The Novel

  ‘From Yoder one would expect a rule like that.’

  ‘What you don’t know is that at the time they handed me the check they intimated that if things went well with their future books …’

  ‘That they’d give us further gifts? They intimated that?’

  ‘Much stronger than intimated.’

  ‘But nothing in writing?’

  ‘Of course not, but we have nothing in writing from you, either. Standard, I’d say. Advise me. Do you think Streibert’s review, coming from the college, as it were … will it sour the Yoders on us?’

  I reflected on this for some moments, then said: ‘Emma will be furious. She may try to burn down Streibert’s lecture hall. Lukas, I should think, will ignore the matter.’

  ‘Ignore the review, perhaps. But will what’s happened today strangle further gifts?’

  More reflection: The Yoders aren’t like that,’ I said.

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘What would I do? I’d convene a small cocktail party here at Windsong. I’ll be hostess. You do the inviting. The Yoders, Yoder’s Dutch farmer friend, Zollicoffer, and act as if nothing had happened. The important thing, Norman, is to let Emma know that you treasure her husband, because she’ll make the final decision.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Consider a moment. The Yoders are exactly like me, only more so. We have no immediate children, I have only my grandson, Timothy, and the Yoders don’t even have someone like him. So when we die, we have to do something with our funds. Emma knows this as clearly as I do, and she’ll give to whoever treats her husband with respect.’

  ‘In your recommendation just now, you meant that you would give the cocktail party?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll get the local librarian to come too, a fine woman named Benelli. That will make it a literary affair, celebrating his novel, and no one will see that you’re sweating unmercifully.’

  ‘Agreed, but I shall be sweating.’

  My next calls were to the Zollicoffers, whom I knew only slightly but respected as the farmers who helped Yoder with his writing, and to Ms. Benelli, all of whom were pleased with the prospect of visiting Windsong on Wednesday.

  That pleasant chore attended to, I prepared for a meeting I had long anticipated: an introduction to Miss Jenny Sorkin, about whom I’d heard a great deal from Timothy but had not met. Since it seemed apparent that Timothy was seeing her quite often, I felt I ought to know what kind of young woman she was. She was a new experience, tallish, slim, unkempt, a rowdy look, a twinkle in her eye, a ready smile and a T-shirt on which was printed: WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I NEEDED A DATE FOR THE PROM? When I saw it I had to chuckle. ‘I had that problem at twenty. It was pretty awful to be at Vassar in those hectic years. The draft for World War II made men simply unavailable, especially if you weren’t too good-looking, and I wasn’t.’

  When the two young people were seated facing the big windows through which the lights of cars driving the Cut Off were visible, I served sandwiches and a plate of Fenstermacher’s new autumn scrapple fried so crisply it had become finger food. Now,’ I said, ‘explain if you can why you Young Turks feel you have to declare war on Lukas Yoder.’

  ‘Wait!’ Miss Sorkin cried. ‘Don’t include me. I’m quite fond of him and his books. Let’s face it, we’re pretty much alike. We write books that ordinary people can read and understand.’

  I smiled at her and said: ‘The minute I saw your T-shirt I knew I was going to like you.’ Then, turning to Timothy, I said: ‘So it’s going to be two women who prefer books that can be read, against you and Streibert, who advocate books that nobody can read.’

  ‘Talk about savage!’ Timothy cried in mock horror. ‘Grandmother, nothing I said about Yoder was half as brutal as what you just said about Streibert—that nobody read his novel.’

  I said: ‘I meant it in the abstract—that the general readership cannot absorb either his novel Empty Cistern or your exciting adventure story Kaleidoscope. Do you accept my kindlier interpretation?’ My grandson snorted: ‘You’re digging yourself in deeper. Let Professor Streibert and me get on with our assassination.’

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘If he were here tonight instead of hiding down in Philadelphia, I’d spit in his eye. Here, have some more of Fenstermacher’s scrapple. It’s as close to the soul of Grenzler as Yoder’s novels.’

  ‘And just as lethal to the digestion,’ Timothy said. ‘In a time of growing cultural darkness, men like Streibert—in universities across the nation—are beginning to believe that the job of serious fiction is to maintain a dialogue of exalted meaning among the elite—the rare few who will be making the decisions that will keep society alive.’

