Customer Reviews

Mission to America

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What happens when an insular, moribund religious community meets a heedless, spiritually restless America? That is the premise of this book, where the earnest and well-spoken Mason, a resident of an insular religious community known as the Apostles, is sent on a mission to convert modern Americans to his faith, in order to bring back young adepts to freshen up the local gene pool. In this novel, Walter Kirn very sympathetically depicts the faith of the Apostles as well as the various faiths of the restless Americans. Though others have called this book a satire, it isn't a biting satire, it is an affectionate one. The characters are vivid and well-drawn, the scenes are set with impressive detail that is as one would expect of a novelist of Kirn's caliber.

And yet, for all that, the story fell flat for me; I didn't end up caring about any of the characters depicted, and it brought me no insight into the questions of faith in America. The book, sadly, was a complete waste of my time. It hints at questions of faith in the modern world; it begins to ask if we need it, want it, or treat it with the kind of respect we and it deserve. Those are valid and important questions, but the book never even really explores them, and it certainly doesn't begin to try to answer them.

So what happens when an insular community meets modern America is: nothing much. Mason has a few trenchant observations about both, but the religious community continues to be moribund, and modern society continues to be heedless. And Mason himself is still lost; his faith dying before his eyes, which he escapes, but into what? Into a place he knows is even more lost, with a woman more rudderless than he is.

Kirn says that the women are really the heart of the book, and if that's the case, then I liked it even less. All of the women here are selfish and lack self-awareness. They never step outside their own concerns, and why Mason takes up with Betsy after rejecting her for very wise reasons, is never explained. It is a betrayal of his own perceptive moral vision. It may be that someone like Mason could and would take up with Betsy, despite all that he knows and understands. But why we should care about him after he does so is the real mystery.

That's what I mean when I say this is a well-told tale that signifies nothing. Imagine talking about missionary work without conversion. Imagine talking about faith without invoking the transcendant. Imagine talking about community without invoking love. Imagine talking about religion without invoking the divine. Works without grace. Sin without redemption. Mystery without majesty.

That is this book. A lot of trees, but no forest. Far, far from the forest. I can only conclude this is because, though Kirn obviously sympathizes with religious sensibility, he obviously clearly lacks any of his own. I think he used to, but has lost that ability. It's philosophastery of the worst sort, practiced by someone who should know better. We can only excuse it because this may have been his own, personal attempt to recapture it. He failed, and we, his readers, are pained witnesses of that failure.

If you are interested in the enchantments, consolations, and delusions of faith in America, your time would be much better spent, and your spirit more enlightened, by reading John Irving's _A Prayer for Owen Meany_, or Yann Martel's _Life of Pi_. And the incomparable Flannery O'Conner--she said more about these questions in one short story ("Revelation") than Kirn does in an entire novel. Going back further, the classic American books about faith are Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_, and Melville's _Moby Dick_. And if you want to range wider, Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_ and Joyce's _Portrait of an Artist_. And of course you can never go wrong with the Russians--Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.

another reviewer has already covered the plot pretty thoroughly. i didn't really end up feeling anything for the characters, though i really tried to like the protagonist. it seems promising at first, but after the first eighty pages or so it just drags along. it builds up all kinds of events, but then seems to try and wrap up too quickly - which in this case was a good thing. i had to force myself to read the last thirty pages rather than skimming them.

the only thing that really recommends the book is the humor in the first half of the book - specifically a scene where one of the elders gets work as a secret shopper at a thinly disguised walmart.

Kirn's novel starts promisingly enough with a hilarious account of the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles, a matriarchal sect located in an isolated town of Bluff, Montana. The Apostles are obsessed with digestion, and observe strict diets that focus on fish. Unfortunately, the only fish near Bluff is trout, and the Apostles only limited ways of preparing it. The sect also has unusual mating rituals, which start with the Sanctified Midsummer Frolic, a religious festival in which the young males are initiated into sex by female partners chosen for them by their families, and in preparation for which they practice mental exercises that will "arrest their pleasure at the last moment," so as to avoid pregnancy.

The Apostles' population is dwindling, and so they select two young men, Mason and Elias, to travel to what they call Terrestria and find new brides. And that is where the novel goes downhill, with depictions of Mason and Elias in a predictable episodes that mock modern American culture, from their obsessive consumption of chicken wings and soda, to Mason's amazement with teeth whiteners, to their involvement with underage girls who claim to be Wiccan. Their travels end with an almost visit to the ranch of a wealthy Coloradan that ends with an ill-fated buffalo shoot, and with the book moving from parody to absurdity.

Just not very funny or very insightful.