Powerful Novels: From All False Doctrine by Alice Degan
Earlier posts on this topic: What creates power in fiction.
Okay, so I read From All False Doctrine by Alice Degan in 2020, it was one of my two favorite books for that year, and here is the post where I commented about this book. I said, among other things:
At times it’s useful to do comparisons, right? So, sure, let me try to do that. From All False Doctrine is like … it’s kind of like … okay, it’s sort of like a cross between a Wodehouse novel and In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. But with demonology.
… If you wanted to pull out its defining characteristics, you might say it’s a story about personal growth wrapped in a comedy of manners, with romance. Oh, and demonology.
I read this book slowly — very slowly — a chapter or two per day. This is sometimes, not always, the way I read a particularly powerful novel. This is because sometimes power goes with (a) beauty of the prose, and (b) density of the prose. I don’t think any of these are the same thing — I mean power, beauty, and density. I don’t think they’re even related, necessarily. Let me see. All right:
Power is where you read a sentence or paragraph or passage and then you read it again because you are so struct by its compelling expression of truth. Or possibly by its compelling expression of falsity.
Beauty is where you read a sentence or paragraph or passage and then you read it again because it’s just lovely, like reading poetry.
Density is where you read a sentence or paragraph or passage and then you read it again because you’re trying to wrap your mind around it. What does this even mean? you ask yourself. Something that might be big, or might be true, but there’s a lot there and you need to re-read it multiple times just to try to understand what it’s about.
Well, the beginning of From All False Doctrine isn’t powerful or beautiful except maybe in retrospect, when you can really see what the author is setting up here, but right from the start, it’s just masterful in terms of crafting the scene. It’s a fabulous example of starting a story quietly, in a way that works. It’s also an example of starting a story with dialogue, in a way that works. I’ve probably pointed to the beginning of this novel before for those reasons because pulling off this kind of opening is impressive. Here’s the first page or so:
“It isn’t a question of actually believing the teaching,” said Elsa, drilling two neat holes in the sand with the heels of her shoes. “It’s whether or not they believe in the authenticity of the manuscript, that’s all.”
“Gosh, you had better hope that’s all,” said Harriet cheerfully. “It would be so tedious for you, wouldn’t it, to have your research interrupted every so often by cultists wanting to worship the thing you were studying? In my department, now, we don’t have such problems.”
“Good heavens, Harriet — you study money! All sorts of people worship that.”
“Oh, true. Have a grape while I consider a suitable riposte.” Harriet proffered the tin of green grapes that had been nestled on the blanket beside her.
They were seated in the shade of a large blue sun-umbrella — Harriet’s property, like the blanket and the grapes and the vacuum flask of iced tea and the basket that it had all been packed in. They had been there since noon; they had moved the umbrella several times to adjust their pool of shade, and the tea was nearly finished. The day had become blazingly hot, the sky arcing blue-white out over the lake, the water flashing in the sun.
It’s remarkable that Degan can open a novel with a nice, peaceful chat on a beach and have this hook the reader. Elsa and Harriet meet Kit and Peachy and have a nice chat, and that’s it, that’s what happens. This is what I was thinking of when I said this story is like a cross between Wodehouse and whoever. This initial scene is brilliantly written, nothing happens, it’s fun to read, everything is set up, everything is foreshadowed and I’m still in awe of this opening, which you should really come back to and re-read after you’ve read the whole book because you can’t appreciate the foreshadowing and setup unless you know exactly where the story is going. Regardless, this is a masterfully crafted opening. No doubt it wouldn’t hook all readers everywhere, but it worked beautifully to hook me. One reason I read this novel so slowly was to enjoy the writing. The other reason was that I kept wanting to take my time thinking about things that had just happened in the story and where I thought it might be going.
So yes, I think the prose here is top notch and that is important to the power of this novel. The prose isn’t what I would call exceptionally lovely, though there are some lovely passages here and there. Then he heard a sound: a voice, or an instrument, or a rush of wind and water and beating wings, wordless, or thundering out in verse upon verse of poetry, or one great word, its syllables not yet finished. That’s lovely. But mostly the prose is witty and precise, like Wodehouse, rather than beautiful.
The prose is not just witty and precise, though; it’s also filled with humor and good will. That, to me, is the attitude that comes through just about every word in this novel. The second chapter, when Kit happens to bump into Harriet at that home for delinquent boys, is filled with humor as well as wit — I would say that humor is warmer and without bitterness or scorn, while wit can definitely be cold, bitter, and/or scornful; that’s the difference I have in mind. And that chapter is filled with good will as well as humor — for the boys, for Harriet, for Peachy, whose personal weaknesses are becoming rather apparent by the end of this chapter, but still, it’s impossible to think too badly of him because we’re seeing him through Kit’s eyes.
