Történelemlecke, ahogy az amerikai nagyepika mesterei szokták volt csinálni. Négy generációban átfogott történelmi idő, a huszadik század újvilági krónikája, némi keleti part, némi nyugati part, no meg persze az álmos középső megyék. Mindez összefonódó arcképekben bemutatva. Hadd mutassam be hát a szereplőket:

a.) Kezdjük Clarence-szel, a presbiteriánus egyház papjával, akit munkahelyi baleset ér: elveszíti hitét. Ez olyasmi, mintha a zongorista a jobb kezét veszítené el, gondolja ő. Környezete viszont mintha úgy vélné, ez inkább csak valami náthaféle, amit ki lehet bekkelni, nem hisz Istenben, na bumm, attól még prédikálhat. De aki Istent komolyan vette, Isten hiányán sem teszi könnyen túl magát, szóval kész is van a privát összeomlás.
b.) Fia, Teddy kevésbé tragikus figura, a paradoxonok szerelmeseként hadd kockáztassam meg: tragikuma a tragikum hiányából fakad. Ő csak nyugalmat akar, kívül maradni mindenféle versenyből, és úgy építeni méltó életet magának. Csak hát körötte ott lüktet a kapitalizmus, korbáccsal hajtaná előre az emberfiát, szegény Teddy pedig, úgy fest, nem kompatibilis az efféle világrendező elvekkel.
c.) Lányát, Essiet más fából faragták. (Nem is fából, inkább valami sokkal rugalmasabb, szívósabb anyagból.) Ő tudja, minek van olyan piaci értéke, hogy abból vígan megéljen: a testnek. Az ő pazar, álmodnivaló testének. Meg is találja helyét a film világában, és felhág a sztárság hófödte ormaira, bár meglehet, amikor onnan letekint, nem a jól végzett munka örömét érzi, hanem valami sokkal, de sokkal nyugtalanítóbbat.
d.) És végül essék szó Clarkról, aki Essie gyermeke, de mit sem örökölt az anyai célvezéreltségből, sokkal inkább nagyapára ütött. Ugyanaz a lanyha helykeresés, puhaság, tétova középszer. Mindazonáltal személyében mintha a regény útjai körbeérnének. A dédapa, Clarence problémái ugyanis Isten elhagyásával kezdődtek, Clark viszont felfedezi magának Istent – ám ez, ha lehet, még katasztrofálisabb következmények bölcsője lesz. Mert Isten útjai, mint tudjuk, kifürkészhetetlenek. Tegyen panaszt, akinek nem tetszik.

A portrék mögött pedig ott húzódik maga Amerika. A sztrájkok és szekták Amerikája, Hollywood Amerikája, az az Amerika, aki elküldi fiait az első világháborúba, a második világháborúba, no meg Vietnamba, de mi végre. Az ilyesmire szokták mondani, hogy: tabló. Mégpedig színpompás, vérbő, életteli tabló, olyasmi, aminek örül a szem, ha végigtekinthet rajta. Nem mondom, az első fele (az első két arckép) mintha kissé vontatott lenne, de második részre már illő gyorsvonati pótjegyet váltani, mert száguld, mint a veszett fene.

Updike meg nagyon tud. Eszem azt a huncut eszét.

( )

Great novel about a family across multiple generations. Updike can really write a sentence!!! I just love to follow his words...he had an amazing command of the English language. ( )

Nachdem der Priester Clarence Wilmot seinen Glauben verloren hat, quittiert er den Dienst und stürzt sich und seine Familie aus dem gesellschaftlichen Angesehensein hinunter.
Das Buch behandelt vier Generationen dieser Familie, die sich auf ihre Weise mit ihren eigenen Göttern beschäftigen, mit Ersatzreligionen (v.a. dem Kino) und dann doch wieder mit religiösem Glauben (aber fundamentalistisch und letztendlich fatal). Das Buch zeigt deutlich auf, zu welchen "Göttern" welche Zeitepoche der amerikanischen Geschichte verführt und welche Art von "Glaube" wann möglich ist.
Doch der Roman wäre nur halb so interessant, wenn nicht die dargestellten Personen mitreißend und glaubwürdig wären und jedes aufgezeigte Leben interessant und nachvollziehbar. Am meisten Probleme hatte ich mit Clarence selbst. Aber nach ungefähr 100 Seiten war der Funke bei mir übergesprungen. ( )

