One of our newsletter readers refers to Tender Victory as TC's liberal novel … despite a small communist subplot. It was published before circumstances incapacitated her moral compass (see below). There is an Open
Road promotion today. I put the URL for obtaining that volume at the end of this newsletter, along with the review by the newsletter reader I just mentioned. The remainder of this newsletter is on the 3rd (and final) part of my series: Dear and Glorious Physician, TCs most significant volume.
Dear and Glorious Physician (DAG) wasn't TCs first attempt to engage the mysteries of how some men have risen above the common lot to god-like stature. That would be in The Earth is the Lord's about Genghis Khan (1940). This, her first novel that featured her quasi-historical method, gives us her vision of what her protagonist accomplished, or how they were perceived, where the historical record did not.
We can anchor ourselves in a writer's life by comparing what they tried to do, with what succeeded in sales. Also, in what succeeded in influence. In both areas even a single novel has a timeline, and a constituency. That is, when and with whom did it succeed (or fail). Especially, when we can associate it with works of others that come later.
This is my 3rd (and final) Part of the significance of DAG to TC. I start with a 3-part prelude consisting of a story from my own life, that will play a role in the last of the following three topics.
- TC's engagement with the Meaning of Life:
- With whom in history she wanted to Affiliate:
- The seldom discussed distinction between the Wealthy and the Elites:
My initial story exemplifies of how I came upon topic C in my very young adulthood. Having it in particular details shows many complications that get obscured today. It also shows how time – especially with how generations change, something that TC didn't believe – alters the significance of your life's details.
Christmas, Flint Michigan, 1963: Prelude
I grew up in a home where Christmas, indeed Holidays in general, birthdays too, or affection or shoes and clothes, and often meals and care for health, were given short-shrift. Maybe the right statement is ''not on the radar.'' One of my greatest high school successes was to create a lawn business. Especially during my senior year, when I substituted going to school with handling this business. That business was my source for being able ro buy some clothes and to get a modicum of dental attention on my own.
I went to college in Fall, 1959, finishing my undergraduate career in Electrical Engineering in Spring, 1961. While my class was still in school I worked as an aerospace engineer. Within that time I married a woman whom I met at my undergraduate school when I revisited the campus for a month after my first Aerospace company (Allied Research Associates in Boston) faltered. After a few months in my home town of Buffalo I found a local aerospace job with Bell Aerosystems. Those were the beginnings of dark times in rust-belt Buffalo with the failure of the largesse predicted from the opening of the St. Laurence Seaway. That's still my picture of Buffalo in those times: darkness and ice and mean dispositions and bad behavior. My then wife insisted that aerospace engineer wouldn't impress her father, with whom she had an abysmal relation.
What I had gotten into
That prelude is short shrift for a time I remember well, though preliminary to a propitiously changed direction. We went to her family's for Christmas. Yes, mine was in Buffalo where we were living. Ah, I already explained why we wouldn't have gone there.
Her family was clear. They weren't happy with this marriage of their wayward daughter. Still, there we were in this very large house along the 3rd hole of the Flint Golf Club on a street of suitably varied, yet, similar houses equiped with large lawns. These were the emblems of success in small town businesses. Max, my father-in-law, owned four large Ford Dealerships.
Christmas morning: A great room dominated by a commanding brick fireplace – placed perfectly between two large picture windows showcasing that snow-covered golf course – took up much of the back of the house. You couldn't, though, see through those frosted windows as the fireplace was blazing. Even the fireplace wasn't easy to see. As you entered you had to peer around a massive table loaded with trays of breakfast goodies. The room itself was packed to chest high with gifts.
It took several hours to go through them. I got a sweater.
Perhaps you've gone, while young and of hearty appetite, to a fancy feast. Then, after gorging yourself (or is that only a guy thing?) found you were mistaken. What you thought was the actual meal turned out to be mere hors d'oeuvres. Well, that gift-packed fire-place centered room was only a prelude to the real gifts.
Those consisted of cars, and new sets of gold clubs, winter paraphanelia, including snow mobiles. There was a mink fur, and I hardly remember it all, which were arrayed in another room, and then outside in their large driveway.
Here, was overridden their misgivings about me for the sake of their pregnant daughter. We were given an unembellished new Ford to replace the highely embellished but bald-tired, rusted-bottomed, oil-belching Pontiac that I drove from Buffalo. Also, before moving on, I mention a significant detail that happened when that first child was born. It was my wife's mother, and not mine, who gave us two weeks in-house help that it never would have occurred to Peggy – less than two miles away – to offer.
Max, whenever and wherever, referred to himself as "just a Middle Class guy"
A short time later, my then wife had asked if me if I thought I could get a PhD. That would, she assured me, impress her father. Especially, a PhD from University of Michigan. I suggested I thought that would be possible, and she then wondered in what area. I suggested any of the Physical Sciences, Physics, Math, Chemistry. (I had not specialized previously in any of them, though I had honors courses in Chemistry.) She chose Mathematics.
When I was accepted for their program, she told Max. His skepticism was announced at dinner to the family. So, a pattern immediately emerged. He continued to express that he thought my being in such a program was a waste of time, whenever possible, even after I was attending classes at U of M.
Then, one day at the beginning of my second year (after I had passed oral prelims), one of the secretaries (that's what we called them then), called me from her office. She told me she had received a call from someone who wanted to know how I was doing in the PhD program. She gave me the name of the Professor (Allan Shields) to whom she had sent him. Shields who especially watched over the students he thought would make make U of M Mathematics look good.
From that evening on, Max's attitude toward me did an about face. He lauded me to whatever of his associates whom I met. In this small town in America, University of Michigan was a big deal, and he had heard that I was a potential big deal in it.
That, however, was no piece-of-cake. There were approximately 250 graduate students in the department at the time. Years later I was told that the total time for getting a PhD (from U of M; in those days) averaged 10 years, among those who GOT PhDs eventually. After 3 years I received my PhD.
I went off to a Post Doctoral at the Institute for Advanced Studies (in Princeton; in case the name is unfamilier to you; where Einstrein lived most of his time in the US). That was originally given for one year; in my case it was extended to two. I was one of four who got their PhD's at U of M that year. Simple arithmetic will show how many likely never did get their PhDs. I had been offered post-doctorals at several other universities at the time, including a famous one from Harvard.
I have to point out to people, that there were good reasons I turned that down. The Institute was a far superior fellowship with no teaching. Also, I hadn't gone to Harvard previously, but I had met several of those who were professors there at summer institutes. The arrogance among them was mind-boggling.
All three of the others who got their U of M Phds at the same time were students of Allen Shields. I was not. Yet, he had obviously made an impression on Max, about me.
Indeed, one of Shield's students became extremely famous. That was under a different name than he had at U of M. You'd know him at the The Unabomber. He got his degree after his 4th year.
When I met Prof. Shields in later years he told me how astounded they [his colleagues] were that someone without any of the background of their best students, had managed to not only get a PhD. in such a short time, but also solved a famous problem soon after in the area in which I worked.
I was lucky there was an Allen Shields. I was even luckier that I could prove myself without a previous portfolio. That is, I became, by the standards of today an elite. By the standards of that day, I impressed Max, a man of considerable wealth, prestige and power in his local community, despite his middle class description of himself. Yes, Max was an examplar of his community in being gratuitously racist and misogynistic.
What you can't see here, was that Max had always been chagrined in taking over 4 of the larger set of Ford Dealerships from the business his immigrant father developed. Chagrined because he was forced to forego going to University of Michigan. He could have forever harbored his doubts about me. To his credit – when an authority told him of my legitimacy – he changed his mind and accepted it.
That marriage was not destined to last, though divorce is nothing to play games with. That family money had no power over me. For one, I quickly became a highly paid professor and stayed that way through becoming emeritus. It had much power over the other three who married into that family around that time. One, destined to be an always beautiful, well beyond her youth (she was four years younger than myself) woman made no bones about it one time. In privacy, she averred she was not going to end up where her mother was.
She went after my then brother-in-law with a plan. Eventually she moved those dealerships into a new era by switching from Ford to Chevrolet. Even now she is a bigger person than was Mac in her wealthy Michigan, not Flint, town.
