Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip Through the Land Art of the American West by Erin Hogan

The Director of Public Affairs for the Art Institute of Chicago, Erin Hogan, "wanted something joyful and dreadful, fierce and high"(1). Considering where she works, that sounds like an easy enough itch to scratch. However, Hogan required something that can't be found in a museum. She felt the need to get out of her comfort zone, to get away from "being surrounded by a constant clamor of voices- of strangers, of friends-and el trains and car horns and music from passing cars and the rhythms of the boys drumming on overturned buckets on the sidewalk"(1). She "wanted to learn to enjoy being alone"(1).

Hoping to scratch this mix of itches, Hogan took a road trip to see some of the major pieces of American land art. She chronicles the experience in a thoughtful and entertaining book,Spiral Jetta, a mix of art criticism and travel narrative.

Originally, Hogan intended to visit Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels , Michael Heizer's Double Negative, James Turrell's Roden Crater, Walter De Maria's Lightning Fields, and Donald Judd's complex in Marfa, Texas. She drove a Jetta, hence the title of this occasionally punny book.

The art-criticism side of the book records the ways these classics of what is often referred to as Land Art matched and missed her expectations. Related to Minimalism, Land Art set out to disturb the relation between viewer and object. To the extent one can define it as a movement, Land Art aims to create experiences of the sublime.

With Land Art, size matters. Using the earth, actual landscapes as their canvas and material, the artists above set/created objects within natural spaces in the hopes of overwhelming and disorienting potential viewers. The resulting works not only wont fit in a museum, but, theoretically, the setting of the object is part of the art, integral to it. Object and setting are one; the created object can only achieve its effect within the natural environment in which the artist originally placed/created it. Ultimately, an atmosphere is sought. Ideally, within that atmosphere, the viewer experiences a dislocation. He or she loses a sense of self, inundated by the austerity and grandeur of their surroundings.

Despite the fact that the works highlighted are often thought of part of a movement, Hogan's direct experience of them tends to point toward their differences. Spiral Jetty is a more traditional piece of art; at it's core, there is an object, a design, that might be appreciated outside of the space it occupies. However, the object achieves a greater expression by virtue of it's location on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. The lake has coated it over the years with a salt coating per Smithson's intention. Spiral Jetty was submerged under the lake for some years, only to resurface in 1999. Upsetting the notion of the artist, "the artists behind land art surrender control of their objects to natural processes"(28).

Hogan also believes that the setting of Spiral Jetty is important in establishing the work's effect in another way. She describes Smithson's masterpiece as "a spiral of rocks and dirt approximately fifteen hundred feet long and fifty feet across"(2-3). Within museum walls, this would be a big, monumental piece. Yet, as Hogan presents it, set on the desolate shores of the Great Salt Lake, under the wide sky of its surroundings, Smithson's work seems almost forlorn, quaint. At the mercy of the elements, it's peristence amidst an indifferent setting acquires a pathos.

Double Negative, a long, interrupted, gash that Michael Heizer blasted onto the edge of a Mesa in Utah, is the opposite. Far from constituting an object, it is a vacancy that confronts viewers with the dwarfing magnitude and desolation of their surroundings. Unlike traditional artwork,it is impossible for a normal, grounded viewer to see it in it's entirety and at once. To do so, one must look down from far above, as in the picture immediately below. With it Heizer intended to "defy the passage of time"(101). To this point, time has responded by continually eroding the clean lines Heizer intended for his gash.

These works are meant to scar the land, to compel attention through their size and location. Critics have complained about the coercive and blatant nature of these works; they demand attention rather than compel it in a gentle and suasive fashion. Yet, Hogan discovers they're hard to find, even when she draws near them. She never does actually locate Sun Tunnels or Roden Crater. Writing of the travails involved in visiting Spiral Jetta, Hogan notes, "how could a work be described as intrusive...if one had to travel so far, so uncomfortably, and with such determination to see it"(23).

Many prove hard to 'find' figuratively speaking. Her experience of several of the pieces proves strangely deflating. Far from delivering moments of awe and shock as intended and expected, several of the pieces visited leave Hogan feeling underwhelmed. At one point, she confesses "I needed to come to terms with the fact that this monumental art of the 1970s had turned out to be less than transformative. I had yet to have an experience that truly lifted me out of mysef and reengaged me with a sense of awe and wonder"(122).

