Behind Bars with John Cheever
On a good day I call myself a Christian simply because I was raised
Catholic, it's the one religion I know something about, and it's programmed
into my cultural genes. But don't ask me to quote the Bible, even on a good day. Instead, like many
of my generation, most of my adult spiritual education has been focused on
Buddhism. I've done all the required spiritual reading: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Siddhartha, Gesture of Balance, Be Here Now,
Surfing the Himalayas etc. and I can ramble on about mindfulness and loving-kindness
as if I were one of Jack Kornfeld's original apostles. Still, I was baptized
and confirmed Catholic, married in the Episcopal Church, had both my children baptized
(though you could count the times they've been to church on one hand) and can
still recite the Apostle's Creed from memory. In short, I've cut my teeth on
Christianity, so it would seem a shame to just discard it like an old glove and
start getting up at dawn to contemplate my naval for several hours before
coffee.
So imagine my surprise, given my rather average shallow and
cursory knowledge of the Old Testament, when, upon completing Falconer it struck me that I had just
read a novel inspired by a loose 20th century interpretation of Cain and Abel, with the truncheon having
switched hands. Perhaps mine is a culturally programmed reaction to any
literature involving fratricide. Still, it occurred to me that perhaps Cheever
had asked himself "what if Abel had murdered Cain?" in the context of
our 20th century justice system. Or, maybe more accurately, what if Cain took
the first premeditated shot at Abel and missed, and Abel came back later and,
in a classic spontaneous crime of passion, settled the score?
In the old story, Cain, the older son of Adam and Eve,
murders Abel after God accepts Abel's gift of meat but rejects Cain's gift of
crops. Cain supposedly murders his brother in a fit of jealousy. Ezekiel
Farragut murders his older brother Eben in a fit of rage:
" ‘I know one thing,’ shouted Farragut. ‘I
don't want to be your brother...’
...’Kiss my ass,’ said Eben.
‘You've got Dad's great sense of humor,’ Farragut said.
‘He wanted you to be killed,’ screamed Eben. ‘I bet you
didn't know that. He loved me, but he wanted you to be killed. Mother told me.
He had an abortionist come out to the house. Your own father wanted you to be
killed.’
Then Farragut struck his brother with a fire iron."
(p. 174)
What we may not recall is that earlier in the story Eben
tried to indirectly kill his brother Ezekiel by encouraging him to swim in
Chilton Gut, a narrows between some Atlantic islands where they summered that
had a deadly rip tide and was infested with sharks. While Eben runs away, up
the beach, a stranger accosts Ezekial:
" ‘You're crazy,’ the stranger said. ‘The tide is
turning and even if the rip doesn't get you the sharks will. You can't ever
swim here.’ “ (p. 48) But Farragut doesn't acknowledge his brother's
skullduggery, or doesn't believe it possible. Given what we know about
Farragut's character at this point, it's possible that Farragut doesn't
question his brother's innocence, even when it's obvious to the reader that
Eben has set him up for certain death.
Perhaps it is Farragut's instinctual tendency to turn the
other cheek away from the various forms of injustice that seem to surround him
up to his incarceration - his tendency to keep his distance, to avoid
involvement in his own supposedly accidental life, a life that was not intended
to exist - that makes him such a natural drug addict. The drugs begin as a
shield against the horrors of war, and become as time goes on an escape that
enables him to sleep through an equally horrific marriage. Farragut seems to
have logical, perhaps even justifiable reasons for his dependence on opiates, and
in Cheever's hands the professor is perhaps the most likeable drug addict I've
ever met. Nonetheless Farragut is a truly helpless sinner, and as events of his
life before prison unfold it becomes apparent that he can't sustain his life as
a stoned-out spectator. Ironically, it is when Farragut finally takes decisive
action to help his suffering sister-in-law, niece and nephew by eliminating the
source of their misery - Eben - that society locks him up. Ultimately it is the
events inside the walls of Falconer Prison that bring Farragut unwittingly to
his senses.
Throughout the novel, Cheever juxtaposes God's mercy
against the brutal and destructive laws of man, and the poor dispirited boobs
in the Department of Corrections that enforce those laws. It’s this
juxtaposition that makes Falconer
blasphemous and enlightening at the same time.
Consider the ignominy Chicken’s Bible undergoes during the
VD exam:
“ ‘He stole my Bible,’ Chicken screamed, ‘he stole my limp
leather copy of the Holy Bible. look, look, the sonofabitch stole my Holy
Bible.’Chicken was pointing at the Cuckold. The Cuckold was standing with his
knees knocked together in a ludicrous parody of feminine shyness...Chicken
pushed him. The Bible fell from between his legs and hit the floor. Chicken
grabbed the book... ‘It stinks,’ muttered Chicken. He was holding the Bible to
his nose and making loud noises of inhalation. ‘He stuck my Bible up under his
balls. Now it stinks. The Holy Scripture stinks of his balls. Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Deuteronomy stink.’ " (P. 151)
It’s easy to imagine a Fundamentalist or Evangelist cursing
Cheever and his entire family to hell for depicting a Bible in a scrotum, but
again that would be missing Cheever’s point. Sure, it’s
rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-out-loud hilarious, but it also makes the subtle
point that the Bible, to these men, is just another book, good only for its
leather cover. Yet for reasons Chicken fails to articulate in any sort of
convincing way, it has suddenly become important to him. As readers we can see
that Chicken’s sudden interest in the Bible is perhaps a harbinger of death. At
the same time, Cheever sets Chicken up as a sort of spiritual agent that will
facilitate Farragut’s redemption and freedom.
Some may say that Falconer
is not only blasphemous, but filthy, bawdy, scatological, irreverent and just
plain dirty. Those that might be disparaging of Falconer for it’s undeniably raw characteristics may be missing the
meaning of the work. When an author chooses to be honest and describe unwholesome,
distasteful scenes the way they are, they take the inherent risk of losing
easily offended readers. Ironically these are the same readers who may stand to
benefit the most from the message, and Cheever’s message in Falconer, though subtle, is powerfully
clear.
What makes Cheever’s message so powerful is, again, his
ability to juxtapose those things we associate with Christian goodness - love,
kindness, charity, forgiveness, tenderness, understanding, compassion etc.-
against those things we might associate with sin: homosexuality and drug
addiction, in particular, but also the brutality of the Falconer prison environment. The episode describing Farragut’s
“withdrawal show” in which he tries to hang himself with the prison’s deputy
warden watching enthralls with tense, jerky rhythms:
“When the sweat was in full flood, he began to shake. This
began with his hands. He sat on them, but
then his head began to wag. He stood.
He was shaking all over. Then his right arm flew out. He pulled it back. His left
knee jerked up into the air. He pushed it down, but it went up again and began
to go up and down like a piston. He fell and beat his head on the floor, trying
to achieve the reasonableness of pain. Pain would give him peace. When he
realized that he could not reach pain this way, he began the enormous struggle
to hang himself.”(p. 67)
An equally horrific display of satanic brutality comes at
the hand of Tiny, the cellblock guard who can be at once kind and at the same
time unbelievably cruel:
“Two cats at the end of the block, thinking perhaps that
Tiny had food, came toward him...Tiny raised his club, way in the air, and
caught a cat on the completion of the falling arc, tearing it in two. At the
same time another guard bashed in the head of the big cat. Blood, brains and
offal splattered their yellow waterproofs and the sight of carnage reverberated
through Farragut’s dental work; caps, inlays, restorations, they all began to
ache.” (p. 78)
Oddly enough this experience begins to awaken religion in
Farragut:
“The fire detail came in with waste cans, shovels and two
lengths of hose. They sluiced down the block and shoveled up the dead cats.
They sluiced down the cells as well and Farragut climbed onto his bunk, knelt
there and said: ‘Blessed are the meek,” but he couldn’t remember what came
next.” (p. 78)
Midway through the novel we find these horrific prison
scenes surrounding a tender bittersweet love story, that of Farragut and young
Jody.
“They had known one another a month when they became
lovers. ‘I’m so glad you ain’t homosexual,’ Jody kept saying when he caressed
Farragut’s hair. Then, saying as much one afternoon, he had unfastened
Farragut’s trousers and, with every assistance from Farragut, got them down
around his knees. From what Farragut had read in the newspapers about prison
life he had expect this to happen, but what he had not expected was that this
grotesque bonding of their relationship would provide in him so profound a
love.” (p. 82)
Even though we can see that Jody isn’t much more than a
hustler, Farragut’s professed love for the younger man is convincing. Even when
we learn that Jody has played the prison chaplain DiMatteo to help secure his
escape, Farragut shows no jealousy, no sense of betrayal. I can’t help but
snigger a bit at Cheever’s portrayal of the Catholic priest and Cardinal who
help the young hustler escape, given the church’s recent scandals. And I’ll
admit that what I first took to be symbolic of Christian charity may actually
be more of a sympathetic look at homosexuality in the Catholic Church. When
Jody doesn’t return for DiMatteo and instead runs off and marries an Asian
woman, the notion that Farragut has been played seems more likely. However the
important distinction that Cheever makes is that Farragut’s love is real, pure,
selfless, and forgiving. Thus Farragut makes a start at opening up his heart.
