The Damnation of Theron Ware: Or Illumination

by Harold Frederic, Scott Donaldson (Introduction), Stanton Garner (Editor)

A candid inquiry into the intertwining of religious and sexual fervor, and a telling portrait of the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, this novel foreshadows the rise of naturalism in American literature. The Damnation of Theron Ware (published in England as Illumination) is an 1896 novel by American author Harold Frederic. It is widely considered a classic of American literature by scholars and critics though the common reader often has not heard of it. The novel reveals a great deal about early 20th century provincial America, religious life, and the depressed state of intellectual and artistic culture in small towns. It is similar to Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh and Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry. It is written in a realistic style.

The novel centers on the life of a Methodist pastor named Theron Ware who has recently moved to a fictional small town in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, which Frederic modeled after Utica, New York. A promising young pastor recently married, Theron has a number of experiences that cause him to begin to question the Methodist religion, his role as a minister and even the very existence of God. His moral decline (or illumination) is heightened through his dealings with Father Forbes, the town's Catholic priest; Dr. Ledsmar, a local atheist, philosopher, and man of science; and Celia Madden, a local Irish Catholic girl, with whom Theron becomes hopelessly infatuated.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Religion, Literature, 19th Century, American, Novels

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

Frederic was born in Utica, New York, to Presbyterian parents. After his father was killed in a train accident when Frederic was 18 months old, the boy was raised primarily by his mother. He finished school at fifteen, and soon began work as a photographer. For four years he was a photographic touch-up artist in his hometown and in Boston. In 1875 he began work as a proofreader for the Utica Herald and then the Utica Daily Observer. Frederic later became a reporter, and by 1882 he was editor of the Albany Evening Journal.

Two years later he went to live in England as London correspondent of the New York Times. He retained this job for the rest of his life. He was soon recognized for his ability both as a writer and as a talker. He wrote several early stories, but it was not until he published Illumination (1896), better known by its American title, The Damnation of Theron Ware, followed by Gloria Mundi (1898), that his gifts as a novelist were fully realized. Jonathan Yardley called Damnation "a minor classic of realism".

Frederic married Grace Green Williams in 1877, and they had five children. Sometime between 1889 and 1890, he met Kate Lyon, who became his mistress. Frederic and Lyon established a second household, living openly together; they had three children. Lyon was a Christian Scientist who, when Frederic suffered a stroke in 1898, tried to cure him through faith healing. After his death, she was tried on charges of manslaughter and acquitted. Frederic was interred in Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica, New York. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[path · Rating 3 out of 5]

“[Y]ou see, there is nothing new. Everything is built on the ruins of something else. Just as the material earth is made up of countless billions of dead men’s bones, so the mental world is all alive with the ghosts of dead men’s thoughts and beliefs” (71)

I suppose that I would describe this novel as one of attempted intellectual discovery. A rank and file Methodist minister, Theron Ware, is working his way up through the church hierarchy, and his professional ambitions are comfortably constrained by his limited worldview, which hardly extends past the boundaries of his congregation. Ware is good, but not great, at what he does, and he resignedly moves to a new town, Octavius, with his wife Alice to make the best of things.

Despite being set in the Adirondack Mountains, which I would find reason enough to be happy, Ware is disappointed and he finds his congregation to be collectively dull, miserly, and intellectually stultifying. His fortune appears to turn, however, when he happens upon and was drawn into the orbit of a non-practicing Irish Catholic priest (Father Forbes), a non-practicing physician (Ledmar), and an Irish woman who is is pianist and church organist. These three figures seem to represent intellectual pursuits (theology/philosophy, science, arts) that Ware identifies as missing from his life. These people are also sources of Ware’s damnations or punishments - as promised by the title of the book.

In each of these three people, Ware finds the allure of people, culture, and intellectual pursuits that are both outside the norm for a Methodist minister and even at the edge of what would be deemed socially acceptable. Ware is convinced, however, that his brief engagement with these people “had lifted him bodily out of the slough of ignorance, of contact with low minds and sordid, narrow things, and put him on solid ground” (131). This might have felt true to Ware, but I think Forbes, Ledmar, and Celia deemed Ware to be irretrievably mired in the brackish pond of his social and professional circles. It’s not a fair judgement, I think, and it feels a little like an ethical shortcoming if Forbes, Ledmar, and Celia have misjudged the shallowness of the pond in which Theron thought himself to be drowning. However, Ware helps himself not one bit by inviting punishment on himself by pretending to transformative intellectual rebirth after mere days, only to show himself to be the misinformed bore that he can’t help but be.

