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A
lot of people have told me that they read Mark Salzman's latest
novel, LYING AWAKE, in a single sitting. (I have to confess to needing
three.) Normally, I'm suspicious of such claims --- so often the
stuff of promotional hyperbole --- and yet, in this case, they are
telling: At a breezy 181 pages, LYING AWAKE reads like a single
thought obsessively reworked: Does God exist? If so, how might we
get to know him? Is it possible to live a life of faith and still
have doubts?
Such thoughts run through the mind of Sister John, a middle-aged
nun cloistered in a Carmelite monastery in the heart of present
day Los Angeles. After languishing for years in a spiritual limbo,
"her prayers empty and her soul dry," Sister John suddenly begins
to experience overwhelming visions, dazzling sensations of warmth
and light that she interprets as a direct encounter with God. After
these episodes, Sister John pours her feelings onto paper, producing
ecstatic --- and highly popular --- verse.
The problem is that Sister John's visions are accompanied by increasingly
severe headaches. After blacking out during prayer, the other nuns
decide that Sister John must seek medical help. A brain scan reveals
a small tumor on Sister John's temporal lobe, a condition known
to trigger epileptic seizures, which is often accompanied by intense
psychological experiences and hypergraphia (voluminous writing).
Dostoyevsky is believed to have suffered from the same condition;
so, apparently, did St. Teresa of Avila, founder of the Carmelite
Order. Now, Sister John must face the possibility that her spirituality
has been a sham, her mystical visions only epileptic seizures. Should
she go ahead with surgery and risk losing her gifts, or should she
cling to her possibly delusional state of grace?
It's a fascinating conflict, even though almost entirely internal.
By interweaving Sister John's thoughts and fears with fragments
of her poetry and prayer, Salzman creates a luminous narrative that
reads like a mind arguing with itself. To his credit, Salzman resists
turning Sister John's dilemma into high drama --- she never gnashes
her teeth in anguish, or throws up her arms in despair. Instead,
he beautifully transmits the rhythms of a contemplative life ---
the daily rituals, the silence and severity, the sisters' petty
squabbles and moments of levity --- and against this backdrop raises
the piercing specter of doubt.
The novel is affecting, austere, and maddening --- so much so that
I continue to think about it days after putting it down. Other reviewers
have noted its lack of pretensions, how it creates beauty and meaning
from a "limited palette." This is undeniably true, but the simplicity
of the writing at times seems threadbare, the metaphors those that
were closest to hand. (Two nuns enduring a night vigil together
become "two life rafts lashed together on the sea;" the prioress's
eyes are "the same color as the sky."
Ý
As a modern fable, Sister John's story raises existential questions,
not just about faith but also vocation, about the nagging question
of just what it is we are meant to do with our lives. In a recent
New Yorker article, Salzman spoke about the life of a writer as
being one of faith --- faith that the novel will get written, faith
that the sacrifices are worthwhile, and most of all, faith that
there is value in art. It took Salzman six years to write LYING
AWAKE. After eliminating a romantic subplot between Sister John
and her doctor ("a cross between the movie Witness and the movie
Awakenings," he jokes), Salzman struggled for years to put one sentence
after another. Only by retreating to a New England cabin, a place
nearly as quiet and solitary as a nun's cell, was he able to finish
the book. "...the book wrote itself in five weeks, with me in a
state that I can only describe as euphoric." Hallelujah!
The story of how the novel got written is nearly as appealing as
the story of the novel itself, and perhaps that's why I remain skeptical
of its achievements. It's clearly a powerful story, an opportunity
for reflection, and good dinner party fodder. Is it great literature?
You decide.
--- Reviewed by Martha Hostetter
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