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. 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 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 filmBabette’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. A Thomas when internal forces, rather than much for us frail human beings to be biography noted the profound external forces such as weather and helpless: a few weeks without food, a influence of Hopkins on his work, accident, are involved. The five sisters’ few days without water, a few minutes so I sought it out and discovered lives were cut short in a tangential in freezing cold, and the consequences the source for Dylan Thomas’s vital kind of martyrdom, but I wanted to are fatal. You put a fictional character imagery and passionate, incantatory illustrate how Hopkins’s own longer in extremis and you have a perfect style. I’m still amazed by how much life was a kind of martyrdom in which basis for philosophical, theological, or Hopkins can squeeze into a sonnet. I he foundered in jobs for which he psychological interrogations. go back to the poetry again and again was ill-suited and was tormented by and always find something new in it. storms of depression. I was struck by your description of Looking at the Hopkins biogra- The five sisters were not wholly Hopkins as a prematurely old man phies available over the years, I saw invented. I had some rudimentary in Dublin and his final confession to that none of the authors really under- information, such as birthdates, birth the Rev. Tom Finley “of shutting off stood him. Many were frankly irreli- place, schooling, date of entrance the grace of inspiration by not paying gious so they were hopelessly shackled into the convent, and so on. And I enough attention to his poetic gift.” when trying to get to the heart of his supplemented that by reading biog- How much did Hopkins struggle in poetry. Even those who were more raphies of the nineteenth-century reconciling his talent as a spiritual kindred spirits often faltered when foundresses of religious orders in gift? From your experience, is this faced with the mystery and enigma in Europe, borrowing from them what- struggle common for people of faith Hopkins, and the rules of non-fiction ever seemed likely. I would have who write literature? hampered them. With a historical loved to have photos of each sister, novel I felt I could attract readers who but there was only one and from far People did age more quickly back were reluctant to read a biography, off: of them laid out in the basement then. Medical and dental care was construct a personality very close to of a church, awaiting the funeral appalling, for one, and the air and the real thing, and at the same time rites. I did know one of them, the nutrition not good. Even a hundred speculate about him in ways that were youngest, was little, and the oldest, years ago, the life expectancy was at least plausible. It was a labor of still in her late twenties, was six feet forty-seven years. I was stunned love. tall and possessed a deep voice. Even when I discovered that Franklin D. at a distance, I could see from the Roosevelt, that weak, elderly, infirm, I’m fascinated by the counter stories photograph that one was heavy, and not-with-it president at Yalta, was just of Hopkins and the Sisters of Saint one very fair. I let my imagination sixty-three years old when he died. I Francis as both being stories of exiles. take over from those hints. would have guessed at least eighty. What are you hoping the reader gains About realizing his talent: each from the stories and their juxtaposi- Your description of the storm that writer or artist or performer has tion? How difficult was it for you to shipwrecked the Deutschland reminds to contend with that, for it’s an

24 | The Covenant Companion The tragedies that strike people of faith may be essentially selfish and seemingly Decoding of Lana Morris by Laura unnecessary act. You hole up in remembered and realized and Tom McNeal, Breath by Tim your room and practice your art as meaningful exemplars, Winton, and Only the Lonely by Gary to the exclusion of other things. but at the time they are Zebrun. Whatever hour that Hopkins gave to his poetry was an hour he was often inglorious and You’re currently a member of an not giving to ministry or prayer or humiliating. They hold English department faculty, and I just social interaction. My brother assume that means teaching a certain is fond of noting that many people both the divine and the number of creative writing classes. have talent but they lack that inbuilt very human. I have heard a number of writers need, that “you gotta wantta,” that express a wide range of reactions to ends up in productivity. And it takes attuned to the sacramental nature of teaching writing. Are there advantages a particularly strong connection with the world—of God holding it together, for you in teaching? Does it affect God for one to be certain that he is animating it, and yet still giving it your own writing schedule? not just fooling himself in responding freedom, including the freedom to fail. to his deepest desires, especially when About the last question, yes, it others may be censorious. Had I It seems to me that “Christian fiction” does affect my writing schedule. I been Hopkins’s spiritual director—a has been divided into two halves— just looked at the clock and saw I laughable thought, I’ll admit—I those books one sees quarantined in needed to head to school. Were I would have pointed out that Jesus their own section between “New Age” a full-time writer I’d head into the would heal dozens of people and then and “Religion” at the local bookstore, scene I’m hankering to write. But the go away by himself to pray, leaving and those others that have escaped advantages of teaching, beyond the hundreds more unhealed. My sense is the quarantine and have successfully paycheck, are the zest and vitality that Hopkins and lots of other priests mingled with the section simply called you gain from interested students, the in his time would have felt guilty “Fiction.” Your books are among the opportunities you have to investigate imitating that. Even having said that, I latter. Any thoughts on this, or on the and try out new ideas, the avoidance notice in myself that other obligations risks and expectations about being a of isolation and narcissism, and the often have priority over my own person of faith who writes? colleague-imposed obligation you feel fiction writing. The struggle to get to keep the quality of your own work work done is ongoing. Quite often I hear from first novelists high. who suspect their manuscripts have You have commented at some length been rejected by agents or publishers Anything in the works? in A Stay against Confusion about because they entertain religious writing as sacrament, pointing to themes. It can be a hard sell, especially I’m collecting my stories into a book- writers such as John Gardner and if an author’s goal is to evangelize. I length manuscript and currently Hopkins, and to works such as have never read the books in those writing what may be the last Babette’s Feast. How does this idea quarantined areas and only saw one insertion. My collection Nebraska was continue to play out in your own of the Left Behind movies, so I don’t published twenty years ago, so I have writing, particularly Exiles? know much about the field or its been negligent with the form. I have a audience. In my own fiction writing, I novella in mind, too, but don’t know In my childhood catechism classes we just try to get as close as I can to the if that will join the stories or stand were taught that a sacrament is “a books of my heroes, imitating their on its own. You open the kitchen visible sign of an invisible grace.” And style and thrust and narratives, but cupboard and find cans of soup and there is a hymn with the lyrics, “What with a slightly franker exposition of for some reason your hand selects you hear in the dark you must speak the spiritual aspects of our lives. But one to pull down. My fiction projects in the light.” Our inward experiences, the worry about being pigeonholed or, are always instinctive like that—for our graced moments, need to be com- even worse, ignored, is very real. reasons I try not to interrogate, at municated to others to help them see least initially, one topic looms larger how they have been similarly graced. Who is on your reading list these than others and I find myself sneaking With Exiles I was able to be more days? up on a work-in-progress. ■ overt in that construction because the characters themselves were more I’m reading the fiction of friends:The

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