. You remember when old Red Baxter tried to lay into our altar with a mining pick? It was crazy! He called the church a whore! When Vince’s wife Etta died a couple years back, Ted sent flowers. A sign of forgiveness? Angie works at his bank now. And he and Ted were WCHS teammates after all on the best football team in their division in the state. That’s what the big-city papers said. Maybe he should give old pal Ted a call, see if he needs any help. Yeah, but remember what we done to their prayer barn afterwards! Maybe he shouldn’t.

Isn’t that Joey Castiglione over there, putting a play on your daughter, Vince? asks Carlo, and Vince grunts in reply. He is well aware of his daughter’s dangerous beauty. And her likely misuse of it. Angie is pretty dreamy and out of the human loop of late and she’s taking a lot of baths; it’s his impression she’s putting out on a regular basis. Right now she’s cooing over the Piccolottis’ baby, who is getting christened today, Joey whispering something in her ear. Joey’s all right. College kid, smart, better choice than most. His old man, killed in the mine blast, was a tough union scrapper, and Joey, though just a runt, has a lot of his feisty grit. But Angie’s probably too dumb for him. He rather wishes she’d take an interest in the Moroni boy, a good kid more her speed upstairs, decent footballer in his day, Ange and Concetta’s only boy, named after his crusty old nonno Nazario. Keep it in the family. Five years gone since Deepwater blew up, and he still misses Ange. Damn it. His best pal since kneepants. Got laid together for the first time in the same Waterton whorehouse. In-fucking-separable, to speak in the old way. Young Nazario now wears his dad’s old hat, tipped cockily down over his nose the way Ange always wore it playing pinochle or sharing a bottle. Angela is dressed in a new Easter outfit she bought herself with a hemline just under her chin. It’s a scandal, everybody’s looking at her, but what can he do? With Etta gone, there’s no one to talk to her. His daughter gets all her advice from the trashy romance rags she reads. As the family wage-earner, she dismisses him as a tiresome and useless old fool. The older kids have all gone their own ways, she’ll be leaving soon, too. He’ll be all alone. That’s your daughter? Georgie asks with a shit-eating grin on his face. Yeah, and keep your fucking hands off her, Vince says to himself, otherwise remaining silent except for an ambiguous grunt. Hey, where’s Etta? Georgie asks.

Joey is smart, Angela knows this. She likes him. Unlike that stupid creep Moron Moroni who is, regrettably, part of her Dark Ages, and still acts like he owns her; at the moment he’s staring at her legs from under the brim of his dad’s hat, tipped down over his broken nose, and kissing the air. Which is as close as he or any of his rough pals will ever get again. Joey is considerate and sweet and he loves her. He used to fix her bike and help her with her homework and he wrote To the one and only! in her yearbook. She would never have made it through math without him, and that helped her get the job at the bank, where everyone says she’s really good at numbers. He and his dad were close, it was always Joe and Joey, so it was so sad when his dad got killed in the mine accident. Her heart went out to him. And then, when her mom passed away, Joey was the first to drop by and say how sorry he was and how he knew how she felt. He came home from college, where he’s studying to be a mine engineer, just to do that. But, though they’ve gone to dances together and he’s had his hand between her legs, she doesn’t love him. Not the way he loves her. It is Tommy Cavanaugh she loves and that makes Joey really mad. Joey saw her in Tommy’s car last night and he has called Tommy a very bad name. Don’t use language like that, Joey. You’re at church. An asshole’s an asshole wherever you are. Honestly, Joey, Tommy and me are just friends. We didn’t do anything, we just drove around. Oh sure. That rich fratboy is only interested in hicksville chitchat. She sighs. You don’t understand, Joey. He doesn’t. She is having her period. Tommy will have to wait. Until Wednesday.

The news that the Brunists have returned, taking over the old closed-down Presbyterian church camp out by No-Name Creek, is spreading across the waterlogged West Condon church lawns this morning like a storm within a storm, causing alarm, anger, disgust, fear, disdain, curiosity, ridicule. Some say they are squatting illegally, others that they have a rich patron who has bought the camp for them, yet others that they were invited in by the Presbyterians, though none can fathom why the Presbyterians, chief architects of their expulsion five years ago, would do such a thing. Probably has to do with money. With those people, it always does. That those foot-stomping rollabouts were shown up as deluded fools and chased out of town should have been the end of them, but they have apparently been able to find plenty of other gullible saps and are now said to be a full-blown church, nearly as big as the Seventh-Day Adventists, many of whom have joined them. But though Brunist churches may have sprung up across the country—it’s said in the magazines in doctors’ offices that they’re the country’s fastest growing new Pentecostal church—they must know they are not welcome here. Their return is a taunt, a slap in the face.

