Daniel de Roulet considers the uncertainty of life’s realities, and talks with novelist Ron Hansen about faith, literature, and his new book, Exiles. Weathering hen Philip Yancey theBig questions interest Stormsme, but the Nouwen writes, “For a long time we published Disap- smaller, personal realities are where might not feel capable of accepting pointment with God I live and breathe. One doesn’t have our own life; we might keep fighting in 1988, he claimed to look far to see people asking such for a better or at least a different life.” to ask three ques- questions. Is my job secure? Will I This, I think, is the subject matter of tions that few Christians dare to ask keep my home? Perhaps the questions Hansen’s latest book, Exiles. Waloud: Is God unfair? Is God silent? are more quiet and constant. What The novel is a curious juxtaposi- Is God hidden? The 1997 edition’s will the test results from the doctor tion of two histories, intertwined with back cover seemed to seek to reassure be? Will my son or daughter get a poem. Gerard Manley Hopkins the reader even after Yancey’s reputa- back on the right track? If life does (1844-1889) was a bit of a prodigy, tion as a reputable Christian writer not go as planned, will I or someone born into an Anglican family that was established: “Yancey answers I love fall through the cracks? In produced poets and painters. By these questions with clarity, richness, those moments, will God answer my his eighteenth birthday he had been and biblical assurance. He takes us prayers? awarded both a poetry prize and beyond the things that make for disil- Ron Hansen in many ways is Philip a scholarship to Oxford, where he lusionment to a deeper faith.” Charles Yancey’s counterpart in the world earned a rare “double-first” degree. Swindoll was quoted as well, perhaps of fiction. He has been publishing At Oxford, he also met John Henry to give the reader an extra nod that short fiction and novels since the late Newman, who provided him with Yancey’s book indeed was safe read- 1970s, including an eclectic collection the answers he needed to convert to ing. of stories, Nebraska; novels such as Roman Catholicism. I like Yancey, but more because Desperadoes, Atticus, and Mariette As with everything he did, Hopkins of another phrase on that same back in Ecstasy; and a group of essays on put his all into his conversion. He cover: the writing is described as writing and the religious life called entered the Society of Jesus and, be- “insightful and deeply personal… A Stay against Confusion. He wrote lieving that the production of poetry [pointing] to the odd disparity be- the foreword to the tenth anniversary would bring him only into conflict tween our concept of God and the edition of Henri Nouwen’s Can You with his sacrificial service to God, realities of life.” Drink This Cup? In that classic work, he burned his early poems. Later, as 22 | The Covenant Companion Hansen tells the story, encouragement unrecognizable in premature old age. Much as from Philip Yancey’s from a brother during Hopkins’s Hopkins’s last confession, writes Han- work, one might hope for easy studies in Wales, the influence of sen, asked forgiveness for wasting his answers from Hansen, but finding theologian John Duns Scotus, and the poetic gift. such assurances would go against odd occurrence of a shipwreck in early This theme of storms, literal and that fact that life does not go as December of 1875, prompted the metaphorical, runs through Hansen’s planned—something about as central Jesuit to write again, resulting in his work: a sudden blizzard’s havoc on to Christian theology and the stories long poem, “The Wreck of the of the Bible as can be. The Deutschland.” … one might hope for easy answers tragedies that strike people The history that so touched from Hansen, but finding such of faith may be remembered Hopkins in the account of the and realized as meaningful shipwreck was the fate of five assurances would go against that fact exemplars, but at the time German Franciscan nuns, who that life does not go as planned. they are often inglorious and were sent from their order humiliating. They hold both among increasing anti-Catholic the divine and the very human. sentiment and legislation in Ger- But we rarely can do more than many to found a new faction of speculate at God’s purposes or we the order in, of all places, Mis- mistake them so that we are left souri. The great ship, a veteran simply to do God’s work, as best of many successful