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Exit 36: A Fictional Chronicle
Capon has a clear sense of the job expected of him. Not only does he participate in the acute authorial self-consciousness found generally in 20th century novels, he also recognizes the extra onus of trying to make living, breathing, experiential sense of life-in-Christ rather than of life-in-general. He sees his basic fictional problem as that of establishing a direct & authentic tone of voice that will engage readers & carry them into & along with the course of the story. The chosen mode of presentation is 1st person narration: the persona is a perceptive, experienced man in his fifties who is intimately involved in the events he relates.
Capon makes his novel turn on the mystery of a single human personality. The mystery is particularized in central figures who are men in their mid-thirties (Christ-bearers?). He uses as the mainspring of his plot a death--specifically, a violent death--to force his theological questions & the need for commensurate answers to the fore. It's obvious, then, why the choice of a 1st person narrator was made.
The atmosphere of Capon's Exit 36 is, oppressively & aggressively, that of Long Island suburbia. The narrator is an Episcopal priest who makes no bones about belonging to this freeway-&-shopping-center, banal, comfortable, TV-family-comedy way of life & thriving in it, talking its lingo & living by its rhythms. He saves his self-respect by pouring it on for the theology class he's been retained to teach on Saturdays at a nearby seminary. Otherwise he is, as he introduces himself, Bill Jansson, an easy-going, extrovertive, life-affirming regular guy. The pages of Exit 36 race with Jansson's embracing love of self & others, mingling wit, slang, up-to-the-minute four letter words, big theological generalizations & a rueful awareness now & then that he's rarely the persuader & mainstay that he'd like to be. (Is Capon flirting breezily with some comic self-portraiture in Jansson?)
The subject of Exit 36 is the suicide of a 38-year-old Episcopal priest from the parish next to Jansson's. Ted Jacobs died by driving his car at full speed into an abutment at Exit 36, Sunnyside Blvd, Northern State Pkwy. The novel unfolds as the revelation of Jacobs' all-too-human errors & ineffectualities, which center in his four-year-long "double life" as not merely a gentle idealist & leftwing activist, a model of pastoral care, & a passable husband to Anne but also as the tortured & magnetized lover of Pat, a desirable divorcee who lives in Jansson's parish. Jansson's self-appointed mission is to bring the two women to accept the truth about Ted, & their own separate yet somehow mutual relations to him, without repudiating their love for him or their potential respect for each other. This is what Jansson calls "reconciliation"-"One Main Subject: God, it is just so obvious!" (p.81)
Unfortunately, it's Capon's treatment of Xianity as "so obvious," so open to brash paraphrase, so approachable in over-familiar or trendy terms, that precludes any achievement of human authenticity or religious vision in his novel. Exit 36 simply begs its ultimate questions instead of confronting them directly. Mod-pop God-talk may be acceptable to that segment of his readership for whom he's a preacher to the converted. But those readers who judge him as a novelist will see their time & money as having pretty largely been wasted.--Janel M. Mueller (edited)
Capon makes his novel turn on the mystery of a single human personality. The mystery is particularized in central figures who are men in their mid-thirties (Christ-bearers?). He uses as the mainspring of his plot a death--specifically, a violent death--to force his theological questions & the need for commensurate answers to the fore. It's obvious, then, why the choice of a 1st person narrator was made.
The atmosphere of Capon's Exit 36 is, oppressively & aggressively, that of Long Island suburbia. The narrator is an Episcopal priest who makes no bones about belonging to this freeway-&-shopping-center, banal, comfortable, TV-family-comedy way of life & thriving in it, talking its lingo & living by its rhythms. He saves his self-respect by pouring it on for the theology class he's been retained to teach on Saturdays at a nearby seminary. Otherwise he is, as he introduces himself, Bill Jansson, an easy-going, extrovertive, life-affirming regular guy. The pages of Exit 36 race with Jansson's embracing love of self & others, mingling wit, slang, up-to-the-minute four letter words, big theological generalizations & a rueful awareness now & then that he's rarely the persuader & mainstay that he'd like to be. (Is Capon flirting breezily with some comic self-portraiture in Jansson?)
The subject of Exit 36 is the suicide of a 38-year-old Episcopal priest from the parish next to Jansson's. Ted Jacobs died by driving his car at full speed into an abutment at Exit 36, Sunnyside Blvd, Northern State Pkwy. The novel unfolds as the revelation of Jacobs' all-too-human errors & ineffectualities, which center in his four-year-long "double life" as not merely a gentle idealist & leftwing activist, a model of pastoral care, & a passable husband to Anne but also as the tortured & magnetized lover of Pat, a desirable divorcee who lives in Jansson's parish. Jansson's self-appointed mission is to bring the two women to accept the truth about Ted, & their own separate yet somehow mutual relations to him, without repudiating their love for him or their potential respect for each other. This is what Jansson calls "reconciliation"-"One Main Subject: God, it is just so obvious!" (p.81)
Unfortunately, it's Capon's treatment of Xianity as "so obvious," so open to brash paraphrase, so approachable in over-familiar or trendy terms, that precludes any achievement of human authenticity or religious vision in his novel. Exit 36 simply begs its ultimate questions instead of confronting them directly. Mod-pop God-talk may be acceptable to that segment of his readership for whom he's a preacher to the converted. But those readers who judge him as a novelist will see their time & money as having pretty largely been wasted.--Janel M. Mueller (edited)
200 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
2 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Robert Farrar Capon
42 books150 followersRobert Farrar Capon was a lifelong New Yorker and served for almost 30 years as a parish priest in the Episcopal Church. His first book, Bed and Board, was published in 1965 and by 1977 left full-time ministry to devote more time to writing books, though he continued to serve the church in various capacities such as assisting priest and Canon Theologian. He has written twenty books on theology, cooking and family life.
His lifelong interest in food intersected with his writing and led to his becoming food columnist for Newsday and The New York Times and also teaching cooking classes.
His lifelong interest in food intersected with his writing and led to his becoming food columnist for Newsday and The New York Times and also teaching cooking classes.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 4, 2021
Superb! Superb narrative! Superb writing!
January 10, 2011
What an odd, odd novel for me to read. A friend must have recommended it. That, some vague familiarity with the author and recent graduation from seminary may have taken me over the threshold of resistance. In any case, it wasn't very impressive.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews