#4: In the Beauty of the Lilies

The quest for the Great American Novel has possibly been going on for as long as there have been great American novels; and it's probably not a quest that will ever have an objective conclusion. Martin Amis believes it ended with Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March, which I haven't read, although I do own it, and like the band. Does that count? No, I figured it didn't.

I suppose a Great American Novel needs to capture something deep inside the American spirit, and needs also to have a grandeur of vision that we tend to associate with various Large and Significant works, like Moby Dick or The Grapes of Wrath. It probably also needs to stand the test of time, so we generally opt for works that have continued to be held in high esteem decades, even centuries, after they were written.

But a recent contender - written a mere 11 years ago - would have to be John Updike's In the Beauty of the Lilies. It's one of my all-time favourites; I did, in fact, write my Honours thesis on it. And it certainly has a grandeur of vision, spanning almost all of the 20th century, covering, in essence, the decline of an American family, and possibly the decline of a century, and a nation.

Updike has often been placed in the elated company of the great 19th century American novelists like Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the comparison is easy enough to understand. Both Updike and Hawthorne, at their best, wrote fable-like, sometimes almost magical narratives of an America that was torn apart by fundamental tensions; and these tensions would be played out in the lives of their heroes and heroines, whether Hester Prynne, the Pyncheon family, Rabbit Angstrom, or, in the case of Lilies, the vast and directionless Wilmot family.

The story of the Wilmots in the 20th century is utterly unforgettable, incorporating, in Updike's magnificent style, global and local events, politics, religion and popular culture, and capturing with perfect pitch the spirit and feel of each age that the story covers. Each of the novel's substantial four chapters - each one covering a new generation of the Wilmot family - stands alone as a compelling story, and yet together these chapters create a narrative of heartbreaking urgency and majesty. And the conclusion, in a Waco-type religious "community" in the mountains, is both the devastating culmination of all that has occurred in the Wilmot family up to this point, and a deeply challenging indictment upon the spiritual deadness of late 20th-century Western society.

There is always going to be too much to say about a novel like this. I once wrote more than 12,000 words on it, and even then felt like I was barely scratching the surface. The only way, really, to do it justice, is to read it. You may decide that Moby Dick is still the Great American Novel, but this recent addition to the American literary canon is, if nothing else, a great American novel. And, as such, it needs to be read.