But what to do about it? Some few are willing to live and let live, but most believe the cult must be sent packing, and right away, before they’ve had time to sink new roots, for as it says in the Old Testament, Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it. Many of the townsfolk were out at the old Deepwater No. 9 coalmine—it was about this same time of year, and it rained then, too—when the Brunists, watched by the whole world, waited for that watching world’s fiery end, dancing around in the mud in their wet nightshirts and underwear, whipping each other, crying and screaming for Jesus to come—it was like the storm was egging them on, driving them all berserk, and a lot of locals went crazy and joined in as well. The state police had to be called in, there were brawls and beatings, a lot of people were jailed or hospitalized, including their so-called prophet, who was sent off to the loony bin where he belonged, and in the middle of it all, laid out on the hillside like bait for the angels sent to gather the elect, there was a sickening blue corpse on a folded lawnchair, that sad little Italian girl, her dead body getting rained on while her hand pointed spookily at the sky as though accusing it of something. Some say the cultists themselves killed her in some sort of weird ritual sacrifice, and few would put it past them. For the rest of the world, the end might not have come that day, but for West Condon, it surely did. It was the worst thing that ever happened here and the town has never really recovered from it.

How the Brunists have ended up in their old church camp is something of a mystery even to the Presbyterians themselves. Ted Cavanaugh, head of the Board of Deacons, is having to field a lot of questions about it in a kind of ad hoc gathering of the board on the church lawn during the break between Sunday School and the main church service, the storm having let up for the moment in timely fashion. He explains that the minister and his wife evidently took a number of actions of questionable legality without consulting the board, and that he has already begun the processes that will recover the camp and force the intruders to leave. But privately he knows it is largely his own fault and it won’t be easy to get it back. When the Edwardses brought up the idea of selling the old camp a couple of months ago, back when winter was at its worst, Ted thought it was a good idea. The camp had fallen into ruin, and the church could use some immediate revenue. He told them to go ahead and see if they could find a buyer. When the strip mine operator Pat Suggs came forward with a decent offer, he’d seen nothing wrong with it, supposing that Suggs, who owned adjacent lands, was planning to develop the site as an industrial park or strip it for coal or both. Suggs is destroying the countryside, but any investment and source of new jobs in these hard times is welcome, so Ted helped negotiate a tax break and used his connections to get electricity brought over from the closed mine, the camp’s old generator having long since given up the ghost with no hope for resurrection. He’d heard there were people living out there in trailers, a construction crew of some sort, and supposed they were Suggs’ cheap imported non-union labor. Should have looked into it, should have insisted on a review by the board, but his mind was elsewhere. He finally picked up on the Brunist connection a week or so ago when Clara Collins and Ben Wosznik turned up at the Randolph Junction bank to set up an organizational checking account and he got called for a reference, they having each had accounts at his bank in times past. It was a substantial initial deposit, garnered apparently from donations from the worldwide faithful. They gave the camp as their address and explained that they had a five-year lease on the site at a dollar a year. A side of John P. Suggs he hadn’t paid attention to. Hasn’t paid attention to a lot of things of late, too much going on in his life, he has let things slide. Edwards’ onrushing breakdown, for example.

Some Easter, Burt Robbins says sourly, scowling at the thick black sky. Burt runs the five-and-dime, is a member of everything, complains often, contributes little, a man amused only by pratfalls and public humiliations. And now those Armageddon nuts landing on us again. Sorry I didn’t get out there to the sunrise service, Ted. But the sun never rose. Thought it must have got canceled.

Me, too, Ted, the Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jim Elliott says. I wasn’t even sure where it was this year.

Out at South County. Pat Suggs set it up.

That was a friendly gesture, says Elliott with his dippy smile.

No, it wasn’t. Standing up there among the rainsoaked and muddied few, he’d wondered if in fact it had been some kind of practical joke, but he’d discounted it. John P. Suggs is not a humorous man, not even meanly so. It was simply a tactical move. He has tried to pin Suggs down all week, hoping to cut some kind of deal, undo this wretched business somehow; the bank has its hands on properties elsewhere in the state that could be used as a trade. But Suggs was resolutely unavailable. Ted also put pressure on Wes Edwards to renege on the sale, got nowhere. Couldn’t even get his attention. Seemed off in some other world. Ted talked to his bank lawyer, Nick Minicozzi, about trying to get an injunction on the grounds that the minister had illegally bypassed the church board; Nick said he could try, but it would be difficult, given Ted’s own earlier approval.

South County Coal, says Robbins, squinting in that general direction, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. You know, you can probably see the Waterton whorehouses from up there.

Oh, nice, says Elliott. Of course, I wouldn’t know.

Serviced at sunrise, Gus Baird says.