voyages and we can, with the sufficient grace staffed by an experienced crew, given to us. was confounded by a furious win- Hansen’s prose, often as poetic ter storm near the mouth of the and life-breathing as Hopkins’s River Thames. The vessel, unable own rhythms and meter, shows us to navigate in the weather, was both the shores of home and our torn apart by a shoal and then fin- mutual exile. Of Hopkins on his ished by the unabated wind and deathbed, Hansen writes, “But he wild seas of the storm. Although a is shipwrecked and foundered, the portion of the crew and passengers prey of the gales. A cold washrag survived, 157 people died less than paints his face, is folded onto four miles from shore. his forehead, but he cannot look Hopkins’s poem is now con- in time to see whose hand. The sidered a masterpiece, but in the contrariness of the body: to be 1870s and 1880s his verse seemed chilled with fever.” clearly experimental in its diction, And later: “The faces of friends meters, and rhythms, enough so and relatives who had died visited Ron Hansen as to keep his poems in obscurity him continually in his dreams, until well after his death. We even the Great Plains in “Wickedness,” each smiling and welcoming. Well wonder if through much of his life the opening story to Nebraska; the dressed, in a grand ballroom, with an he felt this work to be of primary unexpected news of a lost son in orchestra playing Henry Purcell. And importance. Instead of seeing himself Atticus; the conflict of devotion and five nuns, off to the side so he could as a poet, he went as a priest where the realities of human frailty and not see their faces. He felt a thumb the Society of Jesus assigned him, community in Mariette in Ecstasy; form a cross on his forehead and away from the beauty of his beloved the winter storm of Exiles. Even smelled the olive oil of anointing.” Wales to Sheffield, Oxford, London, the primary essay in A Stay against For that honesty and the faith that the slums of Liverpool, Manchester, Confusion is about the story and both embraces and struggles against and finally Glasgow, where he found then film Babette’s Feast, written by unexpected turns and storms—the himself, like the nuns about whom Danish author Isak Dinesen, whose life that Jesus holds out when he asks he once wrote, an exile—from home protagonist is exiled to Jutland and Daniel de Roulet is an English professor and and family, nature, any possibility of a life she never imagines, first by the author of Finding Your Plot in a Plotless World leisure, and even the sense of God’s political storms of France and then to (Brazos Press). He is at work on Fear Not: Why presence in his daily work. He died the shores of Denmark by a storm of the Church (and Just about Everyone Else) Needs Dangerous Christian Fiction, which includes a in Glasgow of typhoid fever, almost the cold North Sea. chapter on Ron Hansen’s writing. February 2009 | 23 if we are able to drink his cup— match the realism of Hopkins’s life me in some ways of your account of Hansen’s work should be read and with that of the sisters, for which another storm in “Wickedness” from appreciated. there is considerably less historical your collection of stories, Nebraska. information to draw from? Is there an interest in that particular recently had an opportunity to kind of situation, or is that a valid ask Hanson about his latest work, We hear of lives lost in a shipwreck connection? Exiles; his interest in the poet and we think it’s sad, a tragedy, but IHopkins; and the intersection of faith the feeling is frequently different I’m glad you saw the connection. A and literature. when we encounter stories, like blizzard or the foul weather of the sea that of Hopkins, in which lives are conjures fears of malevolent forces. What draws you to Gerard Manley lost because of misunderstanding, But it’s called wilderness for a reason. Hopkins as a poet? What drew you misplacement, mismanagement, The untamed, obeying only the laws to him as the subject of a historical and the like. Our pity is mixed with of physics and meteorology, can seem novel? chiding, especially when the chaos evil and out to get us. It’s easy to see seems due to some mental imbalance. why primitive peoples considered the I first became aware of Hopkins Like Hopkins’s friend Robert Bridges, earth and its atmosphere governed through Dylan Thomas, whose poems we become skeptical and disapproving by vengeful gods, for it doesn’t take I discovered in high school.