●●●●●
Robert Coover has returned to the scene of his very first novel with a 1,000-page sequel that is just as bizarre and as brilliant. The Origin of the Brunists, published in 1966, described the genesis and disgrace of the fundamentalist cult of Brunism in a decaying Western American town. Now, five years on, the Brunists have returned to West Condon for the day of Rapture, when the righteous will be saved and sinners damned for all eternity… that is, if they’ve got the date right.
First impressions are chaotic. The narrative flits, seemingly at random, from one wacky character to the next. There’s Abner Baxter, the bible-thumping zealot whose apocalyptic notions are too extreme even for the Brunists; Wesley Edwards, who finds one day that his brain has been inhabited by an argumentative Jesus Christ, with whom he bickers aloud; the Blaurock children and their madcap playground game of “Apocalypse”. Throw in several Christian Hells Angels, plenty of writhing fits of religious ecstasy, a somewhat seedy teenage romance and some very lax gun control, and you’re getting close to the carnival that is The Brunist Day of Wrath.
This may seem like excess to some, like the New York Times reviewer who wrote of the original: “It’s a pity Mr. Coover ran out of ideas before words”. The style of the Brunist novels is excessive, but that’s the point. Instead of a singular story we have a sprawling, multi-perspectival collage — like sitting in a supermarket security room and watching the floor from every angle at once. And even still, somehow, there is enough forward motion for a gripping pace, although it does take a few hundred pages to get going.
As well as a scathing critique of Christian fundamentalism, this is a story about stories. Events are seen to morph and solidify in new shapes as they are reprocessed through the lenses of myth and history. Narrative, of one sort or another, reduces experience to a singular, linear chain of occurrences. The reality conveyed by the newspapers differs greatly from that which will go down in Brunist lore, and both share only tenuous links with what “actually happened”. Characters who seem almost sensible from inside their heads become “cretins” or “ugly smartalecky sluts” from another’s standpoint. “Life’s a story,” observes Sally, “and you either write it or get written.” In contrast, this book lets the narrative spread laterally to create an intricate fabric of perspectives.
Many of Coover’s postmodernist contemporaries address similar narrative concerns, but few are so legitimately funny. His off the wall dialogue and deadpan character sketches will provoke laughter at the most apparently inappropriate situations. Whatever the key to this brand of dark, off-the-wall humour, Coover has it. He had it in 1966, and he still has it now.
