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Come, the Restorer
William Goyen's fifth novel is a fable of Texas country life in the first half of the twentieth century, portraying religious revivalism and the money madness and ecological destruction caused by the oil boom. His narrative is composed of the brief linked episodes and tales that are Goyen's trademark, and is written with an ear for the rhythms of regional speech that was his particular gift.
- GenresFiction
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
44 people want to read
About the author
William Goyen
52 books24 followersCharles William Goyen was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, editor, and teacher. Born in a small town in East Texas, these roots would influence his work for his entire life.
In World War II he served as an officer aboard an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific, where he began work on one of his most important and critically acclaimed books, The House of Breath. After the war and through the 1950s he published short stories, collections of stories, other novels, and plays. He never achieved commercial success in America, but his translated work was highly regarded in Europe. During his life he could not completely support himself through his writing, so at various times he took work as an editor and teacher at several prominent universities. At one point he did not write fiction for several years, calling it a “relief” to not have to worry about his writing.
Major themes in his work include home and family, place, time, sexuality, isolation, and memory. His style of writing is not easily categorized, and he eschewed labels of genre placed on his works.
In World War II he served as an officer aboard an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific, where he began work on one of his most important and critically acclaimed books, The House of Breath. After the war and through the 1950s he published short stories, collections of stories, other novels, and plays. He never achieved commercial success in America, but his translated work was highly regarded in Europe. During his life he could not completely support himself through his writing, so at various times he took work as an editor and teacher at several prominent universities. At one point he did not write fiction for several years, calling it a “relief” to not have to worry about his writing.
Major themes in his work include home and family, place, time, sexuality, isolation, and memory. His style of writing is not easily categorized, and he eschewed labels of genre placed on his works.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 21, 2021
about 4 pages into this when he started elaborating in extensive detail on a guy in a coma with a perpetual erection i knew it was going to be cool. it's easily the horniest book i've read in a year or more and it's also incredibly sincere and fabulist and not at all interested in doing the kind of stuff that a realist novel would do, it feels almost latin american to me in method. and the prose style looks like this:
"He was accursed with the sense of destruction, marked like Cain, by the natural gift, the ancient instinct for devastation. To bring down or dig up was his natural urge. What grew he went right to, to cut down. What ran under the earth he clawed down after and sucked it up and got it out—he wanted it out and in his hands; tore up everything to get down to something; and when he had got it all, turned and took it away and left a wasteland. He was a walking Plague, a pestilence, locust, frog, grasshopper, tree moth, a devourer, worse than any chemical spray or poison, a devastator. He took away from Nature its pure self, its forces, and did not put back anything, but he added fake stuff—chemicals, preservatives, coloratives. His factories murdered rivers, spoiled freshness, soured and embittered sweetness, withered green. He was the first, the leader, the beginning of the generation that poisoned itself, that spoiled its own, that ate its own poison. Wylie Prescott left a ghost forest of burnouts, sinks from salt-water overflow, slews from oilwell drillings, junk from pipeline digging. Nothing lived in his devastation. He drilled and dug and hacked and tore up the wilderness. He opened out of the earth volcanoes of salt water that spewed hundreds of feet into the air, shot off geysers of salt and slag and crude that blackened trees and vines and encrusted acre upon acre with salt cake. He created a landscape of slews and sumps."
"’Twas said that this cocked-gun sleep in which Mr. de Persia dwelt had been devised by some witch that had enchained him in bonds of sleep forever. He was encasketed in a tub of glass, his heavy hand holding his light hand cupped tenderly in it as though it were something it had just scooped up out of water. The watery casket of Mr. de Persia was a deep, wide bathtub made of thick icelike glass, a creation of Mr. de Persia for his own pleasure? for sale? on capricious commission from somebody who never came back for it? Whatever the reason, Mr. de Persia made it and one morning was found deeply asleep in it in the rear of his workshop. Possibly a swindler named Craig Corinth, lumber king, cotton king, oil king, etc., had asked Mr. de Persia to make a tub deep as a pool like this one for his lascivious bathroom in the mansion which he had suddenly so mysteriously abandoned, disappearing in the East. It was rumored that Craig Corinth had a special liking for bathtubs, and not a few girls of the town had been his guests in his marble one and reports held it to be a sensational experience. Whatever the reason or why ever he had made it, Mr. de Persia one morning was found deeply asleep in it, and in full erection."