  ‘Does that eliminate people like me, who enjoy reading Jane Austen and Willa Cather?’

  ‘No, no! You are the elite,’ and he pointed to the two small bookcases that sat even in our big room. They contained, I must say, an impressive mix of books: serious novels, essays on women, treatises on, and analyses of, changing foreign policies. I have to admit I was rather pleased at what I thought they reflected—the interests of a concerned woman at the beginning of her seventies. As I was immodestly preening, Timothy introduced a name that would become of importance to me in the weeks ahead: ‘I think our great American poet Ezra Pound expressed it best when he was a prisoner in St. Elizabeths insane asylum. He preached to those loyal American poets who braved public censure by visiting him in what amounted to his jail: “Write only for your peers. Ignore the general public. They always follow false gods.” ’

  My husband and I had schooled ourselves to be suspicious of ideas like the ones Timothy had been expounding, for we feared they led to fascism. I had to protest: ‘I don’t believe I’d be comfortable with the ideas of your Mr. Pound,’ and Timothy explained: ‘Professor Streibert has taken Pound’s concepts and elaborated them into what he calls “the Imperative of the Now.” ’

  And what might that mean?’

  ‘That an artist is obligated to wrestle with the problems of society as they arise—in his day—in the understandings of his own particular time.’

  I was about to say that to me this sounded like mere expediency when Miss Sorkin said: ‘Tell you what, Mrs. Garland, if you want a taste of what Timothy’s talking about, read the manuscript of his new novel.’ She explained: ‘It borrows its title from the word that Streibert and his fellow new critics like to throw around, Dialogue, and it consists of a hundred and sixty pages of talk between a man and a woman who are never named or identified in any way except through their unbroken conversation. Their arguments, agreements and reflections begin on page one in the middle of a sentence and run unbroken to the end on page one-sixty. It’s eight or ten pages before you discover whether a man or a woman is talking.’

  ‘But identities do emerge?’

  ‘Yes! Quite definitely—and interesting they become, too—if you stick with it.’

  ‘Sounds more difficult than your first one, Timothy.’

  He shrugged his shoulders, obviously uncomfortable at hearing his unpublished work being discussed, but Jenny continued: ‘The subtlety of the later pages—take my word for it—this one’s going to establish the norm for the decade ahead. It’s a brilliant book, Mrs. Garland, one you’re going to be proud of.’

  ‘Will I be able to comprehend it?’

  ‘If you stay with it for fifty pages you’ll catch on.’

  ‘I’m like Snoopy. I want action in the first sentence. “It was a dark and stormy night,” ’ I joked. ‘That’s my idea of how to start a novel.’

  Obviously eager to support Timothy’s bold enterprise, Jenny said: ‘It’s a grand effort. To quote my grandmother: “Try it. You’ll like it.” ’

  ‘Are you going to let me see it?’ I asked Timothy, for I was vitally concerned about his progress.

  ‘Yes. I brought all but the last section,’ he said, handing me a flat cardboard box. ‘You know, Grandmother, I do appreciate your counsel—and act on it, especiall
y when you don’t drift back to the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Have you ever read Joseph Andrews? Those rowdy goings-on in the eighteenth century might astonish you.’

  We dropped that subject, and I asked: ‘And what will you be writing, Miss Sorkin? After your football novel is published?’

  ‘I’m trying to write a story specifically for you—one with a strong start and a striking conclusion.’

  ‘I can hardly wait. The subject?’

  ‘Well, now! If I’ve had good luck so far with football players and their hang-ups, why not do the same with the pompous faculty and board of regents of a well-respected college in—say—Ohio, where they have so many? Or perhaps eastern Pennsylvania?’

  ‘Get that subversive woman out of here!’ I cried, and she blew me a kiss.

  As I led my talented young guests to the door I paused to take from one of the bookcases we passed a novel by Margaret Drabble, and as we stood together looking at the long sweep of lawn in the autumn moonlight, I held up my two hands: ‘Left hand, Timothy’s new novel to decipher; right hand, Miss Drabble’s to enjoy,’ and they booed me as they drove away.