Then, some of it is just hard to find. Costing potentially 20 million dollars, Hogan describes James Turrell's Roden Crater as an "inverted planetarium" filled with interior caves from which "ethereal yet sculptural forms will appear"(107). Yet, despite it's size and cost, Hogan is unable to find anyone to show her the crater despite numerous attempts to contact folks and institutions associated with the project. She is never able to find Sun Tunnels and only locates Spiral Jetta and Double Negative after a lot of driving around lost.

Hogan begins to question whether the effects of the art she set out to see can possibly be worth the difficulty and cost of achieving and viewing them. As she drives through the often majestic West looking for these pieces, she often encounters landscapes that wow her more than the art she set out to see. Most of the land art visited was designed to, in the words of the critic Michael Kimmelman, provide "heightened perception"(108). The author wonders whether such "'heightened perception' was the natural state of being for those who live in the West,"(108) rendering the works unnecessary.

De Maria's Lightning Fields is the first piece that elevates her perception. The work is set on a piece of land a mile long by a kilometer wide. Within that space, De Marie place four hundred identical steel poles at regular intervals. The poles are set at varying depths in the earth so that their skyward tips all meet on an imaginary plane.

Visitors to the field are driven out to the sight by an assistant of De Maria's and must stay overnight in a fairly rustic house. While the work may have been designed to speak it's piece during lightning storms, Hogan is struck with it even though she visits during a twenty-four period of temperate weather. She finds it especially striking at sunset and sunrise when the poles gradually but suddenly appear and disappear as the light strikes or leaves them, casting an intriguing and entrancing skein of shadows on the land. At one point, she experiences a moment where "the atmosphere itself, the air and the light, becomes so powerfulthat one can't experience anything else"(130).

Finally, Hogan finds pleasure and solace in the methodical and basic installations of
Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. Judd was not a landscape artist per se; he came to fame as a sculptor and founding father of minimalism, an art movement that made a religion out of context. Howver, like Land Art, Minimalism sought not to create objects but atmospheres.

Judd did not make an essential distinction between his objects and the setting in which he placed them but viewed them as integral, equally important. Accordingly, he not only created sculptures but the "museums/spaces" in which they need be seen. The majority of these are sited at a campus of building in and around Marfa, Texas. According to his will, "'works of art which I own at the time of my death as are installed at 101 Spring Street in New York City ...or in Marfa, Texas, will be preserved where they are installed'"(145).

Judd is the ultimate control freak. Beyond trying to create an atmosphere, he is intent on imposing a view, not a metaphorical one, but an actual, through-the-eyes view. His installation 100 untitled works in mill aluminum are 100 boxes, all slightly different, set up in an old artillery shed. Judd redesigned the shed, putting in large windows along the walls so that the boxes are "seen in generous daylight. Also, tours only go through the shed during the late morning, noon and afternoon. While this is owing to a lot of reasons, Hogan suggests that it is another instance of Judd meticulous and obsessive attention to creating a specific experience for viewers.

In sum, with Marfa, Judd wished for viewers to focus on a specific experience without any distractions; everything within the spaces he created is created by him. The critic Michael Kimmelman describes the "impact as hypnotic"(152). According to Kimmelman, in demanding the viewer pay his installations a certain quality of attention, Judd confers on art "a dignity that becomes a moral point. Again quoting Kimmelman in interpreting 100 boxes, Hogan sees the work as "a metaphor for how to deal with each other, which is to say, one at a time and patiently'"(156).

Hogan's record of her journey is an interesting and she has a knack for presenting complex art work and the ideas surrounding it. If you've ever wandered off into the thickets of modern art commentary, the latter is no mean feat. This book truly is an education in a significant swath of contemporary art. Hogan is also a good sketch writer, drawing lively portraits of various places she visits along the way: Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, a dive bar in Montello, Nevada, and sprawl of Juarez, Mexico. She also manages to deftly weave her experience of these places into her thinking on the art she encounters, as when she questions whether anyone could create a work as surrealistic and disorienting as Juarez. By her account, Juarez truly seems a slice of reality that beggars the best products of human imagination.