Max always had misgivings on her as she told me – expressed crudely at the time. Still, she was a powerhouse with astonishing charisma that her husband couldn't approach.
Now I make another statement that is relevant to Part C below. Also, that initial mathematics success had no power over me. I continued to change my speciality right up to NOW, since I had fashioned my way into some of the most difficult areas of mathematics. I had developed techniques that pointed to precise and attackable forms of many of the greatest mathematical mysteries I had heard about. I made inroads into them.
Still, explaining that to the world at large is harder than it would be for a research doctor – one using the tools of microbiology – to explain how medicine actually works. To the world outside, and especially to what runs conservative politics today, I'm just an elite.
The seriously ambitious want their lives to be meaningful. Maybe all do, but the seriously ambitious must find a non-obvious way to make it so. You can have the courage of your convictions in something that you aim to do that makes a meaningful life. Yet, you want others – significant others – to agree. Sure, it's a minority who think this way. It is a still more rarified group that actually accomplish finding their path in this way.
Further, if someone thinks this way, with rare exception it leads them to expend oodles of time in their hope that, ultimately, some significant group will agree that your life mattered beyond your family. In the case of TC, she obviously cared little about what her family thought.
- I speculate further. To have a life that matters, you need a model for a life that mattered.
- Then, you need to attempt specific endeavors that deserve spot-on recognition, endeavors that you can actually fulfill.
- Finally, though this might not occur to you at first, you must decide when given a success in #2, that you understand its meaning, and how to live your life following it.
Was TC really that appropriately ambitious? You bet she was. I claim, for obvious reasons, the most important and the least tended of these is #3. Keep in mind nuanced versions of Jesus's phrase: What behooves a man to gain the world and lose his soul?
Clearly she did use Genghis Kahn as a model in 1940, among her first publications. That was a model from her early writing attempts and her quasi-historical method. Alas, it was the same time when there was a much more successful and seriously historical life by Lamb on the same person. Then, with one exception, The Devil's Advocate, there was a long respite – during which she avoided any issue of identifying with a model for a life that matters. Then, she wrote Dear and Glorious Physician. As her preface makes clear, it was an early dream to write just such a novel.
Here she chose the model, by associating with 4 historical people: Jesus, St. Luke, Mary (not The Magdalene, but the mother of Jesus) and especially St. Luke.
TC's most dramatic scene, her imagining of the conversation between Luke and Mary.
Luke listened without speaking on the bench. Mary's voice had risen like pealing of sweet bells as she recalled those days [when she visited her cousin Elizabth.] And as it happened between him and his brother, Priscus, he wondered how much he learned from Mary's words and how much from a mystic insight given to him, through his own eyes and speech.
Compare DAG and her method to that of a Renaissance painter, or to the poetry of the mystic prophets, as they inspired a 12 year old girl now grown to a celebrated novelist who could write what she wanted (and get it published). Who could show the world a Jesus who had raised her above the house of her parents. Had taken her from a childhood that disdained her because she wasn't pretty. Had put her above a world that slighted her and had yet to recognize her intelligence even though she could paint pictures with words of the way the world should be and what should matter.
In writing this she would partake of the purity of a Mary that she painted: One who brought forth Jesus. A purity she emulated not a whit in her actual life, but would work to convince her readers that she understood. Then, her own personal miracle: DAG had 112 editions between 1959 and 2012. This could be taken to be the epitome of her career.
Her readers were led to believe that nothing in the New Testament was more authentic than this Gospel of Luke, even if she said nothing about it. After all, wasn't it straight from the mouths of those who lived the life of Jesus: those rough-hewn brothers John and James who journeyed with him. Finally, the story from birth to ministry directly from His mother, as they sat in Nazareth? All this is a fulfillment of the deliverance of the Jews that was promised to Abraham. From Bethlehem to Gethsemene in words that pointed to, but never attempted to explain, his mission.