  WEDNESDAY, 9 OCTOBER: This afternoon I welcomed to Windsong four of our most congenial Grenzler citizens, the Zollicoffers and the Yoders. Two married couples in their sixties or slightly beyond, and in appearance prototypical Pennsylvania Dutch.

  Lukas Yoder was a short man with a squarish face, sandy hair that looked as if he could produce a fine German beard had he wanted one, and the quiet bemused manner that Dutchmen often display when meeting strangers. His wife, Emma, a short little woman, looked as if she had been cooking for farmhands for years, so thin and active was she.

  Their nearest neighbor, Herman Zollicoffer, was the darling of the group, a big, rotund Dutchman with a rumpled haircut, a round beaming face and the movements of an aging bull. He was noted for wearing both suspenders and belt, and for his reticence in talking before strangers until some topic arose on which he held strong views; then he would suddenly explode with an oration that might last instructive minutes, for he never spoke unless he had something cogent to say. Silent he was not; prudent he was.

  His wife, Frieda, whom I had not met before, was the ideal Dutch wife: jovial, retiring in the presence of strangers, big round face, very round torso, huge round bottom all kept that way by a voracious appetite, as I was soon to learn. It would have been difficult not to like Frieda, especially when she spoke her Pennsylvania Dutch. The first words I heard her utter when she walked into our big room and stared down the valley leading to Rhenish Road were: ‘Nice, aindt?’ Then she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, pointing backward down the valley: ‘Chust down there, Fenstermacher, aindt?’ She pronounced down in a most engaging way: dahnnn. And when she looked at me for confirmation as to where our neighbors had their farm, I nodded.

  I found that I was correct in my prediction as to how Yoder would react to Professor Streibert’s bitter attack on Stone Walls, for when Ms. Benelli and the other guests assembled, one asked: ‘How did you feel, Mr. Yoder, when you read that horrible review penned by your neighbor?’ and Emma jumped in: ‘A professional like my husband never bothers with reviews, especially when he’s already sold more than half a million copies before publication.’ I could see Lukas wince as if to say: I’ve tried to stop her saying things like that, but what can a husband do?

  When someone pressed: ‘But what did you do personally?’ he said: ‘I worked on my hex painting,’ and this evoked numerous questions requiring him to explain how he searched for hex signs on old barns and converted them into what some critics had praised as collages of fresh concept and elegant execution. He himself dismissed such praise: ‘All I do is try to rescue the fine traditions of our people—and touch them up a bit with my own fraktur.’

  This word also occasioned questions, but at the end of his explanation he received gentle criticism from a quarter he would never have expected, for now Herman Zollicoffer was ready to speak: ‘Lukas, I never really forgave you for the mean trick you pulled on them hexes. I warned you a dozen times but you wouldn’t listen. Pennsylvania Dutch never believed that Gypsy business, hex signs wardin’ off evil, or castin’ spells on an enemy. But you went right ahead, even called it Hex.’

  ‘What is a hex sign,’ Ms. Benelli asked, ‘if it isn’t what the books say, something to ward off bad luck?’

  ‘Simple designs. Brought over from Germany. Make a barn look proper. They’re for nice, not ghosts.’ Then, with the warmth he had always felt for Yoder, and proud of what his neighbor had accomplished in bringing Dutch ways to the attention of the world, Zollicoffer said: ‘In your first four books you listened to what I said—you respected our traditions. That’s why they were good. In Hex you tell all the fables, and it’s no good.’

  Both Yoders laughed, and Emma said: ‘You have it wrong, Herman. When he followed your advice too closely, he couldn’t give the books away, but when he used his own imagination, they sold like pork sandwiches at Kutztown Fair.’

  This launched an extended discussion on how an artist ought to use raw material, and Ms. Benelli was helpful in her ability to cite specific examples of notable books that supported the most contradictory approaches to the problem. One speaker thought Herman Wouk had pulled a daring trick in adapting an entire world war to his purposes, but another said: ‘If I could write, I’d try something like Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. Take one subject and really dig in—small canvas, penetrating focus.’

  Emma said: ‘Or one area of society, like Grenzler.’ Everyone laughed at her eagerness to defend her husband, then Zollicoffer said: ‘I’d like to apologize for what maybe sounded ugly a little while back. Stands to reason Lukas did all right when he listened to what I said about us Dutch, then gave it his own twist.’