Her account lacks a bit of narrative drive and not for a lack of building blocks. For instance, at the end of the book, we discover that prior to her journey she tended to believe in an art-for-art's sake aesthetic. The art she encountered on her trip forced her to see how art could alter the world. In particular, The Lightning Fields "drove [her] to attentiveness and continues to give [her] a stage and the mechanism to fully experience my surroundings"(168). This seems like a significant shift. Yet, this shift in them is only mentioned at the end of the book and she never actually spells out what this shift entails in her everyday life. Still, it is interesting and enough is there to imagine how it might affect a person.

What's most disappointing is that Hogan never explores whether she discovered the pleasures and benefits of being alone. This was one of the central goals of her trip and she simply fails to address it at the end of the book. I've long been interested in the art covered in this book. However, I'm even more interested in the challenges, practices and benefits of solitude and solitary existence. This seems to me our present cultures great, untalked about fear. Hogan's raising it and then ignoring it disappointed me greatly. Perhaps, a lot of this is between the lines.

"An emissary sent from the lord": the complex relationship of Jack Boughton and John Ames

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is a version of the prodigal son story with interesting differences. In Gilead, the role of the disgruntled and righteous older brother is taken up by the best friend of the forgiving father. And, while it is apparent that the prodigal son welcomes and seeks the forgiveness and love of his father, this doesn't appear to be his central concern, nor to entirely satisfy him. Instead, the prodigal son in Gilead, Jack Boughton, seems to desperately seek and need the love and forgiveness of the disgruntled, righteous friend of his father, the Reverend John Ames. Of course, it appears so from Ames narcissistic perspective.

The mystery and drama of this novel lie in the tortured,love-hate relationship between Jack and Ames. A perverse kind of bond exists; each dislikes the other while needing the other's approval. According to Ames' belief, Jack and himself are meant for each other, destined to rely on the other for salvation.

Their relationship is a father and son one. Jack calls Ames "Papa." Perhaps according to Jack's intentions, Ames bristles at Jack's referring to him in this way. However, at some level, it is true in fact. Ames is Jack's godfather; being a believer, Ames takes the role seriously. As Jack's godfather, Ames feels an obligation to his soul and worries that he has failed him.

Boughton had the child christened in Ames' name as a gesture of love and thanksgiving toward his best friend. It was to be a gift revealed to Ames when he asked the baby's name prior to christening him. This well intended gesture misfires horribly. Ames is taken aback by it. Since losing his own short-lived, tragedy marked immediate family, Ames has envied Boughton his large and prospering one. In the face of the disparity between them, Ames is defensive around Boughton and his family. He is sensitive to any suggestion that somehow his now gone immediate family is or was a lesser blessing than Boughton's large and flourishing one.

While Ames might be too polite to say so to himself or God, he clearly reads the disparity between his family and Boughton's as an injustice. Such injustice doesn't square with his beliefs. To shelter these, Ames simply refuses to think of the situation as a disparity, an injustice, and denies his anger at God.

His anger seems to find its locus in Jack from the boy is christened in his name. Ames claims that when he first hears of Boughton's gesture at the boy's christening, it wasn't "resentment I felt then. It was some sort of loyalty to my own life"(65).

With time, Ames' resentment and distrust of Jack gathers real reasons. Jack is a troubled kid who from an early age enjoys annoying others by engaging in senseless acts of vandalism and theft. Then, while in college, Jack impregnates a very young girl and refuses to deal with the situation. He neglects the child and its mother. Indirectly, his neglect leads to the child's death. As Ames must see it, even if unconsciously, Jack is given and wastes a blessing denied Boughton. He compounds his sin by showing little remorse. However irrational it might be, Ames views Jack's misdeed as an affront to himself. Moreover, he commits a sin that touches directly on the great hurt of Ames' life, and puts to the test Ames' ability to show Christian forgiveness.

As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Jack is the cross of Ames' life. Until he returns, Jack is a cross from the past that seemed past, and a cross that Ames contrived to forget. When Glory mentions early on to Ames that "Jack might be coming home...It actually took me a minute to think who that was" (18). When it comes to Jack, Ames is wary and defensive; his attitude seems to be one of "please, let this cup pass." Yet, Jack is truly Ames'cup.

Ames is a rather saintly soul on one level; however, as he himself fears, his has been a rather cloistered holiness. When Jack returns, seeking forgiveness, comfort and refuge, he brings Ames' another cross. Ames seeks to see and thus love others as God sees and loves them. His path to sainthood, his holiness has one obstacle: his distinctly unchristian feelings toward Jack.