"Now in the ruptured and blasted ground, under the ruin of the roundhouse, lay the sweet cinders of Ace Adair, sunken in his urn of dark iron, in an engine of violence. Ο what was he dreaming, Ace Adair, in his sunken locomotive? In his Inferno? Fatherhood? Orphanage? Was his son’s orphanage forever a mystery? Unless, like a prophecy, Addis’ hidden true father would walk into the town out of the deep wilderness and announce himself, proclaiming his fatherhood of Addis, bestowing upon him his real name, and sonhood and parentage like a great prize, and redeeming Ace of his everlasting burden. Wouldn’t Addis be overjoyed to accept his true father? To run and embrace his father and walk all through the town and countryside of Rose River bottom, clasping his father’s shoulder, introducing him to everybody? My father!"
"He was accursed with the sense of destruction, marked like Cain, by the natural gift, the ancient instinct for devastation. To bring down or dig up was his natural urge. What grew he went right to, to cut down. What ran under the earth he clawed down after and sucked it up and got it out—he wanted it out and in his hands; tore up everything to get down to something; and when he had got it all, turned and took it away and left a wasteland. He was a walking Plague, a pestilence, locust, frog, grasshopper, tree moth, a devourer, worse than any chemical spray or poison, a devastator. He took away from Nature its pure self, its forces, and did not put back anything, but he added fake stuff—chemicals, preservatives, coloratives. His factories murdered rivers, spoiled freshness, soured and embittered sweetness, withered green. He was the first, the leader, the beginning of the generation that poisoned itself, that spoiled its own, that ate its own poison. Wylie Prescott left a ghost forest of burnouts, sinks from salt-water overflow, slews from oilwell drillings, junk from pipeline digging. Nothing lived in his devastation. He drilled and dug and hacked and tore up the wilderness. He opened out of the earth volcanoes of salt water that spewed hundreds of feet into the air, shot off geysers of salt and slag and crude that blackened trees and vines and encrusted acre upon acre with salt cake. He created a landscape of slews and sumps."
"’Twas said that this cocked-gun sleep in which Mr. de Persia dwelt had been devised by some witch that had enchained him in bonds of sleep forever. He was encasketed in a tub of glass, his heavy hand holding his light hand cupped tenderly in it as though it were something it had just scooped up out of water. The watery casket of Mr. de Persia was a deep, wide bathtub made of thick icelike glass, a creation of Mr. de Persia for his own pleasure? for sale? on capricious commission from somebody who never came back for it? Whatever the reason, Mr. de Persia made it and one morning was found deeply asleep in it in the rear of his workshop. Possibly a swindler named Craig Corinth, lumber king, cotton king, oil king, etc., had asked Mr. de Persia to make a tub deep as a pool like this one for his lascivious bathroom in the mansion which he had suddenly so mysteriously abandoned, disappearing in the East. It was rumored that Craig Corinth had a special liking for bathtubs, and not a few girls of the town had been his guests in his marble one and reports held it to be a sensational experience. Whatever the reason or why ever he had made it, Mr. de Persia one morning was found deeply asleep in it, and in full erection."
"Now in the ruptured and blasted ground, under the ruin of the roundhouse, lay the sweet cinders of Ace Adair, sunken in his urn of dark iron, in an engine of violence. Ο what was he dreaming, Ace Adair, in his sunken locomotive? In his Inferno? Fatherhood? Orphanage? Was his son’s orphanage forever a mystery? Unless, like a prophecy, Addis’ hidden true father would walk into the town out of the deep wilderness and announce himself, proclaiming his fatherhood of Addis, bestowing upon him his real name, and sonhood and parentage like a great prize, and redeeming Ace of his everlasting burden. Wouldn’t Addis be overjoyed to accept his true father? To run and embrace his father and walk all through the town and countryside of Rose River bottom, clasping his father’s shoulder, introducing him to everybody? My father!"
March 13, 2022
A more accessible, priapic Confidence-Man, a protean tall tale of America, mythic, propulsive, over the top, far more wide-ranging, even if it never leaves East Texas. I’m not a fan of the fiction of excess, but this one, especially the first half, grabbed me. I felt the Cleon Peters/Oil King section was the weakest, and I found myself flipping through the last section, but overall I was caught up in the novel’s language and rhythms. It’s pretty amazing how little noticed Goyen is, especially considering that his books are now easily available.
March 26, 2024
William Goyen’s “Come, The Restorer” is a ghostly ejaculation of a novella, not just in symbol or narrative, but in how the meaning seems to pulse out from the wanderings and machinations of his characters. This is more fantastical than his other works, and could even be described as absurdist, but it never fails to take itself seriously. My love affair and obsession with Goyen continues.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews