Nickel Mountain

'Nickel Mountain', my first encounter with John Gardner's work, was a wonderful experience of just how profound some of our American writers can be. This book is so distinctly American it couldn't be mistaken for anything else. Yet, despite it's regional idiosyncrasies, it manages to convey impressions of a deeper, more universal human quest for the intangible, yet all-important goal of psychological equilibrium, or grace. The several main sections of the book are all inter-related in that they show how different characters experience and deal with the inevitable choices they are faced with in life. Some of the situations which prompt the choices are commonplace and some are dramatic, and even quite strange. One thing that made the book work so well for me is that the rural characters Gardner created for his story seem so authentic. I say this as someone who remembers firsthand, as a child, the rapidly-receding 1950's, in which this story was set. The rural and small-town environments of those days before television and the other media had taken over and homogenized American life, produced some highly individualistic and eccentric characters, for whom you might search in vain in today's malls, discount stores, or fast-food joints. This leads me to explain the "Gracious" element in my review title. To realize how lovingly and respectfully Gardner deals with his characters, you only have to contrast his style with that of Flannery O'Connor, another brilliant American author. O'Connor wrote in a manner which some call "Southern gothic", where the action is carried out by bizarre, eccentric types, in a generally dark, subtly menacing milieu. O'Connor deals also with deep moral and psychological issues, but the redneck hicks who illustrate her fables are treated in a satirical manner which invites you to laugh scornfully at their failings, even though they may eventually attain some form of enlightenment. Gardner treats his characters as real human beings, although I believe we get a sense that they represent more than just their own individual existence. Not only does he make us privy to the workings of their consciences and imaginations; I think we also get a sense that he is sympathetic to their humanity, both it's weaknesses and strengths, and that he is rooting for the best in their natures to prevail, without proposing unrealistic scenarios. Gardner's characters are down-to-earth denizens of the rural Catskills of the 1950's, yet they are unique and exceptional, though the circumstances of their lives may be mundane. The interface between external events and the imaginations of Gardner's people provides the reader with a wide range of human experience to ponder. The writing is in places so excellent with it's opposing light and dark imagery; it's portrayal of human effort to stave off the slow inexorable hostility of nature and its processes; it's depiction of the inner quest to find meaning and moral equilibrium; and it's rendering of att

In 1973 one of our nation's finest novelists, the late John Gardner, made high art out of obscure people living through trials of despair, betrayal and religious doubt in New York State's Catskill Mountains. Although Nickel Mountain slipped out of print, it's back live, thanks to New Directions' republication of such Gardner triumphs as October Light. Nickel Mountain never received the acclaim of some of Gardner's other books, particularly Grendel, which remains in print, but it deserves to be back on the shelf. For in it Gardner has conjured majestic mystery out of seemingly ordinary rural people and landscapes. It's 1954, and Henry Soames, 40-plus, overweight and suffering from a life-threatening heart condition, runs a diner where truckers and local farmers gather. Soon after 17-year-old Callie Wells starts working there, she becomes pregnant by Willard, a boy in whose love she had trusted. He zooms away to college, though, unreachable, leaving Callie in big trouble. She and Henry come to know and help each other; they agree to marry. Is there love? Of a sort. Also much distress. Things Callie says in the throes of childbirth wound Henry. His heart is already damaged on more than one level: Great mountain of a man, he harbors inside a great inchoate love for people alongside a great rage at his inability to express it. After Jimmy is born, the marriage is strained when Henry agrees to provide a home for a half-mad, Scripture-quoting Jehovah's Witness whose house has burned down, killing his wife. When the man comes under suspicion, a sense of nameless dread pervades the mountain like the fogs that descend through the trees at evening. Callie tells Henry she's scared. " `Of what?' he said, exasperated. " `How do I know?' she said. `I'm just scared, that's all. Really. Aren't you?' " Henry realizes he is, because despite our boundless protectiveness for loved ones, in the end we can't protect them. His bitter, lonely friend George Loomis points this out, he who loses his arm in a grisly farm accident. The Jehovah's Witness is caught scaring Jimmy with tales of the Devil. Henry confronts him, with disastrous results. Loss pervades this tale. People destroy each other, or themselves, without meaning to. A mysterious, itinerant Goat Lady driving a pink-and-purple cart comes on the scene, looking for her lost son, only to vanish. Terrible drought sets in. Henry sinks deeper into himself, ill-advisedly eating and gaining weight. Willard returns, not sure if he's looking for his lost son or not. Redemption eventually raises its voice in the oppressive silences. By no means is it easily won, and it seems just out of the reach of articulation. Henry "had no words for his thoughts; the very separateness of words was contrary to what he seemed to know." But new life arises in the wilderness of the Catskills and the heart. No cheap sentiment or smooth pieties in this novel. It shimmers with hints of Christmas and gardens and spirit without tryin

It's a shame. My first taste of John Gardner's splendid craft was in the form of a rather slipshod excerpt of Grendel in my British Lit book, attendant to the excerpted Beowulf. Reading Nickel Mountain, I was struck by both an epiphany of sorts, the discovery of a brilliant author new to me; and struck by the injustice of the current out of print status of the work. The same quibblesome comment should attend a discussion of why Harold and Maude (the novel) isn't at the fingers of more of those otiose, over-caffeinated browsers in ....Invective against certain publishers or readers aside, I will deem this book one of the best I've read in a while. Gardner had a knack for plucking scraps of sentiment and characterization and giving them the reins over the story. The characters in Nickel Mountain are given the sort of emotion and are treated with the same intense, meticulous speculation that Steinbeck lent to his brilliant characters; this is the lodestar of a galaxy of seemingly muddled but, when examined pensively and closely, heterogeneous and multihued feelings; Gardner put a multifaceted heart into this novel. Revelations of aspects in the characters of Henry and Callie, and the myriad supporting characters in New Carthage, from Mr. Kuzitski, moribund from page one, to George Loomis, amount to a breathtaking and touching expression of human interaction. Too stunning to be found only on a rack of unwanted, weathered paperbacks in a murky corner of a public library, where I found my copy.

The characters in this evocative book are inseparable from the pure texture of the unforgiving landscape in which they exist. Although their struggle concerns each one's individual search for love and acceptance, they ultimately acknowledge their situation for what it is; coming to peace with their own strengths and limitations. This book is truly a feast. I have found that it is to be savored by reading a chapter or two a week, allowing time in between courses to catch my breath. John Gardner was a writer without peer and I wonder what he would be producing today, nearly twenty years after his death.

I read Nickel Mountain" for the first time over 20 year ago, and it has never left my life. The characters in this book touch your heart and soul for a liftime. This novel transports you to another space in time. Mr. Gardner has a way with words that enables you to "feel" and "smell" the fragrant night air of the Catskill Mountains of New York State. Hauntingly beautiful, it stirs your soul. Give yourself the gift of a lifetime, read "Nickel Mountain." John Gardner has been given a gift from God.