It has been seven days since my last post, an omission which I can only excuse by work-related pressures, an acute crisis of intellectual faith, unexpected news from my physician, and my arrival at a life-changing decision which will take at least a year to fully work out. In the meantime, I will continue my reading.
The Rector of Justin has been on my list for decades; I suppose I must have stumbled across it while at Dartmouth and was intrigued enough by the first few pages to have mentally consigned it to some future quiet afternoon. While the past septet of afternoons have been anything but tranquil, I can say without qualification that my initial instinct was not misguided: this is an unquestionably great book. But, of course, I find A Separate Peace and The Last Convertible and even The Rule of Four likewise memorable and worthy, so it is possibly that the setting and the subject comprise a lure to which my peculiar curriculum vitae leaves me unusually susceptible.
The fictional biography of a great man must have precedents in literature; it seems like the device a Balzac must have employed more than once. But unlike Eugenie Grandet or James' Washington Square, the life of Francis Prescott is a whole rather than an incident plus its corollary aftermath. It is a bildungsroman, but one which values every phase of a man's life on the same par as the halcyon days of his youth. Along the way, it asks all the big questions about God, faith, love, family, a life's calling, the nature of education, and the true and proper appraisal of one's achievement. It seems to me a hopeful book, although I can see how other readers might deem it otherwise. Auchincloss seems to all but declare in his denoument that his purpose in writing is to inspire, but to inspire who? And with what?
342 days, 47 novels, 48 books of non-fiction to go.
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