Ware, fortified by the illusion of his intellectual and cultural salvation, uses his presumed faculties to drive a wedge that alienates himself from his congregation. This is where Sister and Brother Soulsby arrive, to bring equal measures of illumination and punishment. These two characters come from a checkered background in which they honed their skills of manipulation. The illumination they provide is that Ware’s natural ability to persuade, combined with the authority of his position makes him naturally suited to his work a minister in all of its aspects, including what Ware sees as its more dubious applications. Sister Soulsby argues the moral rectitude of these actions with sophistical skill, attempting to assure Theron that his exercise of power is appropriate “[t]o them the profession of entire sanctification is truly a genuine thing […] don’t you see, when people just know that they’re saved, it doesn’t seem to them to matter so much what they do.” (175). The conflict between who Ware is but doesn’t want to be and who he wants to be but isn’t does far reaching damage.

I’m not sure what the message here might be, but because the Soulsbys turn out to be the most sympathetic characters in the book, it seems to follow that a message is that we are who we are inclined to be, according to the nature of our inherent capabilities. This is certainly one view of human nature, not one that I fully subscribe to. It is a sort of human-as-monad outlook in which it is possible, through reflection, to be aware of our nature, and to work against that nature will surely heap punishments upon us. Illumination (the author’s preferred title for the book) seems to come from a true realization of self and one’s circumscribed potential.

This was an enjoyable book. The writing tended toward a Victorian style of florid elaboration but it was often held in check. Maybe this was the author’s background as a journalist doing its magic for clarity. The author, Harold Frederic was new to me, and I will look up some of his other books.

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note on the Text
Introduction

--The Damnation of Theron Ware, or Illumination

Suggestions for Further Reading

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Damnation of Theron Ware: Or Illumination is about a young Methodist priest. He and his wife have moved to a small town in upstate New York. Every three years the priests are moved around. He didn’t get the township he wanted, but he was young and happy and looked forward to the new position with optimism. We watch what happens in the following year. Theon Ware is the priest and Alice is his young wife. It is the turn of the 20th century.

Look at the title. When the book first came out in America in 1896 it was entitled The Damnation of Theon Ware. In Britain it was published under the title of Illumination, which tells you in one word what the book is about. It is about Theon Ware’s awakening. At the beginning he is naïve. At the end he has become illuminated; he has woken up to the ways of the world. His eyes are opened to how the church is run; he is unsure if he can even believe in God anymore. He becomes infatuated. Here he is let down too.

The novel draws a picture of American provincial life, in terms of religious beliefs, social behavior, attitudes toward intellectualism and the arts and sciences. In its message, in what is relayed via the plot, it is a book of realism. The prose has remnants of the romantic style that preceded realism—which is to say wordy rather than clean and neat. Illicit relationships are not blatantly spoken of; they are implied.

Is there humor? I found one sentence to smile at:

“I was brought up in the country. (There) they don’t have kisses in assorted varieties.”

The line was written in approximately this way!

I felt not a thing for any of the characters! I spent my time considering the author’s message, which by the end is made clear.

John Catty narrates the audiobook. Actually, I did not like the narration. The guy sounds so flat and boring. He drones on and on and on. Some parts are better than others and I could always hear the words, so I decided on giving the narration performance two stars. I am in a generous mood. I think I would have enjoyed the prose more had I read it rather than listened.

On finishing the book, I was rather underwhelmed. People of today are taught to be critical, skeptical and aware of societal problems. In the modern world of today we need scarcely be “illuminated”; we are instead inundated with the problems, injustices and inequalities all too prevalent in the world around us.

********************

The Damnation of Theron Ware: Or Illumination is compared to Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. I like Dreiser’s writing but prefer his Sister Carrie more!

[Ben Hallman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, I've read a book that never once would've come into contact with my bookshelf had it not been for my American Lit class. I hadn't heard of The Damnation of Theron Ware until it showed up on the syllabus, but, being one never to shy away from a good story about goin' to hell, I looked forward to Harold Frederic's minor classic. And, fortunately, it turned out to be a damn fine novel. (I made a pun. I'm witty.)

Now makes for a good time to drop some knowledge gleaned from American Lit: Frederic is considered a Realist, meaning he was part of a generation of writers who pulled away from the mysticism, preachiness, and occasional supernatural tone of the Romantics who came before. The Damnation of Theron Ware never leaves this earthly plane; the damning in question is presented objectively, for the most part, and is shown through the opinions of the various supporting characters that witness the transformation of the Reverend Mr. Ware. In other words, Frederic provides no literal angels or devils, no strange cosmological events of a possible spiritual origin, no moral speeches given didactically by a conveniently wholesome character. Which, to be honest, is a wonderful, welcome trait, one greatly appreciated by a modern reader with a slightly unnerving amount of love for Tom Robbins and George Carlin.