Jim and Burt are board members and they and Gus teach Sunday School classes. Ted doubts they’ve read any more of the Good Book than he has, but he may need them close at hand this morning to help with the rescue operation if Wes Edwards loses it or doesn’t show. Full house today. Extra rows of wooden folding chairs and more chairs in the aisles. Couldn’t see anything this morning in that downpour. It was a mess. And so was Wes. Good thing I went out there.

Burt nods. Ralph says Wes was splashing around crazily in his stocking feet out there and yelling at the rain.

He was somewhat out of touch.

Just singin’ in the rain, croons Gus Baird, the travel agent and Rotary Club president, and he does a little turn around his umbrella.

Burt laughs dryly and says, Them two kooks should be locked up, him and his wife both.

Well… And, while fresh thunder rumbles overhead, he fills them in on what he found when he got Wes back to the manse, the general disorder, foul smells, things flung about, the spilled milk in the kitchen and the smashed eggs. Wes said he’d been trying to make breakfast.

Well, I’ve dropped a few eggs in my time myself, says Baird amiably.

On the walls?

Oh oh.

Wait a minute. What do you mean?

I mean, his wife’s gone.

Debra? Really? Elliott turns his dopy gaze toward the manse. Wow, what do you think? She’s gone off with some—?

Wait. She wouldn’t have anything to do with that damned cult, would she?

You can bet on it, Burt. That screwed-up Meredith kid who was in it from the start has been living with them, and he’s gone, too.

Oh boy, says Elliott, flashing his stunned stupid look. We have a big problem. Ted has a big problem with Elliott. An incompetent drunk, holding the town back. The area still has a lot to offer—cheap energy, old rails still in place, unused land, a workforce desperate for jobs, favorable tax incentives—but Elliott is useless. The Chamber needs new blood, someone with energy and imagination and appeal to get the town back on the commercial map again. Something Stacy could do well if she’d agree to it. She’s off visiting family. When she’s back, he’ll try again.

Robbins strikes a match to light a new cigarette and says, It’s a disaster.

Ted rose this morning before the unseen dawn, a routine now. His emaciated wife has already had a couple of falls trying to get to the bathroom on her own, so he tries to be up in time to take her. Irene’s decline infuriates her and she’s resentful of his help, insists he shut the bathroom door and leave her alone. He grants her that, but stands by to help her back to bed again. Poor sweet Irene. It’s heartbreaking. There’d been a couple of giggling young lovers up at the aborted service who evidently, following the Easter vigil tradition of watching the rising sun dance its bunny-hop to have their loves and lives blessed by it, had stayed up all night before coming, and seeing them Ted had felt a pang of grief, remembering Irene at that age and their own premarital spring. Such a pretty thing she was, and so loving, and so his. The girl’s wet dress clung provocatively to her body and the boy slipped his hand between the cheeks of her bottom, and then he felt a sudden pang of desire, and a pang of guilt. Whereupon, with equal suddenness, lightning struck.

Across the lawn, through the crowd, he sees his son Tommy, home from university for the Easter break, leaning against the Lincoln. He looks cool, but Ted knows he’s hurting. He had given the home care nurse Easter Sunday off, so he let Tommy sleep in and be there if Irene needed anything, and when he got back from dropping Wes off at the manse, he found Tommy trying to help his mother, at her insistence, get dressed for church. The boy was down on his knees, struggling with her nylons, and he looked miserable. Tommy, he said, she can’t go. Outside the bedroom, they embraced and wept a little.

The sadness of a house saturated with the depressing odor of mortality and decaying connections got to Tommy last night, so he borrowed his dad’s car and, on a whim inspired by the home-again Brunist news, gave Angela Bonali a call to get together to talk about her new job at the bank. That conversation lasted a minute or two and then his old high school flame gave him a spectacular blowjob while the rain drummed down on the car roof, best in a long time, nearly brought tears to his eyes. He’ll see her again Wednesday when she’s off the rag. It’s a kind of anniversary. They lost their cherries together on an Easter weekend five years ago and, thanks to a couple of gut courses at university, browsing through the old myths, he now knows how appropriate that was. He has been through those juicy old rituals countless times since then, it would have been easy for her to drop out of the memory stream, but those were pretty unforgettable times. First everythings and all that, but the Brunists also helped make them so. Those apocalyptic lunatics not only stirred things up in town, adding an edge of danger and something bordering on an alien invasion, they also gifted him with a what-if line to score by. Later helped him ace a sociology course too. Making History by Ending History was the title of his A-plus term paper, a high-water mark in his academic career. Angie was curvy and cute back then, an inexperienced virgin like he was, but just naturally good at it. Because she liked it. She exemplified his notion of loose hotpants Catholic girls. Perfect for an uptight hotpants Protestant boy earnestly looking to get laid. Now she’s a grownup dark-eyed beauty with all the moves, plus a world-class ass and humongous tits. He gets hard just thinking about them. She’ll be big

Reviews for The Brunist Day of Wrath

[dougj110 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imaginative and compelling. A wild ride through a world of evangelicals, cultists, bikers and small town political hacks.