Excessive prose bloats the insignificant details in this overwritten family saga.
The story spans four generations of the Wilmot family, starting with a faithless patriarch leaving the ministry and ending with an inveigled zealot defending a cult. Similarly, in-between generations are foils. The second consists of dubious slackers, hesitant and withdrawn, while the third is gregarious and charismatic, embodying the Protestant work ethic. Along the way the reader is treated to the lesson that good emanates from strong family ties, while evil results from lackluster parenting. Not to mention frugality is a virtue, extravagance amoral. Et cetera.
What is impressive is that Updike manages to squeeze all this pedantry into an allegory that is just a tick under 500 pages.



Surely high school English teachers love this soap opera all dressed up as literature.

In the Beauty of the Lilies is Updike's treatise on religion and American culture masked by the saga of several generations of the Wilmot family and wrapped up in the growing movie industry. The book has only four chapters, each one focused on a member of each generation. To start, in 1910, we meet Clarence Wilmot, a Presbyterian minister who finds that his faith has suddenly abandoned him. Even as he tries to seek out God and look for Him where he has found Him in the past, he is most assured that the God to whom he looked for his whole life's needs and his livelihood does not exist, has never existed. Unable to so much as preach a sermon, he soon finds himself relegated to selling subpar encyclopedias door to door, even to his former servant, in an effort to support his family even as his very life seems to ebb and his only refuge becomes the movie theatre.

Where Clarence leaves off, his son Teddy begins. Teddy is an insecure boy without goals who grows to be an underachieving man uncertain of his place in world and petrified at the thought of one day becoming a "rube." What he doesn't realize is that, "rube"-hood seems to be what life has in store for him. Forever impacted by his father's loss of faith and slow descent into death, Teddy has no time for God, and yet his story is perhaps the sweetest. When he marries his wife, a cripple, they have a child, Esther, Essie for short, who he and his wife shower with all the love they have to give which is no benefit to her. Secure in herself and confident that nothing will be denied her, Essie leaves her Wilmot name behind to pursue a career in the movies as the very famous Alma DeMott. Forever having love affairs and caring only about advancing herself at the expense of others, Alma believes that God exists and cares only for her selfish needs. Self-centered as she is, Alma makes a terrible mother to her son Clark who, in a desperate attempt to assert himself and do something meaningful after a meaningless, shallow childhood, joins a religious cult. It is with Clark that the Wilmot saga comes full circle until the thing that seemed to capsize the Wilmot family will be the very thing to heal it.

In the Beauty of the Lilies is a most complicated book. One can't help but feel that Updike is trying to accomplish many things with this narrative, and yet, by the end, trying to grasp his many meanings is an epic chore, and without this meaning, In the Beauty of the Lilies leaves a sour taste in your mouth. After so much depression and strife in the lives of the Wilmot family members, readers desperately desire more hope for them, and for us, than Updike seems to have to offer. Updike writes in long, dense paragraphs, and the lack of many chapter breaks in the book seem to make it that much longer and denser.

Many of Updike's characters are terribly difficult to sympathize with, but each is well-drawn with his or her motives and actions and flaws explored to their deepest extent. The writing is beautifully crafted and full of captivating descriptions and turns of phrase that can be both impossibly witty and wildly ironic. There's no doubt that Updike is a master of his craft as he expertly weaves together his saga of a struggling American family set against a backdrop of a centuries old faith that provided a foundation for our nation and Hollywood films that create an impossible and unrealistic standard of American life that have shaped our nation's psyche in ways that even we fail to realize. Updike uses Hollywood both to pace his story through the decades and to reveal an American people obsessed with stars and the idealized version of reality they project even as they abandon the Christian ideals that once grounded them and enabled them to endure the hardships of everyday life.

In the Beauty of the Lilies is not a book that I would recommend to the casual reader. It is not a happy, pleasant book. It requires a good deal of work to understand and even then leaves a lot of ambiguity that the reader must resolve. It's a book that definitely benefits from a group discussion and a careful eye as to what Updike has done. It's a book that I would be hard pressed to say that I liked, but all the same, it's a vivid story of realistic people that firmly lodges itself in the memory. ( )