They're back!
It's
1965, and the Brunists have set up camp on the outskirts of West
Condon, near their now famous Mount of Redemption. Five years prior,
captured on nationwide TV, the drama of the blessed End of the World had
turned into a blood-spattered fiasco, and the Brunists found themselves
either hauled away to the loony bin or locked up in jail for a time
before being kicked out of town.
Robert Coover told an interviewer that he had always intended to write a sequel to his 1966 novel, The Origin of the Brunists,
but he hesitated since such a project would require many years of hard
work, and social realism wasn't the primary way he wanted to create
fiction. However, after witnessing the rise and popularity of George W.
Bush, a US president who actually brought evangelical religion into the
political sphere, he knew the time was right.
The Brunist Day of Wrath,
published in 2014, is a 1,000-page ripsnorter, a novel I found so
compelling and gripping, I could hardly put the book down. I'm a slow
reader but I eagerly kept turning the pages and finished this doorstop
in nine days. Robert Coover smoothly shifts between dozens of his
characters, inhabiting the hearts and guts of women, men, and children
who form the now vastly expanded Brunist faithful. Likewise, those
townsfolk who have remained in West Condon, even though the town is
decidedly more shabby and rundown since the coal mine, the main source
of employment, was shut down following the explosion that left 97 miners
dead. Additionally, a number of new players make their way on the
scene.
There's plenty of drama, ranging from the tragic and
heart-wrenching to the absurd and comic, with a good chunk of the comic
sliding into farce. Surely, the most interesting character is young
Sally Elliott, a college student home for the summer. She wears her long
hair in tangles, dirty jeans, and scruffy t-shirts featuring sayings of
her own making, such as FAITH IS BELIEVING WHAT YOU KNOW AIN'T SO.
Sally even has a stash of grass. As her friend Tommy, the good-looking
son of a community leader and the owner of the town's bank, observes,
"She went off to some dinky liberal arts college where they taught her
to dress like a tramp." With Sally, we're given hints of what will
become the sixties counter-culture – hippies, Haight-Ashbury, Woodstock.
And
Sally is an aspiring writer, constantly taking notes and penning
caustic remarks in her notebook. 'There's only now. And when that's
insupportable, there isn't even that. The hardest thing in life is to
face the fact of nothingness without a consoling fantasy: at the brink,
no way back, unable to jump. The only thing left is to grow up.' Ah,
Sally's words and philosophy are worthy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert
Camus, Zen masters... and Robert Coover.
Lem, the auto mechanic,
refers to the Brunists as "those evangelical wackos out at the church
camp." Tommy tells Sally that's the prevailing opinion of his dad and
the folks in West Condon, that the Brunists are all nuts. Sally replies,
"Yeah, well, they're all nuts in here, too, and he hasn't figured that
out yet." This exchange is key. Sally is, in effect, echoing Eckhart
Tolle when he states, "Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of
human existence." The accuracy of this observation becomes painfully
clear in a culminating scene toward the end of the novel.
As for
the Brunists at their camp, they are far from being one big harmonious
family. Clara Collins, the leader of the faithful, repeatedly emphasizes
to those around her that their campsite is meant solely for worship and
administration; it was never intended for members to actually live
there. However, her instructions are being ignored. Hundreds of Brunists
from around the country swarm in, setting up their tents and trailers
on the grounds, overflowing into a nearby housing development, which
leads to various sanitary and other issues. Furthermore, the vast
majority of these individuals are poverty-stricken, either having never
possessed anything to begin with or having sold their belongings to make
the journey, with the expectation of being raptured up to heaven soon.
At
one point, Sarah Collins, the daughter of Clara, is gang-raped in a
wooded area of the camp. One of the leading Brunists, their major
financial backer, believes that Sarah must, by choice or fate, be an
agent of the dark side. Therefore, her being raped must have either been
deserved or at least necessary. What! Can you, the reader, believe such
twisted, cruel logic? Yet, such is the tenor of the Brunists'
reasoning: if you don't believe exactly what we believe, or if bad
things happen to you, you are aligned with the powers of darkness.
Talk about being trapped by the stories we create for ourselves – a
phenomenon Sally (and indirectly Robert Coover) underscores throughout
the novel.
The stories we create for ourselves, the dangers and
potential for destruction extend well beyond the Brunist camp. To note
just two from the pages of Coover's novel: a Presbyterian minister drops
his conventional role and wanders in and around West Condon, thinking
himself to be Jesus Christ. Additionally, one of the sons of a
fire-breathing Brunist preacher heads up a motorcycle gang he calls 'The
Wrath of God,' preparing his gang with rifles and dynamite at the ready
to extract Godly revenge and retribution.
And what do the
Brunists think of Sally? When Sally makes her appearance in the camp,
many members take her for the Antichrist, but Clara judges her “just a
spoiled unkempt brat with more book learning than is good for her.”
Which
brings us to today's prevailing cultural (or lack of culture) in the
US. Robert Coover could envision where George W. Bush's combining
Christian fundamentalism with politics could lead. What these
present-day Brunist-like folks, drowning in TV stupor, booze, meth, and/or
oxycontin, hate is books and education—anything that threatens
their stultifying worldview. But, hey, the way they see it, they have
God on their side.
American author Robert Coover, born 1932
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