The Tree of Life

by Hugh Nissenson, Margo Jefferson (Introduction)

Finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award

"This small novel works like a laser beam, penetrating the American experience with searing and concentrated intensity."—Los Angeles Times

"The Tree of Life is one of the most powerful, original, and disturbing books that I have read in a long time. Hugh Nissenson has caught the voice of the old-time diary keeper just exactly. It's uncanny, marvelous, so direct and deceptively simple that you know what pains he has taken.The book is a work of art and no one who reads it will ever forget it."—David McCullough

"It is a tale more moving and haunting than one thinks it can possibly be."—Village Voice

The year is 1811. Having suffered a loss of faith, Thomas Keene, Congregational minister from New England, abandons the East and moves to Richland County on the Ohio frontier. The Tree of Life is Keene's journal: stories and jottings appear alongside accounting entries and poems, coarse jokes and sermons, woodcuts and maps. In this "Waste Book," Keene conveys his longing for a young widow, his fascination with John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), and his resolve in the face of the growing enmity between his fellow settlers and the Delaware Indians. The Tree of Life reveals a man of intellect and passion as he confronts the raw country.

"The juxtaposition of horror and information perfectly captures the genius of this imagined diary…Scarcely a word is wasted. Hardly an aspect of the struggle to found a new civilization remains untouched. The Tree of Life dramatizes, sometimes with almost unbearable intensity, the American dream and its attendant nightmare."—Time Magazine

"[The Tree of Life] confronts us where our deepest and most disturbing fantasies intersect with our sense of history…Given the richness of its texture and the strength of whichever of its threads one pursues, one can imagine that its force will grow and take an ever tighter grip on our understanding of the American past. It is a book that plants deep seeds."—New York Times

"A beautifully paced book…[it] allows the shocks and resonances to gather slowly, the way they do in life when you are taking everything in, but cannot yet allow yourself to admit how much you've been affected…In thrall to the powers Mr. Nissenson has invoked and wielded with such fearful symmetry—the powers of documentation and of vision—we can only read on."—Margo Jefferson, from her new Introduction

Hugh Nissenson (1933–2013) was born in New York City. After graduating from Swarthmore College, he published his first short story in Harper's Magazine in 1958. He taught writing at Yale, Barnard, and Auburn Theological Seminary, and was the author of a memoir, three collections of short stories and journals, and many novels.

Margo Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic. She has been a staff writer for The New York Times and Newsweek; her reviews and essays have appeared in New York Magazine, Grand Street, Vogue, Harper's and many other publications.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Historical, Novels

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a compact but powerful novel set on the Ohio frontier in 1811 and 1812. Thomas Keane, a former New England minister and a widower who has lost his faith, settles near Mansfield in the fateful year of 1811, just as the Shawnee chief Tecumseh is preparing to lead several Indian nations agains the white settlers in southern Indiana, and a year before the tensions rise even further with the advent of the War of 1812.

In that year, Keane decides to start an account book and diary, and the entire novel is told in this format. Amid his daily listings of accounts paid and received, weather conditions, and farm chores, a powerful and often disturbing story emerges.

One of Keane's neighbors is the mystic John Chapman, who later would be become part of legend as Johnny Appleseed. In this historically faithful rendering, Chapman is close to the nearby Delaware Indians and is an adherent of Emanuel Swedenborg who believes that a deceased woman speaks to him and guides his life, so that what would today be called schizophrenia is seen here as eccentrity within a close-knit community.

There are few settlers in this part of the frontier, yet among them they encompass an enormous range of personalities, skills, passions, vicissitudes and longing.

Much of the book is dominated by Keane's attraction to Fanny Cooper, whose husband dies early in the story of a rattlesnake bite, and his lengthy decision to ask her to marry him. The other major thread is the growing tensions with the nearby Indians, which erupt once the war with the British begins and Tecumseh aligns himself with America's enemy.

Here is just a taste of the entries during this period:

"11 Sept. 9 p.m.

The warrior named Toby and his 11-year-old daughter, Flower Beginning to Bloom Woman (Mau-nou-goke-co), escaped from Mansfield during this morning's storm .... Bob & Phil resolved to track them down. Six miles out, on the Upper Sandusky trail, they overtook and fired upon them, wounding Toby in the back of the neck. He ran about 40 rods to a stream, drank, then collapsed beside it under a cottonwood. .... They found him sitting against the tree with his breechclout wrapped around his neck. Bob & Phil dismounted. Bob drew his tomahawk from his belt and handed it to Phil, saying, "Take revenge for your drownded Ma!" Stone yelled, "Don't!" "Toby raised his right hand, crying, "En-Gau-has"! (Mama!). Phil buried the tomahawk up to its handle into Toby's neck, under his left ear ...."

Scenes like this, sometimes showing equal cruelty by the Indians, make it clear that anger and bruality were common when conflict broke out, just as kindness, decency and intermingling often prevailed at other times.

A wonderfully incisive book, sprinkled with drawings Keane purportedly made and some poems he tried out, including this one:

"Two drinks, today
And what a shot I am.
After three,
I hit a hickory
Six feet in breadth:
The requisite depth
For planting flesh.
Flesh must decay.
Not like this book.
This book, which sprouts from rot,
Is here to stay."