[stillatim · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What, exactly, should we make of a thousand page long realist novel, the main point of which seems to be the undercutting of the realist novel and religious belief--the kind of belief that the narrative voice would have us associate with the realist novel? It could be that this is the start of something new. Wesley, who is either possessed by Jesus or mad, thinks to himself "this is not merely a post-Christian or post-historical world, as some of those people you've been reading say, it is a post-world world," (55-6). The truth that this new Jesus brings is: "We are not, but only think we are. Our actions are nothing more than the mechanical rituals of the mindless dead. This is the truth. Go forth and prophesy," (56). BDW could be the origin of this new understanding of literature and/or religion: quasi-Nietzschean, French-Heideggerian, the great individual will go forth and create the new world.

In the first Brunist book, the liberal-intellectual is represented by Tiger Miller; here, we have his elective descendent, Sally, who recalls Darren* saying that the religious calling is an invisible form calling out for substance. "Now she writes: The writer's vocation: An invisible form calling out for substance." So, religion, and writing.

True, it's hard to know how seriously we should take Sally, though. So much of her writing, and thought, is just re-hashed sophomore Theory, in which the individual is always right and any barriers to her free expression of freeness is tyranny. E.g., she thinks "about teleological fantasies. The madness of 'grand narratives': history going somewhere," (923). Lest that little squib escape your notice, Sally later tells Mrs. Filbert that
"People are caught up in a dangerously insane story and they don't know how to get out of it."
"Dangerous? Just only stories?"
"Most dangerous things are."
"... Can they, you know, kill somebody?"
"Sure they can. What's the toll now from all this madness? You might say story has killed them all," 958-9.

And if you doubt the link between religion and realism, Sally is there to point out that "the conventional way of telling stories is itself a kind of religion, you know, a dogmatic belief in a certain type of human perception as the only valid one. Like religious people, conventional writers follow hand-me-down catechisms and look upon the human story through a particular narrow lens... conventional writers are no more realists than these fundamentalist Rapture nuts are. The true realists are the lens-breakers, always have been. The readers, like your average Sunday morning churchgoers, can't keep up with all this, so the innovators who are cutting the real mainstream often go unnoticed in their own time. It's the price they pay. They don't make as much money, but they have more fun," 648.**

Jesus preaches more or less the same liberal individualism--"Blessed are the fantasists for they shall not be dismayed by oblivion... But damned are they who project their mad fantasies upon others," 891. Sally, Jesus and Coover all come to praise the individual genius artist and damn institutions.

Thankfully, there is some nuance here. Our implied author acknowledges the similarities between fiction and religion, both modes of life that claim to offer "lies that were truer than truths," that both offer myths, which are "not falsifications of history, but rather a special kind of language for grasping realities beyond time and space," 673-4, with the difference being, of course that fiction's truths are truer than the truths of religion, which are simply false.

To pull this claim off, the book needs to perform: this work of fiction needs to be evidently truer than the truths of religion, more effectively mythical. It does have a nice story to tell: religious cult develops, returns to the scene of its origins, chaos ensues with much symbolic violence between all factions of American life (except the Liberal Artist, who calmly watches from the sidelines).

But sadly, the book doesn't live up to its narrative. BDW is certainly smarter than most of the realist novels you'll read; it is also less entertaining, not substantially better written, and adds little to my life that I wouldn't have gotten from, say Franzen's Freedom--god is dead, the individual is all that matters, live in this world rather than hoping for a better one etc etc...

So I suspect that BDW is not the beginning of anything; rather, it is the end. I have a hard time imagining that anybody will ever again produce such a massive attempt to meta-criticize the realist novel. I also have a hard time imagining that I would want to read any such attempt. The time has come to move on from the doctrines, methods and preoccupations of this book, and the writers of Coover's generation. We all know that traditional realism is boring, and bankrupt, and that it will continue to exist because it's kind of enjoyable.*** We get it. Can we do something else, now?

................................

* There are hundreds of characters in this book, and for the most part they're easy enough to track. Don't try tracking them in this review, though.
** My heart bleeds for the overlooked Professor emeritus of Brown University, who only has fifteen books in print. How poor he must be, but also, how fun.
*** There are some interesting parallels between this book and some great works of not-quite-realism: the parade scene reminds me of Madame Bovary, for instance; I'm fairly sure there are references to Blood Meridian--one of the bikers renames himself 'Kid' and goes on a journey; later, someone is killed by a giant man's bear-hug at a toilet (see the end of McCarthy's novel).