 | |
| Author | Frederick Buechner |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | New York: Atheneum |
| Preceded by | The Final Beast |
| Followed by | The Book of Bebb |
The Entrance to Porlock is the fifth novel by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. It was first published in 1970 by Atheneum, New York.
Peter Ringkoping has caused a stir within his family. Owner of a second hand bookstore, the ageing author has slowly receded from relationships with his relatives, preferring instead the company of the ghost-like figures of dead authors, who have composed the books that he sells on to his customers. A constant source of worry for his long-suffering wife, Alice, Peter’s whimsical nature becomes a cause for concern to his sons also, with his announcement that he intends to bequeath ‘Shangri-La’, ‘a sizeable tract of land’ [1] on Tinmouth Mountain, to an old friend, Hans Strasser. The warden of a community for people with intellectual and emotional disabilities, Strasser hopes to make use of the land to further care for those in his care.
Worried that their father has either lost his mind or that he might be a victim of fraud, and frustrated at the prospect of losing part of their inheritance, Peter’s family protest the arrangement. Unmoved by their opposition, the elderly storekeeper decides to make the journey to Strasser’s community before signing the deed papers. Frustrated by his stubbornness, Peter’s sons, Nels and Tommy decide to accompany him, bringing along with them Tommy’s own son, Tip. At nineteen-years-old, Tip is still struggling with the problems of adolescence, and his search for his own identity has reached a crisis point, in his inability to divulge his love for a girl, Libba Vann. Throughout the journey, Tip writes a long letter to her that he will never send, in which he pours out his fears and hopes, and his general sense of disorientation. His father, Tommy, will also go on his own journey, as he begins to shed the immaturity that he has carried with him into middle-age, grappling with, and finally accepting, the inevitability of his own death, and accepting the realisation that he has to gainfully shoulder his responsibilities.
At the very centre of the group’s fraught journey, however, is the internal struggle of Nels, the eldest of Peter’s sons. A successful man, Nels has risen to become the headmaster of the Putnam preparatory school for boys. Rigidly obsessed with the importance of regulations and systems, Nels struggles to decide the fate of one of the boys, who has been caught taking advantage of some prescription drugs. Facing pressure from several members of staff, all of whom advise leniency, the situation is made even more complex by the news that the boy has committed suicide. Like Tommy, Nels is engaged in a struggle with the reality of his own mortality, and the tragedy of the death of one of his students brings him out of his neurotic obsession over the health of his heart and into deeper reflections.
The group’s physical journey ends upon their arrival at Strasser’s community. As the ageing Austrian takes them on a tour around the village he keeps watch over, he imparts a great deal of wisdom to each of the characters, inquiring after their lives and struggles, and speaking of the simple innocence of many of those that live in the community. Their internal pilgrimages, though greatly advanced by their journey together, are only just beginning, as is the restoration of their respective relationships with one another.
Buechner reflects on the themes that run through The Entrance to Porlock in his autobiographical work, Now and Then (1983). Concerning the title he chose for the novel, he writes that it is a 'reference to the visitor from Porlock who woke Coleridge out of the visionary trance of Kubla Khan.' He goes on to suggest that the central theme of the novel is 'the tension between everyday reality and the reality of dreams, of imagination'. [9]
Buechner further reveals that the plot is ‘loosely based on The Wizard of Oz, with ‘an old man…in search of a heart’ who ‘loses touch with his family’:
One son, a pathetic failure and compulsive joker, is the Scarecrow in search of a brain. Another son, the bullying and hypochondriacal dean of a school like Exeter who fantasizes continually about receiving the farewell visits of friends as he lies dying in a hospital, is the Cowardly Lion in search of courage. And there is a grandson – confused, introverted, adolescent – who, like Dorothy, is in search of home, if only a home inside himself. The Wizard is an Austrian who runs a community for the mentally and emotionally disturbed, and it is in their relationship to him that they all move at least a step closer to finding what is missing in themselves. [10]
With its explorations into the inner lives of each of its characters, the novel is emblematic of the dream-like quality that would become one of the hallmarks of the Buechnerian style. Subtly psychological, The Entrance to Porlock is concerned with writing itself, and with the creation of character, as much as the characters’ own discoveries of the truth about themselves. Suicide also returns as a theme central to the novel, as do developing theological preoccupations. In addition to the ‘search for identity’ [11] Dale Brown writes that ‘Buechner weaves into The Entrance to Porlock themes related to his growing theological vocabulary – loss of innocence, the attainment of full humanity, and the presence of grace’. [12] Additionally, he notes that the novel is a continuation of ‘the big idea that runs like a steady current through his career – the possibility of joy in the midst of puzzling reality.’ [13]