And even at this ending she cannot resist lambasting the Romans (p. 555) for their imported whiskey. A Grover Norquist would have to love, ''to cheat an oppressive government is not to cheat at all. Besides who makes what money we make: the government or ourselves?'' And Luke agrees (p. 556): ''Governments by their natures are robbers.''
p. 562-3: On the banks of the Jordan River: How Jesus's beautiful aura dominated that of the wrathful John the Baptist. TC was there. But the other side: The Nazarenes who disputed this scene, and jealously mocked those Nazarenes taken with (p. 563) the illumination of Jesus by the Sun, followed by ''a great voice'' heard from the sky: ''You are my beloved Son. In You I am well pleased.''
p. 564: Luke moves to finish his gospel. Then, the final chapter in which St. Paul appears at the house of Hillel before the wedding of Arieh and Leah. p. 566 starts by recounting Paul's initial prejudice against Jesus, thus allowing TC to render in her own way the transformation of Saul on the road to Damascus. Hillel's letter says Saul awaits the arrival of Luke at the wedding. p. 568: Luke brings out his painting ''to portray Mary for the ages.''
A decade+ after this dramatic success.
In (1970) – revisiting her successful venture – she centered now on St. Paul in (another title shining a halo on her protagonist) Great Lion of God.
I have no idea who promoted that she should write Great Lion of God. A publisher? Marcus Reback died the year of its publication, and the best assessment I have heard on it, goes like this:
It was agreed upon in the years 1962 to 1970 to be her best, a fitting sequel to ''Dear and Glorious Physician,'' published 11 years earlier.
My opinion: Still, her great success was DAG, a far superior book to that on St. Paul. (I'm not denigrating Paul: . He is one of my heros). Now I consider how she took, and invested in, Luke as her model.
She continues to describe – in overarching prose – that Luke's saga is
the story of every man's pilgrimage through despair and life-darkness ... through doubt and cynicism, through rebellion and hopelessness to the feet and the understanding of God. This search for God and the final revelation are the only meaning in life for men.
[Otherwise we are only animals with futile lives.] That is, she already was invested in giving the fundamental unchanging nature of man. That was the topic she almost pleaded about with her readers – especially in Great Lion of God and in Pillar of Iron (1965). In Glory and the Lightning (1974) she insists The greatest moments of mankind had already passed. Our only salvation was faith in God. Strangely, alas, her exhortations didn't even vaguely approximate what Jesus was about.
Indeed, she never engaged the Acts of the Apostles, despite her exorting her readers to go next to them in the final paragraph of DAG. Nor can I imagine equating Luke, the author of those Acts, and his quest with the story of every man's pilgrimage. Oh well, another long novel after which she had the right to be quite tired.
So, how well does TC do on this topic of meaning in life? It's easy to dismiss what affects many as meaning/motivation of life. Most people seem to insist they know it can't be money. Nor, can it be fame. But, do they really believe that?
Others declare it must be love. Love, or your most gorgeous girlfriend (or whatever gender you choose)? Or your favorite pet? No, it can't be that! Yet, in practice it is hard to exclude this as great motivation for many.
Progressive ministers – not the kind that TC supported – choose love of God and/or Jesus, as the greatest possible motivation for finding meaning in life. They declare it holds infinitely more (or as a symbol,∞) of consequence like Ω and the cross (an obulus symbol) than any other motivations. As much as I personally care for Jesus, I find it hard to credit this as a piece of wisdom in the ministers I have known.
I've had long discussions with many ministers. I have come across even a few of renown for their wisdom. None, not a one, has had in their lexicon anything that serves as a model for ∞. Further, wouldn't you think that loving other earthly people – with a modicum of aiming to love beyond your immediate desires, yet still in the context of reality – is a valuable prelude to loving Jesus. Unless we are to skip the easy things in life, and then, only to treasure the ineffable. Unlikely for actual people!
I can credit TC with a childlike reverence for Jesus. Yet, since she says little of what the world has embraced in Jesus, I can't get out of my head one basic fact. She didn't actually show anything like love to either of her daughters.
Then, there is her insistence on the final revelation in God. It goes hand-in-hand with her view that there was no such thing as progress that she would grasp at this final revelation as a summary of all that is worthwhile in life.
