Half Past Noon

Fiction, being the game of not quite, is the place of not-quite-belief. Precisely what is a danger in religion is the very fabric of fiction. In religion, a belief that is only “as if” is either the prelude to a loss of faith, or an instance of bad faith (in both senses of the phrase). If religion is true, one must believe. And if one chooses not to believe, one’s choice is marked under the category of a refusal, and is thus never really free: it is the duress of a recoil. Once religion has revealed itself to you, you are never free. In fiction, by contrast, one is always free to choose not to believe, and this very freedom, this shadow of doubt, is what helps to constitute fiction’s reality.
– James Wood, “Introduction: The Limits of Not Quite,” in The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief, page xii.

I begin with this quote because I think it explains the context for my disappointment with Wood’s Book Against God. In the same introduction, he makes the claim that “it was not just science but perhaps the novel itself which helped to kill Jesus’s divinity, when it gave us a new sense of the real, a new sense of how the real disposes itself in a narrative—and then in turn a new skepticism toward the real as we encounter it in narrative” (page xiv).

If you had handed me The Book Against God and told me that it was written by a Presbyterian minister, I would probably have thought it was brilliant. As I pointed out earlier, everything in this novel—the repulsive nature of lead character Thomas Bunting to the very admirable speech of Bunting’s father—seems to argue against atheists. I’ll go so far as to say that this novel suggest that atheists are childish men who want nothing more than freedom to do absolutely nothing, to sponge off their loved ones and shirk all forms of responsibility. Because that is how Thomas Bunting ends up being portrayed: his life doesn’t prove the validity of his atheistic faith.

Now, compare my impressions of the novel with the above quotes from The Broken Estate. How on earth do they mesh? This is what bothers me about the novel, it’s why I keep thinking about it despite feeling like I was tricked into finishing it. I simply cannot fathom what Wood was trying to communicate. Everything I’ve read about Wood has suggested that he is no fan of Christianity. Why then does this novel offer us a despicable germ of humanity as a spokesman for atheism?

Obviously, you can’t apply all characters universally. I understand that. But then, why are the most admirable characters in this novel Christians? Bunting’s father, for example, is a fine man: he is patient with his son’s irresponsibility, loves his son to the point of overindulgence, and humbles himself in the eyes of the world by fleeing the academy for a parish. Even Thomas’s ex-wife Jane—the object of all his desires, his only hope for a stable life—makes some claim to Christianity. The people that, like Bunting, hate God lead unhappy lives. Isn’t that weird?

A couple of random thoughts on James Wood’s Book Against God (after an hour of heavy snow shoveling).

First. If Wood is arguing for atheism, then his only convincing argument in this book is, “Philosophy on its own proves nothing—you need to prove your beliefs through your life.” And Thomas Bunting never learns this. To the end, he remains a selfish, irresponsible man who can probably look forward to an old age without friends or family. Of course, this is a valid point that goes both ways: Christians cannot truly argue for their faith without a solid Christian walk with God. And this is something that Thomas Bunting’s father (Peter Bunting, an Anglican priest) has learned:

“You know, [says Peter, speaking to his wayward son] not long before you were born, I had a crisis of faith. Curiously, it’s why I became a priest. Or rather, I resolved the crisis by leaving the intellectualism of the university for the devotion of the priest’s life. I didn’t know the answers to any of my questions, and decided in the end that living a Christlike life was the only answer to them. It’s why I am interested in Tim Biffen, because he so reminds me of myself when I was a young man. It’s very very important not to be corrupted by theology.” (page 225)

Second. Going off of that last quote, it appears that The Book Against God is really quite the opposite. Peter Bunting (the priest who abandoned a theological teaching role for the Church) is the one who seems to have his head on straight. And despite his son’s snide despising, Peter very obviously loves him, tries everything he knows to love his son back into the faith. Peter’s efforts are admittedly feeble (he doesn’t do much more than challenge his son intellectually), but I feel that the end leaves some window of hope, some chance that his son will stop playing at Jonah and admit that he’s just lying to himself.

Third. Atheism (at least as described by Thomas Bunting) is pure immaturity. It’s for people who don’t want the responsibility of worshiping a God, who don’t want to be told what to do, whose chief law is themselves. Bunting writes at the end:

Oh, Father, there were days so exciting when I was a little boy that each morning was a delicious surprise, a joy adults can only mimic when they are fortunate enough to make a long journey by night and rise in an undiscovered place in the morning and see it in the first light. When anyone asks me, I say that my childhood was happy, and for once, for once, I am not lying. Wasn’t it an orchard, my childhood? But why, then, the worm? Why the worm? Tell me. (page 257)

This end is moving, until you realize that Thomas Bunting simply needs to grow up. His complaint with the world is not really, “Why are you so rotten?” but “Why do you require so much of me?” And even secularists can shake their heads at that kind of thinking.

In the end, I really don’t know what Wood was aiming at. If he’s arguing for atheism, then he’s ironically made it very unattractive and unappealing. Regardless, after reading The Book Against God I felt that I had been tricked into finishing it: it wasn’t until I was near the end that I realized that Bunting had no solution to his troubles, no way out of his follies. This book is like watching a traffic accident happen in slow motion, and despite the thoughts inspired above, definitely not worth reading.

This book was a disappointment. My impression coming into this novel was that Wood is an aesthetic critic, all-too-willing to skewer ideologically driven fiction. Even my own (albeit limited) exposure to Wood’s writing backed this assumption. His reviews are enjoyable primarily because he writes as one who loves to read and who loves stories. But The Book Against God (which is apparently a semi-autobiographical novel) is weighed down by so much philosophical dialogue that it becomes more of a treatise than a story.

Thomas Bunting (our narrator and central character) approaches all spheres of life through the lens of philosophy and abhors God. He is a sharp thinker, well-read, and completely unable to support himself. While his wife works all day, he sits at home smoking, reading philosophy, working on a secret Book Against God, and ignoring his already-seven-years-late Ph.D. thesis. He is a most unattractive hero, and as the last third of the book proves, he is one of the most despicable anti-heroes to ever make an appearance in fiction. No matter how much you agree with or hate God, you simply cannot like Thomas Bunting by the end of this book. His greatest and last crime is a dive into Onanism (in an attempt to prevent his wife from conceiving), and after this incident, he is completely unsympathetic.

The biggest fault of this novel is simply that Bunting is an inhumane character. He has no sympathetic traits, no good points. An incorrigible liar, you quickly learn not to trust his narrating, and his interactions with his parents are ungrateful and unfair. Sure, they may be imperfect parents and people, but they certainly do not deserve the rage he exhibits around them. Wood has given us a book about a wretch, someone whom no one can love, but to what end? This novel is (if anything) an argument for God, a proof of philosophy’s inability to stand by itself, a suggestion that atheists aren’t much different than screaming toddlers wreaking unrest in grocery stores. Moreover, there’s nothing to enjoy or learn here. This is a book I would never recommend to anyone, because it’s chiefly unnecessary—the only reason I picked it up and finished it is because I’m interested in Wood.

Wood is most famous for coining the term “hysterical realism,” a phrase applied to the verbose, bloated fiction of writers like Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and others. But I think it could just as easily be applied to this book. Its only lack in that category is length: a reader has only to suffer a mere 257 pages of intellectual refuse courtesy of Mr Bunting. But Bunting is certainly hysterical (most appallingly so at his father’s funeral) and, well, there is a certain tinge of realism here: I can’t see someone with Bunting’s ideals have a much better life. Perhaps this is a lesson about labeling; it is certainly not much of a lesson in fiction itself.