This new novel, probably Updike's most ambitious yet, gets its title from Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Updike treats the lyric, "glory in his bosom/that transfigures you and me" very seriously. He has always been, deep down, a religious writer. This is his most overtly religious novel; it is nothing less than a spiritual biography of America in the twentieth century. Updike follows the fortunes of four generations of an American family named the Wilmots. we first meet Clarence, a Presbyterian minister in Paterson, N.J. in 1910. We witness him lose his stern Calvinist faith under the assaults of the great determinists of the 19th century, Marx and Darwin. "(God's) laws as elicited by the great naturalist's patient observation were so invariable, as well as so impersonal and cruel, as to need no executor." Clarence decides to resign from his post. There follows a satiric scene; a meeting with his Dale Carnegie/Tony Robbins-like ministerial superior who tries to get Clarence to study the great "liberal" philosophers of the day -- pragmatic William James and "Emerson, that old pipe-dreamer". But Clarence cannot imagine a God that is anything other than his old personal God; and still he cannot live with the idea of Hell. He falls into despair, becoming a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman and an addict of the new popular entertainment, motion pictures. Clarence Wilmot can be seen as representing the collapse of the moral consensus of the 19th century and the ushering in of the anxious relativism of the 20th.

Clarence's son, Teddy, becomes cautious and fearful because of the family's fall into poverty after his father's disgrace. He gets a glimpse of New York's Jazz Age (which he finds boring and shallow) before he settles in as a small-town mailman and quiet family man. He refuses to attend church and holds a grudge against God "for abandoning his father". And yet the foundation of his whole life rests upon a semi-revelatory vision he has that tells him to leave New York and marry his small-town sweetheart. Teddy's daughter Essie later reflects that her long-suffering father was made into a "beast of burden" by the Great Depression and the Second World War. This chapter is Updike's tribute to that generation of Americans whose faith was shaken by the terrible events of mid-century, and yet muddled through.

Teddy's daughter, Essie, symbolizes what Tom Wolfe called the post-war "happiness explosion". She becomes a Marilyn-Monroe-like Hollywood superstar. Updike has a lot of fun rewriting movie history, inventing films for Essie to star in and giving us funny and lifelike portraits of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Harry Cohn, among others. Essie's real name is Esther, as in the Biblical Queen Esther, with all of that name's resonances. She has a simple, unexamined faith in God that is sincere, but kept private like a rabbit's foot in her pocket. "All of her prayers were answered". She and her brother Daniel, who becomes a CIA agent, represent the boundless confidence and prosperity of post-war America, as well as the casual assumption that "God is on our side". But there is a terrible price for that arrogance that is paid in the next generation. Essie's son Clark (named after Gable) grows up rich and neglected in Hollywood. No doubt he stands for the baby-boomers, upended by traumatic cultural change; and also for the little brothers and sisters of generation X, adrift in the chaos left by their older siblings. Clark's dispiriting adventures in L.A. are recounted in chilling detail (Updike credits in the novel's acknowledgements Bret Easton Ellis horrific "Less Than Zero" as helpful in writing this chapter.) Clark eventually joins up with The Temple of True and Actual Faith of Lower Branch, Colorado; Jesse Smith, prophet. This sect is obviously based on David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. This is the most gripping part of the novel. Without giving away too much, the novel ends with an answered prayer, and with events poignantly different than what actually happened at Waco.

This novel is a feast for history buffs. Updike fills the pages with details of place and time, sure to provoke nostalgia for long- vanished things like drug-store soda fountains and movie palaces. He also provides clever insights into politics and culture (Daniel Wilmot may be the only sympathetic CIA Cold Warrior in contemporary American fiction). Updike includes two brief mentions about Mormons. The first is about how the U.S. government tamed even the Mormons, " by their remote and bitter lake." The next shows a sympathetic social worker to the sect, "raised as a Mormon", who agrees that a callously atheistic remark heard in public school by sect children is offensive. It appears that Updike mistakenly considers the LDS church akin to the dour fundamentalism of his fictional sect. Whether or not this connection is deserved, the point is that Updike recognizes the legitimate concerns of religious believers about an invasive and frequently hostile secular culture.

In his beautifully wrought essays, Updike identifies himself as a Christian: Barthian neo-orthodox style. He writes that the great strength of that theology is its emphasis on divine grace, that "it gives one permission to live". "I took in the concept that God watches the sparrows fall -- that our world is everywhere, at all times, in every detail, watched by God, like a fourth dimension...like millions of other little citizens of Christendom I was infected with the dangerous idea that there is a double standard, this world's and another, and that the other is higher, and all life flows from it...the parable of the talents bore a clear lesson for me: Live your life. live it as if there is a blessing on it. dare to take chances. lest you leave your talent buried in the ground . . ."

Updike's characters dare to live. They struggle, fail, make dreadful messes of their lives. but they continue to seek for the light, trusting that something they might dare to call "God" will aid them in their quests. Some may consider Updike's most famous creation, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, to be merely a big fat vulgar slob. But Updike sees in Rabbit's thrashings about, and in the crass but energetic post-war America depicted in "Lillies", unmistakable signs of spiritual vitality, a willingness to endure experience, and repent when necessary.

Updike is notorious in left-wing New York literary circles as an unabashed lover of America. Some reviewers of this novel have suggested that Updike is criticizing the nation for replacing religion with electronic media and the movies. On the contrary, I hear Updike saying that this has always been a gorgeously optimistic country: we dream big dreams, and the movies are the latest reflection of the sheer forcefulness and ambition of our dreams. As LDS people with big theological dreams of our own, we can understand Updike's vision, even if its not quite theologically congruent with ours (but we too regard America as an exceptional place). This a big, terrific, exquisitely written novel that leaves you with a lot to think about.

      R.W. Rasband--rrasband@mail.coin.missouri.edu
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  "...for we possess nothing certainly except the past..."