NARRATIVE QUEST AND HEALING TRANSFORMATION IN THE WORK OF REYNOLDS PRICE ...

340 Pages·2007·1.15 MB·English

A VIEW TO A CURE: NARRATIVE QUEST AND HEALING TRANSFORMATION
IN THE WORK OF REYNOLDS PRICE

Suzanne Shrell Bolt

A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Department of English.

Chapel Hill
2007

Approved by:

Joseph M. Flora

Fred Hobson

Edward Donald Kennedy

George S. Lensing

Kimball King
© 2007
Suzanne Shrell Bolt
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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ABSTRACT

SUZANNE SHRELL BOLT: A View to a Cure: Narrative Quest and
Healing Transformation in the Work of Reynolds Price
(Under the direction of Joseph M. Flora)

Reynolds Price is a writer of serious religious fiction whose unique evangelium
reaches beyond orthodox Christianity for some of its deepest expressions. At the heart of
his work is a line of radiant, threatened protagonists whom Price calls “sacrificial
people. . . .lambs in whose blood we bathe, whose blood we drink . . . in the sense of the
god whom men kill and eat.” And the nature of such physical and spiritual grace—its
swift destruction and occasional, surprising redemption—is one of the most crucial,
recurrent mysteries Price explores. As sinner, battler, victim, object of Grace, and
vehicle of revelation, Price’s central type surfaces memorably in characters such as Milo
Mustian (A Generous Man), Todd Eborn (Love and Work), Rob Mayfield (A Great
Circle), Neal Avery (New Music), Raphael Noren (The Tongues of Angels)—even Price’s
father, Will (Clear Pictures and the sketch “Life for Life”). Echoing the dynamics of
Jesse Weston’s core grail scene (with its ritualized gesture of identification,
reconciliation, spiritual revelation, and healing), each narrative staging resembles a kind
of passion play. Each embodies the spiritual dilemma of the wounded young Grail King
and evinces what Emma Jung calls “the dark aspect” of the Divine, which wounds as
prelude to blessing. Price’s evolving narrative approach to these “grand lost boy[s]”
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traces the progress of his own quest for healing and virtue, mirroring the spiritual
progress of grail knight toward wounded grail king.
This study links and examines major manifestations of Price’s privately minted
archetype, exploring why such iconography flourishes—scattered, buried, but persistently
emergent—entwined with the mystery of a central relation Price’s work has explored
from the first (and in every genre). Like the grail narratives, Price’s own testify to God’s
power and Grace—but also (with increasing fullness) to the emotional history and
spiritual Quest of the “grand lost boy,” whose story implicitly demands witness and
redemption (even within the tale). Price’s search for the perspective from which to frame
his healing narrative gesture is a key element of this study—which is in one sense a
history of the search itself.
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FOR MY FATHER,

CLYDE HERBERT SHRELL, JR.

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, ’mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
—Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, LXXII
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This long and sometimes difficult labor of love was helped by many hands. The
input and enthusiasm of Professor Weldon Thornton gave it a strong start and the strength
to last. Doris Betts and Professor Linda Wagner-Martin offered advice and helpful
critiques in the earliest stages of the project. My thanks go also to the Special Collections
Library at Duke University and to Reynolds Price, for his generosity in our meetings and
for the continuing gift of his voice in the work—the source always of “credible . . .
consolations” and reasons to persist (even flourish) amidst difficulty.
But my return to and completion of this study has been no less complicated than
Parzival’s return to the Castle of the Grail. I thank Professor Beverly Taylor and Dean
Michael Poock for their advice in this regard. I could not have proceeded without
Professor Fred Hobson and my new committee members (Don Kennedy, George
Lensing, and Kimball King). But above all I thank my director, Joseph Flora. He has
offered insightful, detailed critiques and has become a strong advocate for the project—
enlisting the aid of Mary Floyd-Wilson (Director of Graduate Studies) and the Dean of
the Graduate School, Linda Dykstra, to whom I am deeply grateful.
I am grateful beyond words to my friends—and to my husband, Brian, who has
loved me through every frustration. But I am most deeply indebted to my parents, Clyde
and Gerry Shrell, for the support, laughter, and wisdom they have offered along this road.
I treasure the conversation that has emerged from this project and strengthened us all.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………..viii