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because it looked like a fast read and because the reviews on the back were unusually laudatory. It was fast, but it didn't move me at all. I laughed a few times. The death scenes were almost startling. The conceit is that the book is a failed preacher's journal from frontier times. It deals with his mundane life, his humorous lust and alcoholism, and the era's conflict between the white settlers and the Native Americans. The death scenes were impressive, the more I think of it. They made you feel dismay at the suffering a character has endured, but you never had a real feeling for any of the characters other than the narrator and the local lunatic, Johnny Appleseed. I will admit I could have read it slower and kept a ledger of who each character was--I did this for Malamud, after all--but the form of the book invited distraction for the reader. I could have tried harder, but at least to a partial degree, my wandering focus is due to the novel's form--inventive and fully realized as it is. If the reader came to care about the characters and/or if the author found a way to make his characters more distinguishable from one another, their deaths would have had a more lasting impact. Nisseson's journalistic renderings of the murders pack quite a punch but are ultimately lost because you can't keep track of which person he's writing about. Oh and the ending is bittersweet; it's effective. Suddenly. So. Yeah, I read it because the reviews made it sound just about profound, and that's what I'm after at the moment. But it didn't deliver. I wasn't the most attentive reader, but an author has to earn that by the time the novel's first half is done. That's when I expire.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

still chewing on this one. it starts cold, or at least the version i read starts cold, and you have to pick up some stuff -- that the narrator/diarist is an apostate minister or some kind of ex-believer, who has moved to mansfield ohio in 1811-ish, some time after his wife died offscreen, which may or may not have had something to do with his faith dying, although there is some frank discussion of how he liked her more than loved her. but you don't get told any of that directly. mostly his diary is about taking corn to the mill, getting drunk, masturbating to roman poetry. meanwhile, his weird neighbor johnny appleseed is pushing swedenborg on him and the whites are nervously eyeing the delaware indian settlement nearby, as tecumseh's war resolves into the larger war of 1812. he falls in love with the young widow fanny and struggles with booze and also horndog tendencies as shit goes haywire and people get killed in raids and etc. rip Juno the cow. some very gnarly, splattery parts, but also some gorgeous, slowly-turned moments of insight and poignant entropy. johnny appleseed is well-suited to religious eccentric comic relief bit part. the whole thing is in delivered a diary, which has tidbits of another narrative frame around it (like, accession details from a historical society) which doesn't really add or detract much. anyway if you are into mumblecore dirtbag frontier novels you should probably read this. CW, some pretty unpleasant things are said about, and done to, and done by native american characters. it surprises me that this book was apparently pretty successful in its day (mid 80s) because i had never heard of it or the author prior to a couple months ago.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this when it first came out back in '85 and always wanted to go back to it. It is the fictional journal of a frontiersman in the Northwest Teritory (OH) in 1812. The journal not only includes day to day occurances, but also art work, poems, financial transactions. The narrator, Thomas Keene, is Harvard educated, so you get some classical allusions here as well.
What Nissenson does so well is let s know these people were human as well - they had sex urges, were vulgar, swore and told dirty jokes. And sold whiskey as a livelyood.
Nissenson, Jewish and from New York, is a different writer almost every book he publishes. You never know what you will get, and that is a good thing.
One of the main characters is John Chapman - aka Johnny Appleseed.
Short, and to the point, one of the few books that gives a realistic portrayal of our forefathers.
Excellent interview w/ him at: http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/n...

[Sterling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book. Particularly the narrative structure which is in the form of a diary: daily entries, drawings, and short poems. You have to simply let it wash over you in order to pick up the storyline and to understand the characters. This made it for me completely unpredictable - which I appreciated. Best of all, it offered a glimpse into life in 1811. These were tough times and the situation with the Native Americans we’re fraud. America was a melting pot of people and cultures sitting on top of a savage wilderness.

[Marvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Darlene thought I'd like this short novel, written as diary entries, set in north central Ohio (near Mansfield) in 1811-12, but it didn't much appeal to me.

[Steve Majerus-Collins · Rating 1 out of 5]

A silly book, written as though it were a frontier diary in Ohio. Except for the historically ignorant, it has no value.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For whatever reason, this book really was entrancing. It's not easy to read at times due to plain, no nonsense descriptions of human cruelty, but at other times you laugh out loud. This is a diary of sorts by an Harvard-educated man who decides to leave the city and head west (to Ohio that is) for a life of deprivation, hard winters, ignorant settlers, and increasingly displaced and angry Native Americans. Mix in a still, some freed slaves and and the certifiably crazy wanderer Johnny Appleseed and you have yourself a unforgettable book.

[Nina · Rating 2 out of 5]

It didn't grab me. The writing felt disjointed and distant. I couldn't get into it or care for any of the characters. I was glad when it was over.

[Beatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are reminded that "frontier" and "west" is relative. HOD in 1800 Ohio.

[Connie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not all that excited about this book. It reminded me vaguely of A Light in the Forest (read 40+ years ago), but not very engaging. I kept hoping it would get better but it didn't.

[Rob Withers · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult and demanding read, but very challenging and very relevant in this political climate.