Although he's central to Ames and his life-story, Ames first mentions Jack on page 72. Jack's sister Glory stops by to tell him Jack is returning. Glory is "excited and also anxious"(72). Ames hardly shares in her emotions; he laments "I suppose he'll appear sooner or later"(72). Everything Ames says in this first mention of Jack is demeaning; his every word seems contrived to render him unimportant. Ames first refers to him as a boy and then "corrects" himself. He feigns uncertainty as to whether he's in his thirties or forties. He makes passing allusion to "a story" that he might relay. Then decides he'll first "talk with [Jack]" and then decide if "all that trouble is well forgotten"(72).

Jack has come home 86-87

Jack "paid a call." "I have never felt he was fond of me."91 Ames' wife is "visibly surprised" to meet this namesake of her husband which leads Jack to conclude "'I gather bygones are not bygones yet, Reverend.' What a thing to say!"91-92.

"'You're looking wonderful, Papa!' he said, and I thought, ...the first words out of his mouth would have to be prevarication." Ames is sitting in a porch swing. He experiences difficulty getting up; "there was Jack Boughton with that look on his face, lifting me onto my feet by my elbow. And I swear it was as if I had stepped right into a hole, he was so much taller than I than he'd ever been before"(92). Figurative rendering of the way Jack somehow lessens Ames perception of himself. Jack brings out something in Ames that his wife and child see clearly; "I caught a look on your mother's face and yours, too, which I know could not have been because of the contrast we made. You didn't wait till this morning to realize that I am old. I don't know what it was I saw, and I'm not going to think about it anymore. It didn't sit well with me"(93-94). Jack "couldn't stay for coffee. Things went well enough. Then he was off"(94).

In this meeting, the recording of the fact that Jack "really is the spiting image of his father in terms of physical likeness"93.

Next, Ames comes home and discover his son and Jack playing catch.101 At the tail end of this encounter, mention again of the likeness between Boughton the father and Boughton the son, Jack: "This Jack Boughton could be his father, to look at him"(102).

Ames goes to ostensibly visit old Boughton. Jack and his sister Glory are working in the yard. Boughton is "in excellent spirits. 'The children,' he said, 'are putting things to rights for me.'"(116)

In two criticism/comments that seems ideally self-directed, Ames writes "I have always like the phrase 'nursing a grudge,' because many people are tender of their resentments, as of the thing nearest their hearts."(117) Next, "I always imagine divine mercy giving us back to ourselves and letting us laugh at what we became, laugh at the preposterous disguises of crouch and squint and limp and lour we all do put on."117-118

Jack comes by to see if Ames' son wishes to play catch. Always looking to dismantle any positive aspect as simply appearance, Ames notes "[Jack] was sunburned from working in the garden. It gave him a healthy, honest look." Neither offering his invitation nor his feelings at its rejection, Ames simply states, "[Jack] said he couldn't stay for supper. You were disappointed, as I believe your mother was also."119

Jack comes "strolling by" again, shortly afterward. "He sat himself down on the porch and talked baseball and politics-he favors the Yankees, which he has every right to do-until the fragrance of macaroni and cheese so obtruded itself that I was obliged to invite him in."119-120

Again, betraying by his language his reluctance to believe in Jack's integrity, Ames observes Jack during supper and writes of "this [my italics] John Ames Boughton with his quiet voice and preacherly manner, which, by the way, he has done nothing to earn, or to deserve. To the best of my knowledge at any rate. He had it even as a child, and I always found that disturbing. ...it seems to me sometimes that there's an element of parody in it."120 "Of sheer and perfect preacherliness I have never seen a finer example than this Jack Boughton, heathen that he is, or was." During his visit to Ames, Jack "mentioned that [Ames] had not been to see his father in a few days, which is the truth, and no coincidence either...it had been one of the gret irritations of my life, seeing the two of them together."120

Ames fills in the back story on Jack in a roundabout fashion. He realizes that he bears a grudge against Jack and wonders and worries that he is not being fair. Perhaps, he's holding overlong to past hurts. A vain man, Ames worries that he's acting in a manner unbecoming to himself. This worry surfaced earlier on when he noted the way his son and wife looked at him when he was talking with Jack earlier.