The novel takes a little while to build up steam. The Rev. Mr. Ware starts out wholesome enough, in love with his wife and making the best of the disappointment that came with not getting assigned to the large, well-populated First Methodist Church of Tecumeh, a position he longed for. Instead, Theron Ware finds himself preaching in Octavius, a much less prestigious location congregated by a people thoroughly mired in tradition. These traditions are illustrated in a wonderful scene featuring one of the church elders, Brother Pierce, who rails against, among other things, Theron's wife having roses in her bonnet and "book learnin' and dictionary words" in the sermons.

But, as things progress, Mr. Ware makes new friends in Octavius, and each one helps to set him on his lovely path to damnation. Dr. Ledsmar teaches Theron of Darwin and science and lends him books that bolster his growing distaste for the Methodist church. Father Forbes drops the "Christ-myth" bomb on poor, impressionable Mr. Ware, and provides later intrigue that the young minister handily uses to make an ass of himself. And then there's lovely Celia, the red-haired Catholic lass that sets Mr. Ware's heart ablaze and his mind adrift and his monogamy athwart. Plus there's the unforgettable Sister Soulsby, who brilliantly evolves from comedic relief to moral compass without being presented as a formulaic plot device.

The exact damnation that Theron undergoes is up for interpretation, which makes for great conversation about the novel, and provides multiple layers to work through. It would easy to conjure up a trite moral for the book-- Knowledge Makes You An Asshole-- but doing so simplifies Frederic's message to the point of offense. Whether or not the Rev. Mr. Ware is truly damned, whether this fall is more spiritual or social, whether he is redeemed by the end of the tale, all of these things are left ambiguous by Frederic, making The Damnation of Theron Ware all the more alluring and entrancing.

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s easy enough these days to pick out those among us consumed with puritanical fanaticism: “The Puritan’s idea of hell is a place where everyone has to mind his own business,” as Harold Frederic writes in The Damnation of Theron Ware. What’s harder sometimes – and perhaps it’s as difficult in our day as it was in Frederic’s – is to pick out the mentally flabby, the spiritually corrupt. Frederic’s 1896 novel tracks the progress downward – or upward, depending on your point of view (the British edition’s title was Illumination) – of a young Methodist minister whose faith crumbles on first contact with intellectualism, Bohemianism, Darwinism, and the more tawdry aspects of organized religious life.

Theron Ware and his wife are assigned to a backwater Methodist congregation in upstate New York, though they had hoped for something more glamorous. The rigorist trustees of their new church (two of whom own mortgages on the church property) don’t appreciate his reputed oratorical gifts or the flowers the young Mrs. Ware likes to wear in her Sunday bonnets. They certainly don’t want any subtlety or soft-mindedness from their new minister. As trustee Brother Pierce puts it to Theron:

“They tell me there’s some parts where hell’s treated as played-out – where our ministers don’t like to talk much about it because people don’t want to hear about it. Such preachers ought to be put out. They ain’t Methodists at all. What we want here, sir, is straight-out, flat-footed hell – the burnin’ lake o’ fire and brimstone. Pour it into ‘em, hot and strong. We can’t have too much of it. Work in them awful deathbeds of Voltaire an’ Tom Paine, with the Devil right there in the room, reachin’ for ‘em, an’ they yellin’ for fright – that’s what fills the anxious seat an’ brings in souls hand over fist!”

Theron surprises himself by making friends with Fr Forbes, an alarmingly liberal but dedicated Catholic priest serving the town’s burgeoning Irish population, and through him is swept off his feet by other new acquaintances more worldly than he’s used to: Dr Ledsmar, the town atheist who loans Theron books by Renan and the German philosophers; and Celia Madden, an over-educated, attractive young woman who introduces Theron to art and music and a moral laxity he finds intoxicating.

Attempting to enter the ranks of scholars in his own right, Theron sets out to write an investigation into the ancient Chaldaeans (from whom patriarchal Abraham sprang) but his former heroes of the Old Testament now limp pitifully across the page:

“Heretofore a poetic light had shone about them, where indeed they had not glowed in a light of sanctification. Now, by some chance, this light was gone, and he saw them instead as untutored and unwashed barbarians, filled with animal lusts and ferocities, struggling by violence and foul chicanery to secure a foothold in a country which did not belong to them – all rude tramps and robbers of the uncivilized plain.”

