{"id":1083,"date":"2020-09-30T19:29:08","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T19:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2020-09-30T19:57:11","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T19:57:11","slug":"jack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/30\/jack\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Life Underwater: A Review of Jack<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Robinson’s newest novel allows her readers neither to flinch from Jack Boughton’s real fall from grace nor to condemn him to suffer what he deserves.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Charlie Clark
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To paraphrase Whitehead, the safest general characterization of Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Gilead novels is that they consist of a series of footnotes to Housekeeping<\/em>. That first novel is so densely yet lyrically written; to look up a fond phrase is to risk losing a whole afternoon. All the themes of her later novels are there in nuce<\/em>. From Gilead <\/em>to Lila<\/em>, we find the cold, black water of Fingerbone seeping into sunlit Midwestern parsonages.<\/p>

So when we come to Jack<\/em>, we are not surprised to find him saying things like, \u201cThe word \u2018lake\u2019 is related to the word \u2018lack.\u2019 An absence.\u201d The lake in Housekeeping<\/em> is the town\u2019s shadow, the home of all its missing citizens, the presence of everything lost; it is the world in negative. In the lake, all our familiar oppositions are destabilized\u2014 \u201ca good foundation was worse than useless. A house should have a compass and a keel.\u201d On the shore, society\u2019s regulars live out their quiet desperation; below the surface, the outcasts and dropouts make their life in death. Housekeeping <\/em>is the story of a passage into that underworld, to Ruthie\u2019s becoming one of the lake\u2019s restless ghosts. She says of her aunt, as Sylvie inducts her into the life of a transient, \u201cI dreamed that Sylvie was teaching me to walk under water.\u201d<\/p>

Jack seems to have been born underwater. Though not exactly a transient, he is a drifter. He drifts in place, the place being St. Louis, bumming from job to job, flop to flop. Speaking of St. Louis, it\u2019s remarkable how little the Mississippi figures in the novel (\u201cthe brown god is almost forgotten\u201d). But then, there is nothing riverine about Jack Boughton, nothing coursing; he is indeed a lake creature (a \u201clack\u201d creature). Jack is an alcoholic who lives one step ahead of his barroom creditors. He is a convicted thief, a penitentiary graduate.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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It seems to everyone, Jack included, that he was somehow born on the wrong side of life and light.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Jack\u2019s subaquatic life suggests some fall from grace. Robinson takes her text from Paradise Lost<\/em>. \u201cThe Prince of Darkness, the Prince of Absence,\u201d Jack calls himself, and here, as in Gilead <\/em>and Home<\/em>, he questions the possibility of his own reprobation. It seems to everyone, Jack included, that he was somehow born on the wrong side of light and life. In this novel, we finally get a look inside his head, at what puts the devil in him.<\/p>

We discover that Jack has an irresistible attraction to fragility. He can\u2019t help testing things, so he breaks them. Anything undefended calls out to be stolen. The impulse extends even to himself; he has to push himself over the edge, through anxiety into embarrassment and drunkenness. Jack shares the dreadful self-awareness of Milton\u2019s Satan. He cannot hide the inevitable judgment from himself, any more than he can stop himself from flouting it. And just like Milton\u2019s Satan, his predicament, however self-made, can move us to something like sympathy.<\/p>

The metaphoric frame shifts, and Jack is now Adam, alone in a garden. He meets a woman. And the woman is very good. From the first pages of the novel, those who have read Gilead <\/em>may think they know the story. But Robinson will not make it so easy on them. Here again, all our categories are turned over and over as roles reverse themselves. In Gilead <\/em>and Home<\/em>, Della is Jack\u2019s redeemer. When we discover her existence, we suddenly find his is justified. Jack <\/em>forces us to remember that she is his victim. Back in Iowa, did we ever ask what she gave up to save him? Jack is not so much Della\u2019s Adam as her Eve: drawing his beloved down into life underwater. He is her Fall.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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To be scandalized by mercy is itself a scandal.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But for Robinson, like Milton, there is such a thing as a fortunate fall. Christ too was a victim. (\u201cGod himself was pulled after us into the vortex we made when we fell, or so the story goes.\u201d) Robinson allows us to see Della\u2019s doomed love as loss, but not as mere loss. However much it will be despised by those around her, however much it deserves their condemnation for all the other real and long-expected goods it forecloses, Della\u2019s love is a participation in God\u2019s self-gift. And apparently the one aperture through which grace can reach Jack is his love for her.<\/p>

There is scandal in Jack\u2019s receiving this mercy. Some theologically-minded critics have accused Robinson\u2019s past novels of antinomianism for appearing to let Jack off the hook. But to be scandalized by mercy is itself a scandal: Shall we deny that Jack should possess a goodness not his own? Where would that leave us? Our only alternative is to recognize our submersion in his. It is an upbuilding thought that in relation to God we are all underwater.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Charlie Clark<\/strong>\u00a0is a writer and retractor<\/a>. He lives in New Hampshire.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Jack <\/strong>was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an imprint of MacMillan. <\/em>Fare Forward thanks the publisher for providing our reviewer with an advance copy. You can purchase a copy <\/em>Jack on the publisher’s website<\/a>. <\/em>
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Robinson’s newest novel allows her readers neither to flinch from Jack Boughton’s real fall from grace nor to condemn him to suffer what he 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