Word: buechner
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...FREDERICK BUECHNER 276 pages. Atheneum...
LION COUNTRY by Frederick Buechner. 247 pages. Atheneum...
...when Antonio Parr wakes up in the morning. Parr is a man in his 30s who has a small private income and has worked without delight as a teacher, a failed novelist and a junk sculptor. "I resorted as little as possible to welding," explains the hero of Frederick Buechner's ruefully funny new novel, "but used balance wherever I could or the natural capacity of one odd shape to fit somehow into or on top of or through another-entirely autobiographical, in other words-the idea being to leave the lover of my art (of me?) free...
...Novelist Buechner (A Long Day's Dying) was ordained a Presbyterian minister and served for a time as chaplain of a boys' prep school. It may be that this professionalism allows him his easy way with the rigors of belief. Without satire or solemnity, he describes Bebb's religion-a life force as sleazy as its peddler. Bebb is, among other things, a sexual exhibitionist, and there is a memorable scene at the altar of his cinderblock church in which he restores potency to an oil-rich old Indian by raising up his own loins in thanksgiving...
...reader does not enter Buechner's rarefied world but stands outside admiring. Presently he realizes that Parr, the hero, and Buechner, who invented him, are standing there beside him too. So is all that is visible of Bebb. A conversation develops among the onlookers that is solid, witty and as full of profundity as one could wish for on a hot day. Disbelief is not suspended, but since things are so pleasant, there is no reason that it should...