October Light (Arena Books) [Paperback]

On the surface, nothing much happens in October Light. Crusty Vermont farmer James Page chases his older sister upstairs and locks her in her bedroom. Subsisting on apples and the trashy novel she finds on her nightstand, Sally refuses to come out until their argument gets resolved. Ultimately, it does. Yet within these narrow confines, the novel encompasses the play of nature on the senses, the politics of change, and the ways in which memory, loss and guilt light up the synapses until they wink like fireflies on a soft June evening.

Sally and James are feuding over Sally's autonomy. She's moved into James' house because she's outlived her money and has nowhere to go. It's the mid seventies, and James has holed up in his tumbledown farmhouse to fight a rear guard action against trashy modernity and moral relativism. Sally's more progressive. She watches TV (until James blasts it to smithereens with his shotgun) and seriously believes that Democrats are people too. Sally won't be enslaved by James' rigidity and rages, and won't come down until he agrees to give her breathing room.

The book Sally reads in her room is called Smugglers of Lost Souls' Rock. This novel within a novel takes up about a quarter of October Light. It's a tale of marijuana smugglers off the coast of California; it's chock full of orgies, flying saucers and more barroom philosophizing about man's fate than any novel can bear. Fortunately some pages are missing, so we're spared some of the existential exegeses, but not enough. Gardner uses Sally's reaction to Smugglers of Lost Soul's Rock, to tackle what constitutes truth in a work of fiction; the faux novel also serves as a brilliant, hilarious send up of the seventies' version of truthiness.

October Light builds skillfully towards a quiet but satisfying resolution. We learn why James is so angry, and over time see that the struggle between brother and sister has widened to encompass a universal dilemma: which changes are worth embracing? Resisting? How can we tell the difference? When do we have no choice? James and Sally's struggle perfectly captures the cultural dilemmas of Americans in the mid-seventies. The novel also contains some beautifully written scenes, the best being an old farmer, now dying, talking about the way he experiences the changing of the seasons in Vermont. It's one of the most moving passages I've ever read in a novel.

John Gardner is underrated as a novelist. Part of this is self-inflicted, since he took potshots at many of his peers. Like a master carpenter, what Gardner builds is solid, elegant and clever in its joins. Sometimes curmudgeonly in his opinions, he nevertheless comes to his characters with an open heart. In his post World War II novelist cohort, only Saul Bellow ranks above him, mainly because Bellow was slicker about folding big ideas into the plots of his novels. If you like this book, treat yourself to Nickel Mountain, Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and his last, largely unread book, Mickelsson's Ghosts, which is a great American novel.

I no longer give 5 stars to everything I like, but this is a book I return to again and again. It is a great 5 star book by a great 5 star author and a brilliant teacher (see The Art of Fiction). I hope it will be reissued so that more people can discover a gem of twentieth century writing. Do whatever you can to find a copy. It's a true hoot. Hopefully your local library will still have October Light in the collection.

John Gardner has created two great characters in 72 year old James Page and his older sister Sally Abbot. James, born on the fourth of July, is fiercely independent. His life's work has been caring for "dumb animals: horses, dairy cows, bees, pigs, chickens, and, indirectly, men. " James is truly shocked by Sally's disrespect for his opinions on the state of things in general. "Though he was never a great talker--certainly not in comparison to her, she could lecture your arm off--he knew a signifcant fact or two, knew by thunder, a truth or two--a truth or two that was still worth getting out of bed for."

Sally Page, a widow, has moved in with her brother James, because once the well to do wife of a dentist, she is now destitute. Sally does not adapt well to James' idea of a good life (one without television, nuclear energy, opinionated females, or home improvements.) "She'd preached him a sermon off television about the Equal Rights Amendment. He'd been amazed by all she said--shocked and flabbergasted, though he knew from magazines that there were people who believed such foolishness." They shake each other up, "She'd seemed as astonished by it all as he was, so astonished to discover what he thought that he almost came to doubt it," and ultimately survive themselves and each other.

The pleasure of laughing out loud one minute and then crying quietly in recognition almost in the next moment are among the literary gifts that Gardner bestows. Within the main story of the crises in James and Sally's relationship, precipitated by the murder of Sally's television set, is another lurid, slyly compelling trash novel, a "blockbuser," which Sally reads while locked up in her room subsisting on a diet of apples. Sally's relationship with the book she is reading are some of the most satisfying moments in October Light. "She began to fall in with the book's snappy rhythms, becoming herself more wry, more wearily disgusted with the world..."

As the spat between James and Sally becomes more grave and less of a rollick, Sally's trash novel becomes an hilarious rollercoaster ride. Sally hangs on for dear life. We learn through her musings a little more about the past and why the two siblings have only each other to rely on now. Much occurs to resolve the spat between James and Sally. And it's all perfectly satisfying, like true October light. If this book were a painting, I would imagine a Wyeth interior with a Bosch on the wall. Fasten your seatbelts and prepare to be entertained.

Here, in one of Gardner's finest novels, domestic warfare between two spirited, overly-opinionated senior citizens--brother and sister--brings chaos to their community of friends and family. Gardner's story says much about that vital tension at the heart of American life--the conflict between tradition and progressivism--and about the difficult business of pushing beyond this conflict to find a place where one can stand, secure and untroubled, beneath the haunted, holy light that comes with an autumn in the Land of the Free.