  ‘What do you say,’ Ms. Benelli asked, ‘to those who claim that the best book he’s ever written was The Shunning?’

  ‘Aha!’ Mrs. Zollicoffer broke in with her heavy German accent: ‘That’s what the Mister said when he read the book the second time: “Chust wunst the young feller got it right.” I think so too.’

  ‘That’s what I been tryin’ to say,’ Zollicoffer cried with intense excitement. ‘A good mix, truth like I said, imagination like his brain saw it. What is the book? A story about a man’s suspenders. None? Or one? Or two? I told him, but he told the world.’

  The only hint Yoder ever gave that he had been irritated by Streibert’s scathing review of Stone Walls came just as he was about to leave, for as he waited by the door for Emma to make her farewells, he took casually from a small bookcase tucked into a corner one of the Jalna novels that Streibert had compared to Yoder’s Grenzler series, to the detriment of both. ‘What were these books like?’ he asked: ‘I see you have six of them.’

  ‘Polite nothings,’ I said. ‘But in her day Mazo de la Roche was a sensation.’

  ‘Canadian, I believe?’

  ‘Yes. The Canadians ridiculed her books—pure fairy tales. But women readers in England and the United States devoured them. I read Whiteoaks of Jalna, in high school, I think it must have been, and wept at what the heroine had to suffer. Or it could have been one of the other books, they did blend one into another.’ Then I laughed and pointed my finger: ‘And you claim you never read your reviews. How else would you have heard of Jalna—or been interested in the name?’

  ‘Emma read the final paragraphs to me. I wish she hadn’t,’ and he would say no more, but I could see that my description of the famous Canadian books had displeased him.

  Toward six, when the guests were ready to depart, I asked Ms. Benelli to remain and take a bit of supper with me: ‘I’ve a question I’ve been wanting to ask, about literature,’ and we sat in easy chairs facing the big window as dusk settled over the valley. Before I could ask my question, she asked: ‘If Mr. Zollicoffer helps so much on Mr. Yoder’s books, does he share in the royalties?’

  ‘I happen to know the answer,’ I said. ‘A dista
nt cousin of mine belongs to the Valley Mennonite Church “up against Souderton” as they say.’ I pronounced it Sawwwdertunnn in the Dutch way. ‘That’s the Zollicoffers’ church, and when Mr. Yoder tried to pay Herman for his valuable help Zollicoffer said: “In the old days we all pitched in to help a neighbor build his barn. Today we help him build his book,” and he would accept nothing.’

  When Ms. Benelli marveled at such generosity, I chuckled: ‘Never underestimate these Pennsylvania Dutch. Zollicoffer told Yoder: “For me, not a penny. But our church is tryin’ to build an addition. You could help on that.” ’

  ‘And did he? I mean Yoder?’

  ‘Of course. He wanted to. But as soon as Zollicoffer had the promise he whispered to the church board: “Yoder will pay!” and the architect sat up all night enlarging his drawing of the extension that now serves as the meeting room. Next afternoon Yoder looked at the plans and said: “Nice. Go ahead.” Now Zollicoffer’s church wants to build what some would call a Sunday School, and believe me, they watch the best-seller list to see if Yoder will be able to afford it.’

  When our laughter subsided I broached a more serious subject, one that had for some time perplexed me: ‘Ms. Benelli, what do you know about an American poet who seems to exert an unhealthy influence on my grandson—Ezra Pound?’

  She drew in her breath, and for some moments sat frowning in concentration: ‘How to start? So many facets.’

  ‘Let’s try the beginning?’

  Choosing her words carefully, she said: ‘In the 1930s there was a little group of men at Cambridge University in England—and maybe the group wasn’t so little—who in their intellectual arrogance betrayed England by committing treason in favor of the Soviet Union. Pound became so infected with the ugly spirit of the age that he betrayed the United States by committing treason in favor of Mussolini and Hitler. But he wasn’t solely to blame. The times were so out of joint that writers fell into confusion: T. S. Eliot and his crowd were vicious anti-Semites, and it was popular to quote E. M. Forster’s famous statement that he’d rather betray his nation than his male friend.’