At the same time his own church finds itself in a dire financial predicament and he’s forced to bring in Brother and Sister Soulsby, a husband and wife team of itinerant “debt raiser” revivalist preachers, whose theatrical performances fill the pews (and the coffers) but whose savvy worldliness disillusions him further. Theron plays sick at the parsonage while they wind up the congregation next door, until Sister Soulsby (who ought by rights to be a classic character of American fiction) comes to cheer him up and help him see the bigger picture:

“Did you ever see a play? – in a theater, I mean. I supposed not. But you’ll understand when I say that the performance looks one way from where the audience sits, and quite a different way when you are behind the scenes. There you see that the trees and houses are cloth, and the moon is tissue paper, and the flying fairy is a middle-aged woman strung up on a rope. That don’t prove that the play, out in front, isn’t beautiful and affecting, and all that. It only shows that everything in this world is produced by machinery – by organization. The trouble is that you’ve been let in on the stage, behind the scenes, so to speak, and you’re so green – if you’ll pardon me – that you want to sit down and cry because the trees are cloth, and the moon is a lantern.

Under such tutelage, Theron somehow revives, but only outwardly, and temporarily. His preaching, everyone says, was never better; but he doesn’t believe a word of it. Half-initiated into a free-thinking fraternity the outlines of which he only vaguely intuits, he begins to feel like a new Adam:

“Evidently there was an intellectual world, a world of culture and grace, of lofty thoughts and the inspiring communion of real knowledge, where creeds were not of importance, and where man asked one another, not ‘Is your soul saved?’ but ‘Is your mind well furnished?’ Theron had the sensation of having been invited to become a citizen of this world. The thought so dazzled him that his impulses were dragging him forward to take the new oath of allegiance before he had had time to reflect upon what it was he was abandoning.”

Is The Damnation of Theron Ware, as some have said, an overlooked masterpiece of American literature? It may be. I stumbled on it serendipitously at the bookshop. I’d never heard of it – or its author – before, though I have a degree in English Lit and have been a reader all my life. But it is a near perfect performance of a novel, an outrageous satire, and great fun to read. It’s a novel, in my opinion, to launch a thousand term papers, if the themes it trades in still have any purchase in contemporary American society, which is questionable.

Part of its success, I think, is wrapped up in the ambiguity of the author’s own judgments and the equivocal nature of the story’s conclusion. It’s not quite – though partly – a burlesque of Evangelical revivalism; not quite – though partly – a sendup of American nativism; not quite – though partly – an indictment of what passes for enlightenment in secular culture. In The Damnation of Theron Ware Harold Frederic is an equal-opportunity tipper of sacred cows.

Anticipating what arguably became the self-demolishing motive force of mainline Protestantism and its secular inheritors in the United States, Theron near the end of the book says to Fr Forbes: “It seems to me that as things are going, it doesn’t look much as if the America of the future will trouble itself about any kind of a church. The march of science must very soon produce a universal scepticism. It is the nature of human progress. What all intelligent men recognize today, the masses must surely come to see in time.”

Fr Forbes responds with a laugh: “My dear Mr. Ware, of all our fictions there is none so utterly baseless and empty as this idea of human progress.”

[Will Waller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Assigned for a class, this book had all the makings of being a real bore. It’s a 19th century book on a Methodist minister, written by an author I had never heard lauded, with Victorian language (flowery!). I was looking forward to reading something less dry than what I had been reading for class but given the other books assigned, this was not difficult.

Boy, I was surprised by this book. It’s ability to go into new depths regarding the troubles facing pastors in the 19th century and today was revealing. The author, even though from across the pond in England, was able to get the Victorian values of the day – outward appearance, success, intellectual prowess. Even the novel read well, if not a bit simplistically.

So with the ringing endorsement, why not a higher star rating? The novel was terribly simple and predicable, although the ending wasn’t as predictable. That the downfall of the pastor would come, that was revealed upon reading the very title of the novel! That he would fall for another, that’s a duh.
An easy read, a flowing book (compared to some of the other disjointed novels that I had read recently), but one that didn’t stretch me in many ways. But for an assigned book for class in grad school? Yeah, I’ll take it.

[Wanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Thoughts:

22 JAN 2014 -- Having been visited upon by the "trinity of evil," Theron makes a veiled threat and, poof, the evil trinity is gone. I know they will be back!

