Talking Big

He saw no sign of the Bible, either. If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that here had come a fire stronger than God.

Train Dreams, Denis Johnson

When I first began to write about Denis Johnson, I was struck by the way his novels and novellas up to and including Tree of Smoke bear a religious awe of the unnamable power (call it fate or chance or brush it off as luck) that moves people to the ecstasies and tragedies of their lives. To this reader, Johnson’s own lyricism could follow without flinching wherever those men (yes, often men, but not always men) wound up. Think of the terribly sad ending of his novel Angels (1983). A fire stronger than God, though, that was more distinct and precise than our everyday use of the word fate. Train Dreams is that kind of book. Distinct and precise in detail. A historical novella with the feel of documented history.

A few years ago, I was thinking about this moment in his work. This troubling image: The Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word. I was arguing with myself about it when I came across a different sort of religious image in Johnson’s earlier novel, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (1991). Here the narrator is describing the interior of a Provincetown church.

It was large, more vaulting, than the church he’d gone to in Lawrence. At the front, behind the altar, the middle of the huge wall telescoped outward away from the congregation, making for the altar not just a great chamber that had nothing to do with the rest of the place but almost another world, because its three walls were given over completely to a gigantic mural depicting the wild ocean in a storm. In the middle of this storm, a bigger-than-life-size Jesus stood on a black, sea-dashed rock in his milky garment. The amount of blue in this intimidating scene, sky blues and aquas and frothy blues and cobalts and indigos and azures, taking up about half the congregation’s sight, lent to their prayers a soft benedictive illumination like a public aquarium’s.

The inspiration for this passage was a real mural inside St. Peter the Apostle Church in Provincetown. The image attached to this blog entry is a photo of the real-life mural. So, I think it’s probable at least Johnson visited this church. Saw something. Felt something. Wrote about it. The real-life mural depicted St. Peter not Jesus. In Johnson’s words: almost another world. That’s his world. His novel. What made me sit up tall in my seat as I researched this was that the mural was destroyed in a fire. This is from the parish history on the church website (which interestingly also says the mural was Jesus):

The church was shaken to its very core following a massive electrical fire that destroyed the building on January 5, 2005, the day after a major blizzard.  Due to the dedication of Provincetown’s volunteer fire department, (some of whom had to walk to the fire scene through snow drifts 3 feet high as many secondary roads were still unplowed,) and mutual aid from fire departments of several Cape towns, no one was injured.   But the entire church, including the altar mural of Jesus walking on water, painted by local artist Eugene Sparks, was destroyed.  By the grace of God, the tabernacle was spared.   According to several firefighters who entered the building, it was as if the fire consumed everything in its path but died out as it neared the tabernacle.

http://www.stpeters-ptown.org/ChurchHistory/Default.aspx

Late last year, the man who posed for the artist who painted the mural passed away. Eugene Sparks was the artist. This is from the obituary for Raymond Sawyer: While the church was being painted, Eugene Sparks was working on a mural behind the altar. He asked Raymond to pose for his rendition of the apostle St. Peter.

Raymond Sawyer, a Stone Mason With a Quick Wit, Dies at 84

According to the parish history, God stopped the fire. That leaves us at a bit of an impasse. I wonder if Denis Johnson ever heard of the church fire. If he hadn’t died in 2017, I’d mail him a copy of the history. I’d ask him to weigh in. I’d also ask him about the color blue.

Here, and also south of us, the beaches have a yellow tint, but along the Keys of Florida the sand is like shattered ivory. In the shallows the white of it turns the water such an ideal sea-blue that looking at it you think you must be dead.

Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson