|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
The Timeless Moment
| Article
# : |
14989 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1988 |
2,757 Words |
| Author
: |
Harold Fickett
Harold Fickett is a novelist and critic whose most recent book
is Flannery O'Connor: Images of Grace. He is a fellow of
Milton Center at Friends University. |
And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. --T.S. Eliot
In Beyond the Bedroom Wall, Larry Woiwode introduced us to the Neumillers, rendering episodes in the life of this North Dakotan family like so many snapshots from a photo album. Woiwode's new novel, Born Brothers, takes up the lives of the Neumillers again--chiefly, this time, those of Charles and Jerome Neumiller. Born Brothers is more like a puzzle than a family album, though--a giant picture puzzle composed of a thousand pieces.
The total image of the novel, the picture on the box if you like, presents the life of Charles Neumiller, the novel's principal character and its narrator. Throughout the book Charles addresses his brother Jerome, telling of their life together as children and his own life as an adult. Reading the book is something like overhearing an intimate conversation. In the end we arrive at an understanding of Charles's life that is grounded in the love the brothers share. Because they are "born brothers," Charles can dispense with self-justification and confront the truth about himself and his experience.
This picture, though, emerges only gradually and requires a kind of assembly. The novel at first seems to consist of a thousand anecdotes, narrated in the present tense, whose edges hook and grip and button into one another. These incidents unreel like the scenes of a film. Each has its own story logic so that it nearly stands as a short story by itself.
As we read, groups of these scenes begin to
... (1998 of 15763 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