28 JAN 2014 -- Theron is a young man feeling his way in the world. He is too naive to really understand the machinations of the narrow-minded thinking of the trinity of evil. This committee of churchmen have long forgotten the beauty of the Church.

29 JAN 2014 -- Typical man-thought! Theron is acting in an inappropriate manner and can only think of how he can pass blame onto his wife. Idiot! Now, I am officially fed up with Theron!

Thanks Karen. I owe a big "Thank You" to you and to Dagny. This book is a wonderful read and I am grateful to you both for the experience!

[Carolyn Kost · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book. I wish that I had read it while in school to be more fully aware of the symbolism throughout, but the young minister's story is compelling on even the most superficial level of plot. Reverend Theron Ware is assigned to serve a congregation in a dull and extremely conservative backwater, where paradoxically, he encounters the most irresistible of temptations: the life of the mind. The consequences for his vocation, his marriage and his worldview are seismic.

The prose is rich, the characters dimensional, the plot unforgettable. While authored in the 19th century, this is contemporary and universal. This illuminates the human experience as well as any recognized classic; it's a gross oversight that this novel does not appear on more reading lists.

[Metin Dirim · Rating 5 out of 5]

BAŞYAPIT

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tale of a Methodist minister who becomes increasingly enamoured with the love of learning, the exoticism of Catholicism, and a beautiful woman. A stern warning for those who come to bemoan what they have while craving what is not theirs.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

As hysterical revivalisms and ignorant orthodoxies remain widespread, it seems neither illumination nor damnation have smitten the benighted.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Dull and disappointing. The title is the most appealing thing about this novel. As far as tales of fallen ministers go, this one is the least memorable or powerful I’ve ever read. (For better examples, see Zola’s The Sin of Abbé Mouret, Lagerlöf’s The Saga of Gösta Berling, Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” Ruiz’s The Book of Good Love, Lewis’ Elmer Gantry, Greene’s The Power and the Glory, Molière’s Tartuffe, Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, and on and on and on...) The writer of the Introduction tried to suggest that this novel was more than just about the personal failings of an individual minister, but represented the spiritual crisis of the American nation at the turn of the century. After making this claim, he went on merely to summarize the plot and offer no further analysis or discussion. I’m afraid I have to agree with one early reviewer who wrote that this novel just melded into a hundred different French and English novels about fallen clergy, offering no new insight or unique perspectives.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theron could not feel sure how much of the priest's discourse was in jest, how much in earnest. "It seems to me," he said, "that as things are going, it doesn't look much as if the America of the future will trouble itself about any kind of a church. The march of science must very soon produce a universal scepticism. It is in the nature of human progress. What all intelligent men recognize today, the masses must surely come to see in time."

Father Forbes laughed outright this time. "My dear Mr. Ware," he said, as they touched glasses again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been brought them, "of all our fictions there is none so utterly baseless and empty as this idea that humanity progresses. The savage's natural impression is that the world he sees about his was made for him, and that the rest of the universe is subordinated to him and his world, and that all the spirits and demons and gods occupy themselves exclusively with him and his affairs. That idea was the basis of every pagan religion, and it is the basis of the Christian religion, simply because it is the foundation of human nature. That foundation is just as firm and unshaken today as it was in the Stone Age. It will always remain, and upon it will always be built some kind of a religious superstructure. 'Intelligent men,' as you call them, really have very little influence, even when they all pull one way. The people as a whole soon get tired of them. They give too much trouble. The most powerful forces in human nature are self-protection and inertia. The middle-aged man has found out that the chief wisdom in life is to bend to the pressures about him, to shut up and do as others do. Even when he thinks he has rid his own mind of superstitions, he sees that he will best enjoy a peaceful life by leaving other people's superstitions alone. That is always the ultimate view of the crowd.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illumination is the only title this book should really have. This is not a Gothic horror of a young man's fall from grace, the sort of thing I so loved in Le Calvaire and which Octave Mirbeau depicted so exquisitely. This tale is too American for that.

What I thought about while reading is that history, as good as it is, can never give you the vivid picture of an era that a good novel can. And this novel is good. The story tells how a naive young Protestant preacher of the 1880's in New York State finds his eyes and his mind opened to the true state of affairs in American religion. Just what he (and the reader) finds out is part of what makes such a good book.

It is not an anti-religious book, at least not to me. It's more satire, an account of the way the world really works. What, for instance, makes a revival so successful? In this connection our young protagonist meets a woman whose character makes for a fascinating read. It is this woman that sets the book apart and turns what might have been an okay narrative into an attention-grabber. In fact, she overshadows the protagonist, who himself is well written.

