MARILYNNE ROBINSON. Jack. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Pp. 309. $17 US.
Marilynne Robinson has become known as one of our most accomplished writers, both as novelist and essayist. Her writing engages moral and spiritual issues, which is not surprising, given that she is the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, and she herself is a Congregationalist who sometimes preaches for her denomination. She is an admirer of John Calvin, a sixteenth century theologian. Until her retirement in 2016, she was for many years a faculty member of the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has won various literary awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for Gilead, the first in a series of so-called Gilead novels which include Home, Lila, and now Jack. ((For a review of Gilead by Paul W. Nisly, see Brethren in Christ History and Life 30, no. 2 (August 2007): 328-330.))
The title of this latest book is taken from its main character, Jack Boughton, the son of a Presbyterian minister. He made his first appearance in Gilead when he returned home for a brief visit, which included a conversation on predestination with his godfather minister, John Ames.
Jack is a ne’er-do-well, a prodigal son in an otherwise near-model family. He is unable to do anything right and good; all his actions lead to ruin. The pattern of his life seemed set at his difficult birth, which threatened the life of his mother. As a child, he found relief in doing wrong. As an adult, all of his attempts to straighten his life fail: he constantly smokes and drinks, despite his awareness of the harm these habits do to his body and mind; he cannot retain employment except for brief periods; he serves time in prison; he fathers a child with a young girl in Chicago whom he soon abandons. He even refuses to return home to attend his mother’s funeral. His entire life seems predestined to failure.
Then he meets Della Miles, with whom he falls in love. She is a beautiful, intelligent young woman, a high school English teacher with an obviously bright future. However, Della is African American, which severely complicates their growing love for each other. The complication is especially problematic because the setting for the novel is the 1950s when the laws of Missouri prohibit interracial marriage or cohabitation. Even for a white man and an African American woman to be seen together is a cause for outrage in the white community and a cause for alarm in the African American neighborhoods.
Racial issues are central themes in the book, which Robinson explores from several perspectives. Jack’s family may accept Jack and Della’s relationship, but Della’s African American community is opposed to it. They see it as the ruin of Della’s bright future. The society that her family inhabits will reject her for any meaningful position in life. While Della’s family considers Jack’s lifestyle a serious detriment, the major problem is race: Jack could be the most impeccable white man on earth but the end would be the same, and the family, whose patriarch is a highly respected Methodist bishop, would be shamed. Looming in the shadows of their relationship is the specter of so-called urban renewal which will destroy much of the segregated safety that Della’s community has managed to craft.
This strong opposition to interracial marriage leads Jack and Della to an unconventional commitment. They simply agree to be husband and wife. Soon a baby is on the way. Robinson’s depiction of the power of love and the effect of racial laws and attitudes on such love is both deft and powerful. The book could serve as a severe tonic for all those who even now harbor racist attitudes.
Robinson’s book leads us, indirectly if not directly, to think of another issue that has puzzled many people over many years: why do some lovely women “fall” for such unsavory characters as Jack? Robinson suggests an answer through Della who is impressed by Jack’s courtesy, the only good quality he took from his father’s teaching. But more importantly, Della discerns that Jack has a soul, a soul that is worth redeeming. And she interprets one of Jack’s dreams as a sign that he needs her.
All of this sounds familiar in real life. Marriage does not always substantiate pre-marital thinking. Can Della’s love perform a miracle in changing Jack’s way of life? If so, some credence will be given to the claim, as old as literature itself, that women have a civilizing effect on men. However, by the end of the novel, we can only hope that the miracle will happen. Perhaps we will be informed about the success of the union between Jack and Della in a future Gilead novel, even if only in a cameo appearance.
This book is a delight to read. Robinson writes in a somewhat somber fashion, suitable to the book’s themes and to the long dialogue between Jack and Della in a cemetery at night, a dialogue that consumes most of the first 79 pages of the book. The author has a marked ability to compose striking, well-turned phrases and sentences. Among them are such passages (chosen at random) as: “like a garden gate opening on a minefield” (106); “all that shiny vegetation, fat with life, untried by weather” (300); “like the shadow of a sound” (33). Robinson’s literary skill reminds us that reading good books stimulates the mind and enhances our speech.