At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Peter Matthiessen, 1965.
Stunning. Ambitious, a novel of ideas aiming for the most profound intent.
An American midwest missionary family come to a hellish South American village, at the edge of the Amazon, to convert the fiercely independent Niaruna tribe. They are preceded at this base camp by another missionary from their sect, and his beautiful wife. The newly arrived missionary family has its own internal fracture, and the missionary husband cannot help but be attracted to his colleague's wife. The corrupt, ruthless, local police chief needs to tame the Niaruna also, as the government wants their land for precious natural resources. And also at this village are a pair of disgraced, dissolute and desperate American adventurers, one of whom is himself half native American.
No one is innocent; all just vary in their degree of foolishness and delusion; except for Billy, the son of the new missionaries, who is simply a boy in awe of the adventure and beauty around him. This potent mixture of desires and conflicts cannot but explode into tragedy.
Challenging, uncomfortably close in its dead-on see-through knowingness of hypocrisy and vanity. A chronicle of the struggle between naivete and innocence, between stupidity and simplicity. And at the same time so poignant in places that I couldnt bear to read and had to put the book aside. The portrait of Billy, in particular, is sketched obliquely but skillfully, and reminds me of John Henry from "A Member of the Wedding".
People have compared the book to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, and to the film The Mission. In some ways maybe it is derivative, particularly from Conrad. But more accessible and direct.
4*
Oct 2013
Peter Matthiessen, 1965.
Stunning. Ambitious, a novel of ideas aiming for the most profound intent.
An American midwest missionary family come to a hellish South American village, at the edge of the Amazon, to convert the fiercely independent Niaruna tribe. They are preceded at this base camp by another missionary from their sect, and his beautiful wife. The newly arrived missionary family has its own internal fracture, and the missionary husband cannot help but be attracted to his colleague's wife. The corrupt, ruthless, local police chief needs to tame the Niaruna also, as the government wants their land for precious natural resources. And also at this village are a pair of disgraced, dissolute and desperate American adventurers, one of whom is himself half native American.
No one is innocent; all just vary in their degree of foolishness and delusion; except for Billy, the son of the new missionaries, who is simply a boy in awe of the adventure and beauty around him. This potent mixture of desires and conflicts cannot but explode into tragedy.
Challenging, uncomfortably close in its dead-on see-through knowingness of hypocrisy and vanity. A chronicle of the struggle between naivete and innocence, between stupidity and simplicity. And at the same time so poignant in places that I couldnt bear to read and had to put the book aside. The portrait of Billy, in particular, is sketched obliquely but skillfully, and reminds me of John Henry from "A Member of the Wedding".
People have compared the book to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, and to the film The Mission. In some ways maybe it is derivative, particularly from Conrad. But more accessible and direct.
4*
Oct 2013
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