Still, why does life continue if all there is worthwhile is a bland worship of God, without understanding Him. This final revelation, available right now? It is the same problem, albeit slightly more sophisticated sounding, as explaining what Heaven is like. Does anyone really think Jerry Falwell or Joel Osteen knows what Heaven is, or is like?
B. With whom in history TC wanted to Affiliate:
Let us rather say that she tried to get to the significance of believing in God, through what the life of Luke gained in so doing, Let us also notice, that here in this novel she did her best for a modern reader to emulate his journey into writing his way into something: something so significant that it became a portion of the bible that has been exalted, as by Marcion in the century after Jesus.
She could afford to make herself into a close approximation of the authors of the Bible, by declaring Luke a close approximation to characters in the old testament, who – and this is where history bears her out gave us a great piece of the most highly touted parts of the New Testament.
I accept as fact – an expression of her actual desire – what she offered in the opening statement of her forward. This book has been forty-six years in the writing. The first version was written when I was twelve ... the second when I was twenty-two ... the third when I was twenty-six ... and all through those years, work did not cease on this book.
She wanted to write such a novel. Yet, her attempts to do so weren't getting her published. She explains this clearly in the letter to our actual Grandfather, Will Combs.
This letter also explains (though she wants only Will Combs to know) that Marcus Reback's contributions finally got her novels in print. Not, though those on her Mediterranean/Unknown God/Bible quest. Here was the method she managed to work in this novel, that actually was (eventually) her greatest success:
She created parables for our time: Exposing what she and so many others wanted for truth.
For those who hadn't gotten enough of miracles from the time of Jesus she handed several to Luke. Miracles similar to, but with more nuanced story around them than you could get in the New Testament.
Her quasi-Historical method – she just made it all up – shows the value of separating her literarily compelling inventions from some concerning aspects that dominated her novels ever after. The end of DAG featured her take on mothers, on motherhood, and on the greatest mother of them all. She wrapped a halo around the relation between St. Luke and Mary. She was creating her own version of the Bible, replete with her vision that Democracy was doomed, through many extra historical characters from Rome of that period. Yes, Herod is there, Pilate is there, Tiberius is there. Each crafted to look as she decided they would look, with all the beautiful women lithe and blonde.
Further, unlike Luke and Paul, she failed to illuminate what Jesus was about. Especially what he meant. At this point her accolades came from often being on Best Seller lists and remonstrations of support from the John Birch Society. Without, however, literarily critical accolades, from that time she was still full of ability to turn out novels.
She continued to do that for 20 more years. Here, though, she might have recognized she was faced with a choice. Especially since her moral guide for 20 years – her husband Marcus Reback – was incapacitated, certainly without any of his previous energy. (I've discussed this in several newsletters.) Here were her choices.
- She could develop her literary abilities to include a deeper understanding of living, breathing, humans.
- Or, develop an understanding of her actual audience, and make herself into a guru on and for their proclivities.
Doing both was not out of the question. With DAG as a starting point, she might have developed a vision of the divine spark that emanated from Jesus. She apparently couldn't penetrate his genius. While Luke and Paul did to a great extent, she hoped to ride on their coattails. She didn't even engage how far those two saints succeeded, though she pretended she did.
Then, she could have managed to learn more how the combination of Jesus's brilliance and his faith, that God was on his side, worked. I see Great Lion of God, written so much later, as showing she needed to return to try again. (Someone, maybe you, might say she was just looking for another success like DAG.)
You might wonder if any others have captured this divine spark to which I refer. For example, Benedict Spinoza took this exact approach in the middle of the 1600s. So he penetrated what God/Jesus was about beyond what Paul and Luke found, though he died young, and unfulfilled.
Not exactly the same, but Simone Weil managed a modern approach to the mysticism that Jesus found that extended his parables. Weil, though a suicide for apparently being distraught over WWII, nevertheless was available to TC. Hey, and to you or me.
If you wanted a charismatic respect for the significance of politics, there was the minister Reinhold Niebuhr who managed to make sense of the antagonism of the US and Russia in Children of Darkness; Children of Light. These were surpremely brilliant people, who engaged what Jesus had been about.