Conscious of appearing petty and unforgiving, he is hesitant to simply dish the dirt on Jack to his family. He admits "[Jack's] story may be more than you need to know, more than I ought to tell you. If things have come right, what is the point. There's nothing very remarkable in the story, in fact it is very commonplace. Which is not an extenuation by any means."121

While he seems to be losing control of his own manners, Ames complains "[Jack's] so respectctful I feel like telling him I'm not the oldest man in the world yet."(122)
Yet, around Jack, basic manners become a conscious effort: "Young Boughton came by again this morning...I'm trying to be a little more cordial to him than I have been...and he looks me right in the face, as though he wants me to know he knows it is a perfomance and he's amused by it...Most people will go along with you in these situations, whatever their private thoughts might be"(123). Then, using an expression he applies to Jack on several occasions, he continues in oblique fashion: I hesitate to call it devilment, but it certainly does make me uncomfortable, and I'm fairly sure that is what he intends"(123).

Suggesting his possibly providential nature, Ames believes Jack can read his innermost thoughts. In Luke 12:2-3, Christ warns "there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops." Psalm 44 speaks to Ames' state as well: "If we had forgotten the name of our God [by failing to forgive or show mercy to Jack].../ Would not God have found this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart."

Unable to "somehow contrive to think graciously about him"(123), Ames goes off and prays. For Ames, praying often seems more a retreat from the world than an action upon it. On some level, Ames is alert to the possibility of jack's return being a piece of providence, a test, a divine reminder that he needs to put his too long untended soul in order. In fact, at one point, he "hopes there's some special providence in his turning up just when I have so many other things to deal with, because he is a considerable disruption when peace would have been especially appreciated"(122).

In an attempt to unravel the purpose in his providentially "turning up," Ames sermonizes:

"When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you....What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me...you are free to act by your own lights."(124)

Jack brings to light Ames' failings. A lack of graciousness.123

A persistent defensiveness; while confessing this fault, he underplays it: "I know I am touchy about some things"(122). Age is one of them. The very term touchy might be understatement. It is interesting to note how Ames and his wife are seemingly unable to find a way of communicating about Jack. One can easily surmise that she picks up on topics he's "touchy" about and simply avoids broaching them. Not only does this suggest a power imbalance at the heart of their relationship, it indicates that when it comes to sensitive topics, Ames is a bit more than "touchy" about them.

Jack also exposes Ames' hypocrisy and vanity. These qualities are apparent to the reader of his account. Sometimes, they reveal themselves in small ways. Thus, he admits in his account that he didn't "write the way I speak. I'm afraid you would think that I didn't know any better"(28). Although he protests otherwise, he's clearly hopeful that his wife will read and save the lifetime of sermons he's stored up in the attic. He mentions them repeatedly.

Ultimately though, Jack has over time become the locus for Ames' questioning of God; he would seem to be exhibit A in Ames' feeling that God is not fair. His existence and behavior throws Ames' very faith into question. When Ames speaks of how all the people we encounter are emissaries of the Lord, he goes on to describe them as benefits insofar as they allow us to "demonstrate...faithfulness"(124).

Again, Gilead is the prodigal son story with provocative twists. In the Gilead version, there aren't two brothers but two fathers. The one forgives an undeserving Jack. Yet, this fails to satisfy Jack. He seems to want and need the forgiveness and love of his other father, Ames. It is as if his own father's easy and immediate love and forgiveness is not enough for Jack. Ultimately, he wants to somehow justify and earn his forgiveness and love.

Again, the two seem destined for each other by providence, as if each were assigned to the other as a trial through which they will gain their salvation. It is not clear whether they pass it. When Ames' grandfather finally leaves his son and his family, he pens them a note detailing his reasons. Ames' father and grandfather have battled over the idea of nonviolence and peace their entire life without resolution. Rejecting his son's pacifism, Grandfather Ames expresses a sentiment which captures the unresolved situation between Ames and Jack at the end of the book: "No good has come, no evil is ended. That is your peace"(84-85).

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

Gilead is a diary/letter ostensibly from elderly,dying minister, John Ames to his seven year old son. Ames intends that the boy will read it as an adult, long after he's gone. This is the central fiction/hope underlying Ames' writing. As such, it lends it an aura of honesty that is not always or entirely deserved.