The power in this novel comes from humor, good will, and truth. The humor and good will are part of the truth. This attitude comes from Kit, but it’s more than that; when Kit takes this posture toward people, this is also the author saying, This is a good way to meet people. This is a good way to meet the world. The world is worth meeting his way: with a kind and charitable attitude.
Here’s something true that I’d like to point out because it’s about ordinary life made into something a little more meaningful:
“I learned to bake a few things after the War, as a kind of therapy. Readjusting to civilian life and all that.” Kit flipped a couple of pieces of bacon. “Actually, it was to prove that I believed in the goodness of Creation. I didn’t have any talents — I mean I can’t paint or write poetry or anything, and I’m not good with my hands — but I wanted to do something, make something material. Something good. So … it seemed like a nice thing to do.”
And this is a great moment, a moment that illustrates a great way to view normal life, particularly the humble things in normal life, with humor and good will and a belief that they matter and that what you do matters, even what you do in small things. This isn’t just Kit speaking to Elsa. It’s part of his character to say this and part of her character to hear him; but it’s also the author speaking to the reader.
Mary Catelli said in a recent comment: The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels … who treat plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. … The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.”
I answered, I feel that when someone says, “Oh, how banal,” that’s diagnostic of a terrible modern attitude that combines an air of superiority with a serious lack of anything to feel superior about. I’m thinking very specifically of Herman Hesse here. This is the precise view of normal life as banal and normal people as contemptible that is the single most objectionable attitude we all have to endure in this era. It’s not just Hesse, obviously; this attitude is quite casually presented at admirable, as we see in the opening of the recent bestselling YA novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Here’s the second paragraph of the book:
On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic advisor that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didn’t care for crowds — being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world. … as much as possible, he weaved through the crowd ... He found himself uttering a series of “excuse mes” that he did not mean. A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say “Excuse me,” while meaning “Screw you.” … People — the ordinary, the decent and basically honest — couldn’t get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, or even do, another.
And when I posted about this book, I specifically said, It’s well written, but this attitude of superiority is repellant. The crowd of normal people, ugh, these ordinary, decent, basically honest people, obviously Sam is very much superior to them, says the author, and the reader generally goes right along, I suppose, as this book is a bestseller.
Well, From All False Doctrine is the complete antithesis to that attitude of self-conscious superiority and contempt. It could not be a more total antithesis if the author had said to herself, By gum, I can’t stand this modern attitude of amused, condescending, superior contempt and I’m going to drive a stake right through the heart of that attitude. If Degan said that to herself, she sure pulled it off. But I don’t think that’s likely, of course, because if someone sits down to deliver a message, it’s hard to bury the message so completely that you write an actual story rather than a sermon loosely disguised as a story. I think the warmth, humor, and goodwill comes through so clearly because it’s genuine. I don’t think the author set out to create that feeling, it’s just something that poured into the story because of her conviction that this is the right, true attitude with which people ought to meet life.
Perhaps I should mention here that I’ve never met Alice Degan, haven’t ever corresponded with her, and so all this is just what I’m taking out of the actual story she presented to the world. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be there if she hadn’t put it there.
The actual heart of From All False Doctrine is Elsa’s internal movement from atheism to faith. That’s what the story is actually about. It’s about making that journey in the real world, because you’ve begun to see the real world differently. We see this when Elsa thinks, There had been nothing supernatural going on. Either that … either that, or what was supernatural was so large, so intricate and leisurely in its unfolding, that its details looked unremarkable from close to. She went in to polish candlesticks with the Altar Guild in a world that had not changed after all, that was just, illogically, as beautiful as it had always been.
And the author is saying, The world is, perhaps illogically, beautiful, and you should notice this because it is important. Which is true, so this is one of the true things this book is about and one of the reasons it resonated for me. When a story is about true things, you don’t pull the truth out analytically; you feel it. It resonates. But sentences like this still stop you — at least, they stop me.
Or again, later, when Kit thinks, Virtue wasn’t a thing that you carried around carefully, trying to keep it in one piece; it was a process, it was little things that you had to do every waking moment, and that he very frequently did not do, had not done; it was work.
This is a thought about something true; and Kit is thinking this in reaction to being told things that aren’t true, so this is important. This is what a great writer can do — re-state something true in a way that the reader hasn’t seen before, so it stands out from the rest of the story. So that it stands out, reverberates, and becomes a permanent addition to the way the reader thinks about the concept.
Permanently changing the way the reader things about something, that really is powerful. The author can’t do this defensively. They have to believe something and put it into the story with conviction. From All False Doctrine is filled with conviction. Sure, I’d have quibbles about some details, but nevertheless, it’s a story I perceive as powerful, and powerful in a good way because it’s also expressing things that are true.
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