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). ( )

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

Robert Coover’s The Brunist Day of Wrath is a sequel—forty years or so in the making—to his novel The Origin of the Brunists. It is set five years after the end of the first novel.

The Origin of the Brunists is set in a small coal mining town and follows the rise of an apocalyptic, pseudo-Christian cult named for one of the survivors of an accident in the mine. It’s a darkly comic and ironic novel, filled with both true believers and natural-born skeptics. As the novel ends, the members of the cult that formed around Giovanni Bruno leave the town of West Condon, intending to return on the first anniversary of the explosion.

The Brunist Day of Wrath, the intervening five years has seen a growth in the cult—except in West Condon. In the opening, it gets even wilder than the original, as a newly-minted Presbyterian minister coming to serve the local congregation meets Jesus in the church where he will work.

Once again, the Brunists have appointed a day for Rapture; this time, they have purchased the campground and the mine entrance, now called the Mount of Redemption. And while many of the main characters from the first novel have mostly moved on, secondary characters (like the head Presbyterian minister Wesley Edwards, who has a bit of difficulty dealing with his “inner Jesus”) fill the gap.

Coover also uses young Sally Elliott—a burgeoning writer—as a stand-in for the authorial voice.

Once again, what makes this novel work so well is the heavily ironic comedy and the depth of the writing. It will take time—especially if it’s necessary to re-read the first novel—but it’s time richly spent.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com ( )