The Entrance to Porlock was the first novel composed by Buechner while in full residence at his family home in Vermont. Having left his teaching post at Exeter, the author began his fifth novel in the midst of several difficulties. In Now and Then, he writes that the process of writing was paralysing: 'I was not just a man writing a book, but a man watching a man writing a book and at the same time continually asking himself whether it was a book worth writing.' The writing process was also affected by broader national events: 'To make matters still worse,' he continues, 'that was the year when both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were murdered, and I remember wondering if there was anything the world needed much less to have added to its pain than another book.' [14]
It was during the process of writing The Entrance to Porlock that Buechner was invited by Charles P. Price to give the William Belden Noble Lectures at Harvard. In Now and Then Buechner writes,
If Harvard had invited me to come pick up gum wrappers with a pointed stick, I suppose I would have been flattered, and though I'd never heard of the Noble Lectures, the men who had given them in earlier years were a group to conjure with – Teddy Roosevelt, for some reason that was never made clear to me, had been the first, but from then on they had been people like H. Richard Niebuhr and George Buttrick, and even Paul Tillich had accepted the assignment but died before the time came round. Since I was hardly a theologian myself, let alone in anything remotely resembling the league of the others as I wrote Price, what could I possibly lecture about if I decided to risk lecturing at all? Perhaps something in the area of “religion and letters," he wrote back, and it was the word letters that did it. [15]
Buechner delivered the Noble Lectures in the Memorial Church of Harvard University during the winter of 1969. These lectures were published in the same year as The Entrance to Porlock with the title The Alphabet of Grace (1970).
Buechner’s fifth novel was generally well received by critics and literary academics. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor , Diana Loercher roundly praised The Entrance to Porlock:
There appears every now and again a lyrical, dreamlike novel that is more poem than prose, more parable than story. Such novels incapacitate conventional critical faculties; we do not understand and evaluate them rationally but rather are immersed, lulled, and transported, as in listening to music, into a shadowy world where feelings are evoked and nothing is explained. The Entrance to Porlock is that kind of novel. One is not sure after reading it whether one has read or imagined it. The contradictory sense of time contributes to this blurred impression. The entire novel takes place within 24 hours, but the movement in the characters' minds back and forth in time and the spiritual distance they travel makes the actual time span seem immeasurable. [16]
In her 1988 study, Frederick Buechner: novelist of the lost and found, Marjorie Casebier McCoy claims that the novel ‘display[s] the virtuoso talent’ of Buechner’s earlier work. McCoy is especially appreciative of the intertextuality of The Entrance to Porlock, noting that its ‘artful retelling of The Wizard of Oz’ is ‘related with compelling warmth and engaging fantasy’. [17] Though quick to assert that the novel is ‘not a copy of The Wizard of Oz’, but rather ‘a powerful story in its own right’, [18] the critic admires the author’s use of its themes: ‘in Buechner’s hands’, she writes, ‘The Wizard of Oz becomes a metaphor for the whole of human life’. [19] Amos N. Wilder, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, was similarly laudatory, writing that in the novel ‘Buechner again shows his unique talent for making wonders real and the real wonderful.’ [20]
In his review of The Entrance to Porlock, published in Southwest Review , Rudolph Nelson notices that the novel ‘included no mention whatever of explicitly religious ideas or experiences’. [21] Despite this, he concludes that ‘the concerns are still no less ultimate, however nonreligious the language’. Critic Dale Brown concurs with this view, suggesting that it ‘is another way of exploring the possibilities of grace, the truth of fairy tale’. [22] Brown continues: ‘with his fifth novel, Buechner nonetheless reiterates his belief that reality, though puzzling and difficult, is fraught with meaning’. [23] Concerning the novel’s theological content, critic James Woelfel writes in Theology Today : 'In Porlock as in the earlier novels, Buechner paints on a small canvas, exploring the personal hungerings for meaning and love and the complex and fragile relationships among a small group of people bound together by ties of family and friendship.’ [24]
Godric is the tenth novel by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. Set in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the novel tells the semi-fictionalised life story of the medieval Roman Catholic saint, Godric of Finchale. It was first published in 1980 by Atheneum, New York, and was a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.