Ames' intentions in writing it shift throughout the course of the book. In the beginning, his primary goal is to give the boy his history, or, as Ames terms it,"his begats." Yet, even here early on, Ames' own interests and obsessions dominate the focus of his writing.

In writing of his and the boy's history, Ames devotes a great deal of attention to his sons grandfather, John Ames. The senior John Ames is a prophetic abolitionist, who helps to found Gilead as a respite and sanctuary to those aiding John Brown in Kansas. Grandfather Ames is a stern, uncompromising man who is willing to resort to violence in pursuit of a cause he deems righteous. He is certain of God's will, having a rather personal relationship to Him.

His grandfather's shadow looms large over Ames' history because he looms large over Ames. Comparing his own beliefs and courage, Ames sees himself as vitiated version of his grandfather, an untested and lukewarm man.

His insecurities thus awakened, his history becomes an apologia for his quiet life spent ministering the Christian gospel in Gilead, a dying, small town in Iowa. Speaking of Gilead, Ames' brother warns him as a teen,"you might as well know what your sure to learn sometime. This is a backwater...leaving here is like waking from a trance"(26).

Ames is a Christian philosopher and the book is full of his meditations on grace, forgiveness and providence. While the philosophy can get heavy going, Ames' thoughtful and eloquent prose is seductive. The book is full of provocative thoughts and meditations eloquently stated; Gilead is replete with quote-worthy aphorisms. However, there is a certain patness to his thinking. The reader quickly joins Ames' in his worries that his convictions have never been refined or challenged by a true test.

Still, it is hard not to like Ames, to be charmed by him. He is capable of expressing an infectious, childlike wonder. He gushes with love for the world. By his lights, the world is blessed by, infused with, God; anyone who pays it sufficient attention is bound to share the blessing and achieve a communion with the divine.

Ames' wonder, hope and faith appear remarkable given the tragedy that has marked his life. As a young man, Ames loses his wife as she attempts to give birth to a daughter who dies shortly after. Scarred by the loss, Ames spends a great part of his adult life alone. He fills his his solitary days and nights with prayer, mediation and study. He grows old ministering a withering flock that he loves in a distant fashion.

According to his retrospective self-fashioning, Ames maintains "that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing"(55). His darkness is broken when a young woman, Lila, shows up at his church seeking religion. Despite the age gap, despite his efforts to resist his attraction toward her as unworthy, Lila becomes his wife and the mother of his son. Ames comes to see their coming together as an instance of grace, God's blessing him with love and knowledge of Himself. Ames recounts, "I learned a great deal from the experience....it enlarged my understanding of hope, just to know that such a transformation can occur. And it has greatly sweetened my imagination of death"(203).

Yet, this experience ends up comprising a rather small part of his memoir. Furthermore, given their central place in his story, Ames' beloved son and wife are rather vaguely defined characters, especially when compared to the sketches he offers of himself, his grandfather, his best friend Boughton, and his nemesis, Jack Boughton.

Finally, Ames' writing is ultimately high-jacked when his nemesis Jack Boughton returns to Gilead unexpectedly. Though unsure as to what brings black sheep Jack home, Ames views him as a threat. However warranted, Ames' distrust of Jack offends his own conception of himself as a Christian. Moreover, he's silently aware that there is an obsessive quality to it. With Jack's return, Ames' writing becomes a record of Jack's past and present doings in Gilead, an opportunity for Ames to reflect on their longstanding and tortured relationship. Ames ends up confessing,"I have mainly been worrying to myself, when my intention from the beginning was to speak to you"(202).

Estranged from his family for the past twenty years, Jack, as he's called, returns to Gilead to see his ailing and doting father. Jack has a troubled past and has deeply wounded everyone close to him. However, when he returns, everyone sense a change and is eager to forgive and embrace him, with the exception of Ames who seems to bear some particular grudge against him. Out of Christian pride, Ames is eager to hide his antipathy and distrust, although it is clear to those around him. Similarly, Ames holds back from writing to his son about Jack's misdeed and why he distrust him but ultimately does. He holds out for a while: it is only on page 155 that Ames finally "bear[s] witness against him"(155).