Almost any fan of good writing will like or love the straightforward and witty tale told here. By all means read it.

[David Fulmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theron Ware is a Methodist minister sent to a small town called Octavius to provide the spiritual sustenance for a very small congregation. Therein he must navigate the competing demands of his own heart, those of his wife, and his church trustees. He also comes to learn of some of the less pure aspects of the church and falls in with a Catholic priest, a man of science, and a seductively decadent rich girl who variously tempt and enlighten him in any number of ways. By the time Ware is deemed a bore by another character the reader has probably reached the same conclusion but this novel nonetheless is somewhat entertaining for its arch descriptions of American innocence in town and church life along with providing some satirical character archetypes which are forerunners of subsequent American novels in the vein of ‘Babbitt’. In the end Theron heads west in the great American novelistic tradition but he doesn’t take with him our expectations of improving at all upon his engagingness.

[Cher · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only thing interesting to me about this book was its repeated concept of degenerateness, spiritual and physical. The sins of the father becoming encoded genetically and spiritually upon the son, until ultimately a line would die out from utter decrepitude.

The plot is relatively simple. A young preacher is posted to a town. He means well but is vain and shallow and doesn't understand the larger social politics at work. Hence, certain doom for the naive idiot. His main detractor is a woman whose name is so sybillant it fairly hisses, which I'm sure is no accident. I guess it's all supposed to be a sort of morality tale about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish we had more from Frederic, as I really loved this novel. Some might say the irony is a bit overdone, but I love the twists it adds to his tale. You can neither absolutely condemn nor admire just about any of these characters. The only one whose potential for redemption is Alice, but even then we see very little of her and her association with Theron and passive role makes it difficult to fully engage. Frederic spares no one in this tale, offering a grim outlook for a humanity which undergoes constant rebirths only to learn and gain nothing in each new life. The only element of constancy is flux and instability.

[Anna Groover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting novel--basically a Faustian tale of a preacher tempted by intellectualism/academia/the occult. Theron was kind of terrible but I don't think he was ever supposed to be lovable. I liked Frederic's prose quite a bit.

[E.J. Fechenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always a classic. Theron struggles with finding his identity within the confines of a strict society where morals are everything.

[Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the more obscure classics of American literature, but I’ve read some rave reviews about it and since it takes place in a fictional small town in Upstate New York I was sure to get my hands on it.

I wasn’t aware of the larger claims this one was making until closer to the end, and it’s extremely impressive to think about all the conclusions he drew in the short number of pages, even if most are up for discussion. In the novel, our protagonist Rev. Theron Ware, a Methodist minister, is an ordinary man driven to his moral decline. He is tempted and provoked by the people in the small town he recently moved to; mostly a Catholic priest, an atheist scientist and a beautiful rich woman. These people along with Theron’s inability to adapt to the ambiguities of the new century completely capture the ideas and controversies that were so prevalent through the American eighteen-nineties.

Honestly, for half of the book I was a little bored, but since it’s only about 300 pages and the writing style and vocabulary is easily digestible (as far as classics go) I pushed through. I ended up loving it more than I had anticipated by the end, which is just another reason why I reallllyyy don’t like to put books in my DNF pile. Even if the book can teach me one valuable lesson or make one valid claim about the bigger picture of this world we live in, it will never be a waste of time for me. This one made so many claims about sins, religion, social constructs and personal morality. Fast, easy and engrossing. Add it to your list.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good, little known late 19th century American novel which deserves a modern edition. Frederic (d 1898) was a NYTimes foreign correspondent who also wrote novels. Theron Ware (published 1894) is a cautionary tale about the consequences of not knowing yourself. Theron (alluding to “hunter” or seeker) is an up and coming Methodist minister with a charming wife sent to a mean old town (modeled on Utica-Frederic’s hometown) which almost immediately starts to break him. The congregation is reactionary and anti intellectual, antipathetic to Ware both personally and doctrinally. Ware is awakened by three people: a Catholic priest (the solidity of religious structure), a lapsed doctor (science), and a beautiful woman (the arts). Excited by these three different ways of living, Ware loses his center, flails around and crashes spectacularly. Frederic presents an interesting array of late nineteenth century social tensions (the Catholic/Irish question; liberated women; scientist) and he writes extremely well. Ware becomes less attractive as he goes along but while he may be a fool, Frederic rather lets his tempters off the hook: they seduce Ware, who simply wants deeper experiences, and then turn away from the man they’ve made. Celia in particular has a lot to answer for.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute bop and a half!!!!

[Miles Trujillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really struck me, as I knew it would lolol. So well done. The American novel has died.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this very much. Very easy to read with an engaging plot. There were no real cliff hangers at the ends of chapters but I certainly wanted read into the next chapter. The author does a great job of engaging the reader with an interesting plot while weaving in his themes without being pedantic. And I enjoyed some of the subtle humor/satire of the thoughts inside the character's heads.

Theron is certainly a weak and immature character with little redeeming qualities. Yet I did feel sorry for him--his floundering around his new town, hopeless crush, and viewing himself as equals to his new acquaintances. He often doesn't make any real choice but rather does what others tell him. I wondered if Celia was being cruel to him or if he asked for it. Did he do anything wrong or was just a fool? And to have learned nothing at the end.

Upon finishing I wonder if Sister Soulsby is the most redeeming character as she is honest with herself and Theron as to her past and her purposes. She also delivers one of the themes: no one is ever all good or all bad, we are all both. And certainly all the characters in the book are mixtures of good and bad. Theron is perhaps the only one who is self deluded and thinks himself good.

I also wonder if the author's original title "Illumination" is a better title or not. It is certainly more subtle, and gets at Theron's supposed transformation although I don't believe he is better off in the end.

And as a red haired, Irish, former Catholic musician myself, I had a fun fascination with Celia!

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Damnation of Theron Ware is a compelling take on American Christianity at the end of the nineteenth century. Theron is a rhetorically gifted young Methodist pastor who, to his horror, is assigned a parish in a small town in northern New York. (The opening scenes are a comedic portrait of Methodist politics at the turn of the century). Immediately disillusioned by his ‘backward’ congregation, Theron becomes fascinated by the local Irish Catholic community and their priest, Father Forbes. He is particularly taken in by the aesthetic sensibilities of these catholics, and is startled to discover the intellectual depth of their worldview, a discovery which sets him on a path of doubting his own Methodist faith and eventually, Christianity altogether.

The greatest thing about this book is how realistically it portrays the intellectual milieu of its time and the kinds of factors that so often converged to push religious believers toward naturalism and atheism. Theron’s naive assurance that Methodism is the only honest and thoughtful form of Christianity mirrors that of so many Christians, then and now, raised in tribalistic denominationalism. All it takes is a personal encounter with a compelling counter-example to crumble the foundations of such a faith, which is so often built on a sense of exceptionalism rather than a deep and long-standing shared history. (‘We are special because only we believe the truth,’ as opposed to, ‘That which we believe is true because it is what Christians have always believed to be true’).

Father Forbes is a complex character: a liberal catholic priest who is educated, worldly, and wise. Insistent on the value of ritual regardless of the veracity of its doctrinal underpinnings and committed to the Irish immigrants whom these religious rituals serve, he introduces Theron to the aesthetic mythical side of nineteenth-century religious thought. There are some authentically Catholic stances represented by Forbes, such as the belief that faith and salvation are communal realities, common goods that we receive in and through membership in the church, rather than through individual intellectual assent to doctrine. And yet, he denies the centrality of the church’s truth claims, which cannot, in reality, meaningfully be reduced to myth. (He made me think somewhat of Graham Green’s whiskey priest in The Power and the Glory, at least in his resolute anti-Donatism. The people need the sacraments even if he is by no means a worthy vessel to deliver them, but he means this in a Feuerbachean sense, unlike the whiskey priest whose failings are rather moral than intellectual). Father Forbes stands as a foil to Theron, for the latter becomes disdainful of his congregation as a result of his ‘illumination’, while the former exhibits a deep care and commitment to his flock.

Dr. Ledsmar, an acquaintance of Father Forbes, is an idiosyncratic ‘intellectual’ with a variety of interests, both scientific and historical, and a bold assurance that these latter effectively disprove the faith. His intellectual superiority humiliates Theron’s academic aspirations, to whom he provides the leading atheist literature of the day. And we find Theron entirely convinced by these books before he even reads them. (I think this often happens—some people have spent so long straining against the particular form of faith that they have received, all they need is the suggestion of a different way of seeing things for them to leap to its conclusions. This seems to account for much of the impact of historical Jesus studies in the 18th and 19th centuries. What Reimarus, Paulus, and Strauss provided people with was an alternative explanation for the events reported in the gospels. People often cared little about the viability of these explanations, all they needed was an alternate story to tell). On top of this, Theron finds Dr. Ledsmar’s air of intellectual sophistication intoxicating. Not unlike the kind of rhetoric offered by the New Atheists, it is precisely the rhetoric (rather than the arguments) that convinces so many people who are desperate to be viewed as intelligent by others.