The Book of Bebb is a tetralogy of novels by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. Published in 1971 by Atheneum, New York, Lion Country is the first in the Book of Bebb series. It was followed by Open Heart (1972), Love Feast (1974), and Treasure Hunt (1977). In 1972 Lion Country was named a finalist in the National Book Award for Fiction. The Book of Bebb is an edited single volume edition containing the four novels, and it was published by Atheneum, New York, in 1979.
This is a list of published works by writer and theologian Frederick Buechner.
A Long Day’s Dying is the debut novel of the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. Published in 1950 with Alfred A. Knopf, the novel was received with critical acclaim.
Brendan is the eleventh novel by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. It was first published in 1987 by Atheneum, New York, and it won the Christianity and Literature Book Award for Belles-Lettres in the same year.
The Son of Laughter is the twelfth novel by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. The novel was first published in 1993 by Harper, San Francisco. In the same year it was named ‘Book of the Year’ by the Conference on Christianity and Literature.
The Storm is the fourteenth novel by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. The novel was first published in 1998 by Harper, San Francisco.
The Return of Ansel Gibbs is the third novel by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. It was first published in 1958 by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
The Final Beast is the fourth novel by the American author and theologian, Frederick Buechner. It was first published in 1965 by Atheneum, New York.
Now and Then: a memoir of vocation (1983), is the second of four partial autobiographies written by Frederick Buechner. Published in 1983, the work describes the author’s life from his conversion to Christianity in 1953, at the age of twenty-seven, up to his residency in Vermont at the age of fifty-seven.
Telling Secrets: a memoir (1991), is the third of four partial autobiographies written by Frederick Buechner. Published in 1991, the work considers in depth several scenes and events from the author's life, from his father’s suicide through to his time spent as a visiting professor at Wheaton College.
The Alphabet of Grace is a collection of addresses on Christianity and faith by Frederick Buechner. It was first conceived as a trilogy of sermons, delivered at the Harvard Memorial Church in the winter of 1969. It was subsequently published by Seabury Press, NY, in 1970.
The Hungering Dark is a collection on meditations on Christianity and faith by Frederick Buechner. Preceded by The Magnificent Defeat, it is the second in a series of sermon anthologies preached in 1959 during the author's time at the Phillips Exeter Academy. The Hungering Dark is Buechner's second non-fiction publication, and it was published by Seabury Press, NY, in 1968.
Wishful Thinking: a theological ABC, later reissued as Wishful Thinking: a seeker’s ABC, is a collection of meditations on faith, Christianity, and theology by Frederick Buechner. It is the first of Buechner’s lexical trilogy, which includes Peculiar Treasures (1979) and Whistling in the Dark (1988). Published in 1973 by Harper and Row, Wishful Thinking is Buechner’s fourth non-fiction work.
The Faces of Jesus: a life story is a collection of meditations by Frederick Buechner on the life and person of Jesus Christ. The work gathers and discusses a selection of artistic portrayals of Jesus, including a variety of forms, from tapestry to sculpture. Published in 1974 by Simon and Schuster, Faces of Jesus is Buechner’s fifth non-fiction work.
Telling the Truth: the Gospel as tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale, is an anthology of essays by Frederick Buechner on the subject of homiletics. It was first composed for and delivered at the Yale Divinity School Lyman Beecher Lecture series in 1976. Telling the Truth was subsequently published in 1977 by Harper Collins. It is Buechner's sixth non-fiction work.
Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who, is a collection of meditations on the stories of biblical figures, written by Frederick Buechner. It is the second of Buechner's lexical trilogy, which includes Wishful Thinking (1973) and Whistling in the Dark (1988). Published in 1979 by Harper and Row, Peculiar Treasures is Buechner's seventh non-fiction work.
A Room Called Remember is an anthology of sermons, meditations, articles, and addresses, authored by Frederick Buechner. Published in 1984 by Harper and Row, A Room Called Remember is Buechner's eighth non-fiction work.
Whistling in the Dark: a doubter's dictionary, first issued as Whistling in the Dark: an ABC theologized, is a collection of meditations on faith, Christianity, and theology by Frederick Buechner. It is the third and final instalment of Buechner's lexical trilogy, which includes Wishful Thinking (1973) and Peculiar Treasures (1979). Published in 1988 by Harper and Row, Whistling in the Dark is Buechner's ninth non-fiction work.
The Clown in the Belfry is an anthology of sermons, lectures, and articles, authored by Frederick Buechner. Published in 1992 by Harper and Row, The Clown in the Belfry is Buechner's tenth non-fiction work.