Yet, search as hard as you might, you will find to hard to see where TC engaged a truly divine spark. Maybe, she had lost the will to even try. She pointed to what were versions of it, like the Parthanon. Yet, those were pronouncements, not serious engagements.
In Great Lion of God she actually said of the Parthenon, in the style that some of her followers use about her, that will be the GREATEST FEAT OF MANKIND ever.
Her oozing public holiness aside, by this time at 59 years old upon publishing DAG, it was clear that she was exceedlingly worse than not-much-of-a-mother.
Sure, there are other attributes. That includes energy, smarts, appropriate knowledge, desire to be a good person, charm. On these she ran the gamut: from Charm (zilch) to Energy (in spades). One attribute that takes precedence with others, is that of someone being an important person.
She once was. She isn't at all today. Yet, as in Part C (below) she was onto divining what attracted the conservative mind. I now turn to what she did do in the direction of #2 (above).
C. The seldom discussed distinction between The Wealthy and the Elites:
TC fell on an easily identifiable side of two issues, that are now with us everyday in the news:
W-E: The Wealthy versus the Elites
F-U: Those of Faith versus those who aim to understand.
To conservatives a lib-tard is someone who sincerely believes there is something of significance to the world, whether they are able to grasp it or not. Conservatives think that is pitiful: Money and adulation are sufficient for many of them; a place in a heirarchy with leaders of various stripes works for others. Obey a great leader and have a society fall in an ordained heirarchy in which they have found their place and sufficient respect to comfort them.
Neither side can find a resolute dependable meaning to life that is convincing to the other. No matter your approach, you will need faith that you will be honored for your choices. You need faith that your path will hold up over time, unless you either somehow believe you are going to live forever, or nothing very significant changes.
TC, like Hitler and like Trump dismissed attempts to understand. I know one person who surely did not, that all of you have heard of: Jesus.
There is so much to understand. As we have seen lately, those who want to can just dismiss what others think is understanding. Simple, false arguments are often more compelling than what is really going on. Indeed, how does someone even demonstrate that they understand?
That is where education is supposed to come in. Alas, that requires acculturation into what education is about. Not everyone can handle that. More don't even want it than do want it in the United States. What may be a surprise is that this isn't how it goes in other countries. Both sides are represented, but in different proportion than in the US.
Indeed, I told the story of my relation with Max at the beginning to emphasize two points. Small town people with much money wield a great deal of power in their localities. Further, it was not long ago that they actually recognized that having appropriate brain power was a good thing. I wasn't just referring to me with Max either. I included the story of Bonnie (my then sister-in-law), who was smart and charming to a degree that Max – despite his misogeny – had to honor. He knew she would handle his legacy, those dealerships, far beyond what his son could.
I'm going to close with a quote, from someone I don't know, but who has reflected on art – which TC has used in each of her Mediterranean novels – a great deal.
I don't know that art can be understood in any final way,
but a search for understanding tends to open one's eyes rather than close them.
Jasper Johns, October 11, 2021 Time Magazine
You can get the Open Road offer for Tender Victory here. Open Road has a short compelling review on its web site.
Rev. Johnny Fletcher serves wounded soldiers from the battlefield as a military chaplain during World War II. His forté is spiritual solace in the darkest of times, but his life changes when he performs a public heroic act: facing down an angry mob intent on attacking five young Holocaust survivors. Upon learning they have no homes or families to return to, Fletcher decides to bring them to America.
To his dismay, his coal-mining community of Barryfield, Pennsylvania, greets this makeshift family with prejudice and distrust. Beneath the town's placid surface run buried religious divisions. Fletcher's commitment to raising the children according to their individual faiths – two Protestant, two Catholic, and one Jewishi – meets with horrific levels of intolerance. Dealing with such prejudice turns more sinister still when a local newspaper publisher cynically uses the story for his own purposes.
Together with Lorry Summerfield, the beautiful, disillusioned daughter of Barryfield's most powerful figure, Fletcher must try to awaken the townspeople to the better angels of their nature before it's too late.
We have often heard avid TC readers remark that wars and priests are among her favorite paired topics. Here is a more extensive review by one of the newsletter's readers.
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