The final straw for Theron is his acquaintance with Celia Madden. The direct antithesis of Adolf von Harnack, she presents Theron with a philosophical Hellenism—a kind of rationalist revisionary Greek metaphysics that substitutes for religious faith, seeing the best parts of Christianity as those taken over from Greek antiquity and disdaining the countervailing Hebrew influences and historical particularities of Catholicism. (Celia represents the kind of reactionary Catholicism that convinced so many Protestants that Harnack et al. were right in their assessments of the Christian tradition). Nonetheless, what Theron finds most compelling is her beauty and sophistication, and like everything else in his life, he subsumes her and the wonders she has to offer under the umbrella of his ego and ambition.

Theron is a perennial picture of a person without the intellectual acuity or work ethic to truly understand the complex issues with which he is occupied, but who insists on constructing his identity around his supposed intellectual superiority. Reality is far too complex for Theron to grasp, so he simply jumps from one overly simplistic portrait to the next and feels pride at having the legs for the leap.

The novel isn’t perfect, but I think it is well worth reading for anyone interested in faith and religion in the U.S. and the ways that intellectual, emotional, political, and economic forces converge to affect people’s beliefs. We do well not to reduce people to the concepts to which they assent, and our understanding of salvation (and, for that matter, damnation) should do justice to the complexity of real human lives. More than ideas, practices, or beliefs, it is Theron’s incessant need to be important, and his lack of key virtues such as humility and temperance, which eventually lead him away from faith and toward a life that better fits his vices. It is not entirely clear to me whether Harold Frederic views Theron’s transformation as Illumination (as in the original British Title) or Damnation (as in the U.S. title). If the former, then he makes an amusing caricature of himself, if the latter, he is a perceptive chronicler of the upheavals in nineteenth-century American Christianity.

[H.J. Swinford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't decide if I totally hated this book or if I didn't really like it, but it was still well-written and interesting. I certainly didn't like it at all, but I can't say it was horrible or poorly done. I suppose I don't like a lot of realism, and that is what this book is. All I got from it was basically: conservative, blinding religion screws people up and they go crazy when they taste the outside world. I read it in a literature class, and most of the other students really liked it, so I guess it's just not my cup of tea. I wouldn't say, "Don't ever read this! It sucks!" because that's not true, but I would certainly give a disclaimer of my dislike for it to anyone that wanted to read it.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author sounds like a really interesting guy, and while this book deals with religion, that didn’t even ruin it. It’s a tricky thing for me because I will not usually read about religious morals without gagging me with a spoon or flinging myself off the nearest cliff, but this managed to work me through the trouble of preaching the word of the christian god without completely nauseating me… because the protagonist is so deeply flawed and vain and while that is hardly uncommon in books about religious leaders, the writing makes all the difference here because one actually cares about Theron, hopeless bastard that he is. i wish i’d read this instead of anything by thomas hardy in HS(yeah I’m looking at you Jude the Obscure)

[Tom Leland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good. "Evidently there was an intellectual world, a world of culture and grace, of lofty thoughts and the inspiring communion of real knowledge, where creeds were not of importance, and where men asked one another, not "Is your soul saved?", but "Is your mind well furnished?"

Would be of particular interest to Catholics and Methodists, and to a lesser degree, to people who grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of New York and want to get a glimpse of life there 120 years ago.

Wikipedia note on this book: "It is widely considered a classic of American literature by scholars and critics, though the common reader often has not heard of it."

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were parts of the writing I really enjoyed. Some of the descriptions were lovely and made the story feel more dimensional and I could picture the scene in my head. I was, however, not impressed with the characters or plot. I read this for one of my college seminar courses and while I thought it did a nice job of providing interesting discussion in class, it wasn't something that I would recommend to other people. I didn't like it.

*Taken from My Sentiments Exactly!: http://reviewsatmse.blogspot.com/2013...

[Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

My son made me read this. He got pretty excited about it because of a college class that focussed on literary realism. Personally, he saw in himself similarities to the hypocrisy of Theron Ware. Oh, Philip, you're not even close. Ware was an interesting character insofar as he was completely unaware of his hipocracy. You're far too honestly introspective to be anything like him.

This is a brand of realism that I have no enthusiasm for. It's part of that tradition which examines the spiritual poverty of the middle class and it seems insufferably condescending to me.