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………..…ix

Chapter

I. THE GUARDIAN BOUND: NARRATIVE AS GRAIL QUEST……………..1

II. THE INNOCENT EYE………………………………………………………..45

III. RETOOLING THE QUEST: LOVE AND WORK, “CONSCIOUS
CALISTHENIC[S]”, AND CRISIS IN NARRATIVE VISION…………….107

IV. THIS “HIGH TALE OF LOVE AND . . . DEATH”: A GREAT CIRCLE
AND THE WAY OF THE “NOBLE HEART” ...……………………...…. 191

V. APOTHEOSIS………………………………………………………………250

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………....303

WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..313
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CM The Masks of God: Creative Mythology

CP Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides

LaT Learning a Trade: A Craftsman’s Notebooks, 1955-1997

L&W Love and Work

LtG Letter to a Godchild: Concerning Faith

LtMF Letter to a Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care?

PoR The Promise of Rest

SoE The Surface of Earth

SoL The Source of Light

WNL A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing
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INTRODUCTION

In the last twenty years, the already remarkable career of Reynolds Price has been
undergoing a unique resurgence. Price had firmly established himself as a major voice
(talented, versatile, and prolific) in the years between his award-winning first novel, A
Long and Happy Life (1962), and the remarkable success of Kate Vaiden (1986). But
following his recovery from a three-year battle with spinal cancer (1984-1987), Price’s
reputation has broadened considerably, drawing renewed critical and popular attention
for a flood of new projects. Since 1986, he has published two volumes of poetry, eight
novels, and four new plays—venturing for the first time into the worlds of children’s
literature (A Perfect Friend) and National Public Radio commentary (see his collection
entitled Feasting the Heart).
More striking, perhaps, is the new directness with which Price—ever generous in
this regard—began to address both his life and his lifelong fascination with the sacred.
He has published two memoirs—the second of which, A Whole New Life, directly
addresses his battle with cancer. Letter to a Man in the Fire (an expanded lecture
delivered at Auburn Theological Seminary) began as Price’s reply to a thirty-six-year-old
man dying of cancer who had read this second memoir and had written to ask (as Price’s
subtitle reflects), “Does God exist, and Does he Care?” Though Price had explored
biblical narrative before, in his volume A Palpable God (1978), he began publishing
more frequently on both canonical and non-canonical Christian texts, exploring their
implications for both Faith and narrative itself. Three Gospels includes his own
translations of Mark and John, but the third in the volume is Price’s own narrative—a
redaction drawn from various canonical and non-canonical stories of the life and work of
Jesus Christ. A Serious Way of Wondering continues this trend, using narrative as a tool
to stage and explore “missing” discussions from the Christian gospels. Price considers
topics such as homosexuality, women’s issues, suicide, and adultery by envisioning
Jesus’ conversations with Judas and with “Rahab”—a character inspired by the unnamed
adulteress of John 8 and the woman at Jacob’s well (96-104). This new direction, and
what critic James A. Schiff describes as “the more colloquial and accessible” voice of his
recent writing, has found Price wider readership than ever before (Understanding
Reynolds Price 10).
The most significant development of the new interest, however, has been serious
reconsideration of earlier, largely neglected works and a deep reassessment of Price’s
entire canon in light of several recent publications.1 Throughout his career, Price has
repeatedly emphasized the large extent to which his work (particularly the fiction) draws
on images and experiences from his childhood and adolescence. Consequently, his first
memoir, Clear Pictures (1989), is now indispensable to scholars for the light it casts on
those experiences and on the tight network of friends and kin who left a strong and
permanent imprint on his early life. The volume is unique in its structure and emphasis—

1 Early studies—especially those prior to Daniel Frederick Daniel’s 1977 dissertation, Within and
Without a Region: the Fiction of Reynolds Price—tend to focus exclusively on Price as Southern writer,
either praising or condescending to the work for its loving portrayals of life in the Virginia valley and
piedmont North Carolina. Daniel’s study is the first to consider in depth “connections between Price’s
technical and thematic interests and the larger tradition of Western literature” (12)—particularly their
“romantic origins” (iii.)—and to comment extensively on its “mythic dimensions” (15). This study is also
the first to stress the extremely personal quality of Price’s “evolving vision.” Daniel asserts that “the
difficulty of creating and sustaining a community” is at the heart of this vision (11)—ultimately comic, but
far darker than most critics had realized (13).
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