With Farragut’s discovery of love comes, shortly
thereafter, the discovery that he is clean. When he realizes that he has, after
all these years, kicked the smack habit, he discovers courage, not springing up
from within, but in the form of a gift from Chicken. During the riot at Amana
Prison, it is Chicken who burns his mattress and tries to incite his fellow
inmates to rise up, and in the end it is Chicken who vocally mourns the death
of the Amana rioters. When Chicken begins to die, Farragut comes to his comfort
and aid, not because he has figured out his escape, but because he feels some
compassion and sympathy for the old lifer who has not a single friend or relation
in the outside world. Chicken in the end repays this kindness with his
singular, courageous view of what “happens next”:
“ ‘...if they were going to take me out before a firing
squad I’d go out laughing...I’d go out there and I’d dance my soft-shoe and with
luck I’d have a good hard-on and then when they got the command to fire I’d
throw my arms out so as not to waste any of their ammunition...and then I'd go
down a very happy man because I’m intensely interested in what’s going to
happen next, I’m very interested in what’s going to happen next.’ ” (p. 204)
Later, at Chicken’s bedside:
“He [Farragut] went to the chair beside Chicken Number
Two’s bed and took the dying man’s warm hand in his. He seemed to draw from
Chicken Number Two’s presence a deep sense of freeness; he seemed to take
something that Chicken Number Two was lovingly giving to him.” (p. 207)
Just prior to Chicken’s death, Farragut is visited by a
young priest. It’s difficult to tell if this visitation is real or if it’s a
fever dream. Farragut takes the Holy Eucharist and the priest disappears as
mysteriously as he came in. After, Cheever finally shares the circumstances of
the fratricide, and even though it’s clear that Ezekial Farragut killed his
brother with a fire iron, it appears he had every good reason to do so and in
the process has perhaps saved the wife and children from continued
psychological torture. Given the current set of circumstances and Farragut’s
transition from drug addict to a truly compassionate soul, we eagerly root for
his escape. That his escape is finally facilitated by a charitable stranger, we
can’t help but get the sense that perhaps God (or Karma as they might say out
at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center) has decided to intervene in the case of
Ezekial Farragut.
Of course we don't have to read Falconer through a Christian lens to be affected by the novel's
sheer wonderfulness. This is a story of a thousand perfect sentences, a
thousand indelible images, a thousand stories within the story, a thousand
gasps and a thousand laughs, all woven together to create one of the most
impactful novels I have ever read; certainly one of my top five favorites if
not my favorite. Falconer represents
in many ways the novel I aspire to write: funny, imaginative, quirky, bawdy and
spirited, fearless and inspiring, meaningful yet entertaining. Falconer is a very clear and accessible
model, with the all the characteristics of plain good storytelling that takes
the reader from place to place without ever losing the pace of the primary narrative.
As Cheever’s last fully-realized novel, Falconer stands on its own; it needs no
footnote, backstory, or other surrounding context for it to be remarkable.
However it only takes a cursory exploration into Cheever’s own life to see all
of the author’s parallel experiences driving the narrative. Like Farragut,
Cheever finally got sober after decades of life-threatening alcohol abuse just
prior to writing Falconer. The
“prison” of alcoholism and drug addiction is a well-known metaphor and may even
be the central analogy in the work. That Cheever was an equal rights advocate
in the sack may also played into his honest portrayal of homosexual love. His
strained relationship with his brother, the failure of his father’s business,
his on-again, off-again marriage, the counseling, the therapy, his own
experience as a fallen brahmin, - all of these life experiences are brought to
bear in Falconer. It seems a shame
that not long after Falconer, which
some have characterized as his crowning achievement, his life as we know it was
over and he was off to find out “what happens next”.
"You know it's hard out here for a sock monkey
