Cloudsplitter: A Novel

Initially intimidated by the size of this book, I nevertheless became quickly engrossed in it's detailed characterizations of the famous and the unknown people involved in the abolition movement prior to the Civil War. Even more interesting is the father-son conflict that drives the novel to it's conclusion at Harper's Ferry. This book will have me checking out more stuff on John Brown. Banks' insight on the problems of race relations in this country are amazing. This is the kind of book that you can recommend to someone not just for the history. Although long, it's a compelling read and one not soon forgotten.

_Cloudsplitter_ is presented as an account of the life and work of radical abolitionist John Brown by surviving son, Owen Brown, who hoped to offer his writings to would be biographers of his father. According to Owen, John Brown would have objected to being described as an "abolitionist," a term he associated with such theorists as William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, all who spoke eloquently of abolishing slavery but did nothing about it. John Brown preferred "action, action, action" in liberating blacks from their masters and destroying the slavocracy in pre-Civil War America. If accomplishing his goals meant murdering slave owners and their other male family members, then so be it. John Brown was true to his word when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, after which drunken southern Border Ruffians and abolitionist free-soilers streamed into Kansas territory either to open Kansas to slavery or to keep it free. Many went into Kansas for the sole purpose of grabbing cheap land.John Brown, as dramatized in Russell Banks's stirring and provocative novel, was more than just the crazed zealot portrayed in history books. He was above all a loving and devoted father and husband who suffered greatly at the deaths of a number of his children at very young ages. John Brown was a deeply religious man who preached and sincerely believed in freedom for the black man. John Brown also viewed the Bible as a handbook for waging war on slave masters and firmly believed that God spoke directly with him and chose him as His instrument of liberation. It is with this belief that Brown gathered together a small rag-tag army of men (including several of his sons) in the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. Brown was certain that they would initiate a massive uprising of slaves against their masters. The great former slave, Frederick Douglass, while loving John Brown for his bravery and his great heart, understood both the white and the black man well and knew that Brown's efforts were doomed to failure.What makes _Cloudsplitter_ more than just an in-depth, three dimensional biographical novel of John Brown is Owen Brown's telling of his personal relationship with his father. Owen Brown was more than just his father's right-hand lieutenant. Owen's actions and very thoughts were completely dominated by his father. Owen lived under the yoke of John Brown as much as any black man did under the yoke of his white master. Comparing Owen Brown to his father, John Brown's best friend, a black man, told Owen that he was not even half the man his father was. This remark haunted Owen for the rest of his life. Many years later, Owen Brown, a lonely old man living in a secluded cabin, questioned whether he were finally out from under John Brown's influence or if he should be dead, lying near his father "where I have always properly belonged."

A proposed experiment: Read this book. If you like fascinating character, sweeping plot, and have a middling level of patience, you'll love it. Promise. Now, when you're done, read a 'biography' of John Brown. This search engine could provide you with several options. Now, compare the two.This book, in my opinion, puts to question the entire field of biography, historical writing, and questions of truth. Through the eyes of one of Brown's sons, Banks reconstructs the world of abolition and frontiersmen with more delicacy, verve and passion that a handful of professional historians could compile. By making the narrative of the story the mind of one of it's primary actors, Banks accesses authenticity with an ingenuity unseen in standard biography. Because he is a writer of fiction, Banks is more likely to manage the psychological, sociological, and cultural complexities of a given moment than academics, simply because he knows that lives are not made up of moments at Harper's Ferry; rather, lives are comprised by the internal contemplations and arguments we have with the world. The resultant actions are always caricatures of such imaginations. Kudos to Banks for doing the research, and refusing to allow it to force his hand into the drawing of cartoons.

When my father gave me this book for Christmas (yes, I did request it), he said, "This should keep you busy until NEXT Christmas!" I feared he might be right. He wasn't. If you are interested in the history (somewhat doctored, but this IS a novel) of the abolitionist movement, then you will not be able to put this book down. If you are an admirer of the awesome power of some writer to capture emotions, senses of place, pain, joy, or horror, this (again) is not a book to put down.As most of you will know by now, Russell Banks has written a huge work on the life of John Brown as seen through the eyes and life of his son, Owen. Admittedly, Owen was not a highly educated man, although he seemingly was a highly principled one. Some readers have criticized Banks for allowing Owen to speak and write to eloquently. How could an uneducated man speak thusly? To which I would reply (as a reader, not an author) that the monumental events of that time could not be expressed with pedestrian prose. Banks' gift is to bring us into those times of life, death, murder, cruelty, and ultimately, madness. How can we live it with him and the Browns in any other way?After reading this work, I feel like I know the Browns intimately. Whether the facts as presented are all true, is grist for another mill. However, Banks has achieved something great here. He has not just given us a taste of the history (as any ordinary historical novel might), but has given us some insight into the psyche of its characters. Why did John Brown take on the establishment in this way? Why did some of his sons and friends sacrifice themselves in the fight against slavery? Banks paints some very interested psychological profiles, but does it so deftly through Owen's first person narrative (actually, Owen's voluminous letter to a historian in NY), that it was a natural part of the story.Ultimately, we are left to marvel at John and Owen Brown, and to wonder if they really were mad. For me, their madness was their gift. Who else in their right mind would have taken the risks that these men did? And without their madness, would the fight against slavery have been so successful? This issue of madness is visited in another incredible and true story, "The Professor and the Madman," which recounts the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (speaking of pedestrian!). It it entirely likely that in today's society, the protagonists in each of these magnificent works would be "treated" in some manner.Had that been the case, the world would be a worse place for it. And had that been the case, we would not have this incredible work of Russell Bank's to celebrate.

I've read criticisms of the book as overlong. Isn't that like when the king tell Mozart in Amadeus that there are too many notes? John Brown's life is history; big history, abolitionism, civil war, slavery, race relations, religious fervor. Mr. Banks does a terrifc job of creating an austere yet magisterial voice for Owen Brown. He gets us into the feeling of living out these big struggles. I also like how he gives us the big moment for Owen as different from the big historical moment at Harpers Ferry. It makes that historical moment feel more real, the fact that Owen's view of it is somewhat removed from both the action and the feeling. The other wonderful feature of the book is that it is not really interested in history but in character and family. This gives the book a liveliness and richness that would be lacking in a historical novel that mechanically went through the big events. This is a terrific book. That said, I've read two of Mr. Banks books that are at the very pinnacle of American fiction; THE SWEET HEREAFTER and AFFLICTION. This book didn't sear its memory into my psyche the way those books did. Banks has set such a high standard that even he can do exceptional work and fall short.