Jack's past misdeeds are numerous. His chief offense occurred in college when he fathered a child with a "very young girl" living on the wrong side of the tracks in Gilead. The event profoundly shames his father. Jack compounds the sin by refusing to acknowledge or care for the child. Despite the efforts of the other Boughtons to provide help, the baby girl is neglected by its teen mother and eventually dies as a result. Jack's behavior especially rankles Ames, still mourning and questioning the senseless death of his beloved child many years before.

Yet, even before this incident, Ames had a problem with Jack. Jack is not an easy child to like. As a youth, he engages in all sorts of malicious behavior, vandalism and theft for no apparent reason other than to irritate and shame those around him. Ames suspects Jack of deliberately testing his and others' capacity for Christian forgiveness and love. Ames is convinced that Jack is a shrewd psychologist. According to Ames, Jack has the ability to see through people, to locate and expose others' foibles and failings so as to explain away his own.

However, Ames' aversion to the boy in part originates in his own failings and weaknesses. Jack was christened John Ames Boughton, as a tribute and gift to Ames from his best-friend and fellow minister,Robert Boughton. However, Ames has never been able to accept this gift, instead seeing it as an affront, a suggestion that somehow the blessings of his life are lesser than those given Boughton. As Ames frames it, Jack was "the beloved child of my oldest and dearest friend, who gave him to me, so to speak, to compensate for my own childlessness"(155). Secretly, Ames has long resented Boughton and his large and prospering family. Ames is obviously bothered and affronted when he compares Boughton's with his own situation. Boughton's "gift" surprises and opens an old wound.

Prone to introspection and doubt, Ames fears that his long harbored dislike and suspicion of the boy is driven by his own failings. Worse, he worries that his petty aversion has played a role in Jack's failed life. Going all the way to the moment of his christening, Ames wonders if "the child felt how coldly I went about his christening, how far my thoughts were from blessing him"(188). Although quick to disavow this as magical thinking, he does confess "I have never been able to warm to him, never"(188). By Ames' convictions, this constitutes a sin, an abrogation of his Christian duty.

Ames is writing for the future. His account has a guarded quality to it. Yet, Ames' ego prevents him from realizing how in cowardly and indirect ways, his foibles and secrets come out. He may not be an entirely open book, but a good number of his pages are legible. As he rather humorously describes an earlier attempt at self-assessment, "I simply could not be honest with myself, and I couldn't deceive myself, either"(203).

Ames is well named: he is full of good thoughts and intentions. He aspires to live a good life. However, his notions of it have grown limited, possibly circumscribed to a smallness thanks to the reclusive and quiet life he's lived. He's grown a little too comfortable and self-involved after all these years in Gilead. This shows in his mention of his elderly parishioner Lacey Thrush, who "died promptly and decorously, out of consideration for me, I suspect, since she's been concerned about my health"(57). The dying Ames claims that in her passing Thrush gave him "a lot to live up to, so to speak. At any rate, she didn't keep me awake past my bedtime, and the peacefulness if her sleep contributed mightily to the peacefulness of mine. These old saints bless us every chance they get"(57).

For Ames, a life should be a blessing. Blessings connect us to and reveal the divine. Ames writes, "There is a reality in blessing...it doesn't enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that." To bless another is to become a vehicle of the divine. When done properly, Ames claims "the sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time"(23). To bless another is to raise them up by imparting to them a sense of their divinity. Perhaps jokingly, Ames even goes so far as to suggest he may have conferred such a benefit on a batch of kittens he blessed as a boy imitating his father who was a minister.

Ames is a tragic case. The bulk of his life has been holy. One gathers that he has truly blessed the folks around him. He has a saintly aspect. As he's leaving town, Jack himself, in partial reference to Ames and his father, remarks "You're all saints"(242). Yet, at some level, it is hard to say if Ames manages to overcome the last remnant of hatred in his heart: his hatred of Jack. Before Jack leaves, Ames blesses him. He tells him he's a good man. Yet, he only does so once he realizes that Jack is no longer a threat to him. He does so after it becomes apparent that doing so will incur no real cost or sacrifice.

One gathers that the time to bless and reach out to Jack was long ago and Ames squandered the opportunity. A sheep went missing and he left it at that. In a reverse of the bible parable, the shepherd Ames may have given his days wandering after and tending religiously to ninety-nine sheep. Out of selfish bitterness and envy, he neglected the one he needed to pay special attention to. He knows this and he can't make it right. A sad story.