Omensetter's Luck (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

To think that for nearly thirty years, Omensetter's Luck was the only novel William Gass had brought into the world. Not the most prolific author ever, but Gass's perfectionist tendencies certainly shine through when it comes to how he works his prose; the man strings metaphors and lyrical rhymes together in such a way that almost seems natural. I mention the prose before anything else about the book, really, because to put it bluntly the prose is the main reason why you read a Gass work, but don't construe that as a point against the man. Few writers can claim to possess the level of poetic talent that Gass has, and just as few can claim to pack so much emotional and philosophical turmoil into such a simple story. In a few ways he is like the opposite of Stephen King, a bitter man who dwells over the arrangement of words to such a degree that his output as well as his audience is incredibly limited. Very few people will ever read Omensetter's Luck, and even fewer will adore it for the dense but oddly gorgeous novel it is; even as I write this review I fear I have not understood some parts of it after one reading, so I plan on going through Omensetter's Luck a second time in the future most definitely. Why do I adore it, though? Well...Listen: Brackett Omensetter is not the main character of this novel. He is in the book quite a bit, though not as much as you'd think, and never does he hijack the narrative like several characters do. In fact, for much of the story Omensetter comes off as a rather boring figure, a man who's round and jolly like Santa Claus and almost as supernatural to boot. He is lucky, as the title indicates. When Omensetter and his family move into Gilean, a small Ohio town at the tail end of the 19th century, the townsfolk generally treat them nicely, despite their own problems bubbling beneath the surface. The first two sections of the book take place from the perspectives of Israbestis Tott and Henry Pimber respectively, two men who suffer from loneliness and the pains of missed opportunities in their own ways. When we meet Tott at the beginning we are actually reading the epilogue, as Omensetter and his family had already left the town, and Tott is a sort of aging gossiper who tells the same stories to the same people, much to their annoyance. He is an extrovert who hungers for the company of his fellow men, but finds himself forever unsatisfied, no matter how much he perseveres. Pimber, on the other hand, is a landlord who deals with an emotionally distant wife and a thankless job. He falls seriously ill and, much to everyone's surprise, is cured by Omensetter; the sickness remains in a sense, though, as Pimber becomes deeply depressed and contemplates suicide...And here we arrive at the bulk of the novel and, according to Gass, the sole justification for its existence. Meet Jethro Furber, Gilean's local Protestant preacher who may or may not be going insane. Growing up in a Methodist household, guilt and self-hatred burned into his mind, Furber didn't have the happiest of childhoods, and as an adult he tries to deal with his internal struggles through consulting the town's former minister (or rather the former minister's grave), concocting dirty but admittedly entertaining songs, and spouting fire-and-brimstone style sermons. Get used to him, because he's the closest thing to a protagonist the book has, and what a character he is! While several of Gilean's residents get somewhat fleshed-out backstories and personalities, it is Furber who takes the brunt of the character development stick; he is demented, but not necessarily evil, and while he thinks a lot of nasty things he is also shown to have a conscience. Omensetter's Luck is a book full of dualism, good and evil, innocence and depravity, idealism and cynicism, and finally superstition and reality. For a deceptively straightforward tale there is a lot of ground covered.As an avant-garde novel, of course, there is a price to consider. The dialogue lacks quotation marks, which for fans of Cormac McCarthy shouldn't be uncharted territory, although there is an abundance of stream-of-consciousness and a prevalent ambiguity between what is spoken and what is merely thought. The structure is also a tad out of whack, and should be taken into consideration for anyone planning on getting through Omensetter's Luck in less than a week; while Tott and Pimber's sections go by relatively quick, the first chapter of Furber's section is a long and soul-draining trip, the part where the book goes to Hell (or do we?) and throws the reader right into the lion's den. It's ultimately rewarding, though, in multiple ways, and while it's not for everyone I feel like Omensetter's Luck deserves a much bigger audience than it currently has. Then again, if David Foster Wallace couldn't elevate the book to more than cult classic status than we may as well appreciate what we got, right?

After making initial unfair comparisons to Faulkner (I'm thinking Tott as unreliable narrator whose existence depends from the stories he tells himself and others from The Sound and the Fury), Omensetter is in my mind the McGuffin of an the implacable innocent in whose light that all these characters' shadows are revealed and reviled...Pimber's grasp after understanding is interestingly doomed, and Furber is a cynical grotesque turning away from realizing final victory over an imagined adversary. Gass's use of Pimber's wife seems thin and less integral than the other characters, hovering a bit close to being a mere plot device. Altogether an interesting read, and a better use of stream of consciousness than I've slogged through elsewhere...my final estimation is "all meat, little gravy" whereas I'm not discounting it would have been nice to have a bit more gravy. Gass can be lyrical...I'd have enjoyed a bit more exposition in all sections, particularly the stream of consciousness from Furber, whose utter turpitude and final effort at redemption is not so much a revelation as it might be.

Written in the 1960's, at the apex of the use of stream of consciousness, jumps in time, changes in voice and point of view, as well as the focus on the local, the particular, and the sexual tensions derived from the struggle between religious repression and the "return to Nature", this novel makes extraordinary use of these resources to tell a story that builds from gratuitous hatred, intolerance and chauvinism to illustrate a conversion, if not luminous, at least bringer of Justice, awarded through atonement and the action of vital forces very different from Religion.In a small town in Ohio, in the decade of 1890, there takes place an almost Cosmic facedown between natural charm and humanism, on one side, and Oscurantism and the thirst for revenge, on the other. To this town arrives, one fine day, a big and good-natured wanderer, Brackett Omensetter, with his wife and kids, looking for work and a place to settle down. He gets both: a job with a blacksmith, and a house by the river. By force of a proclaimed eternal good luck and some fortuitous events, Omensetter acquires an aura of invincibility and invulnerability, which is the cause of much bad faith and envy on the part of many of his neighbors, exacerbated in the case of Reverend Jethro Furber, an unforgettable character which is the incarnation of sexual frustration and its grave consequences, above all the hypocritical fanaticism and the desire to bring everybody down to his levels of self-repression. Omensetter, ever trusting his good luck, abstains from attending religious services, which seals his fate as the object of Furber's hatred.The novel begins with the memories of a minor character, Israbestis Tott, who many years later remembers the foreigner's arrival and its outcome. Then, the novel goes back in time and tells the first adventures of Omensetter, focusing on his relationship with Henry Pimber, a timid man who one day gets an infected wound and whom Omensetter apparently cures in a miraculous way, to the outrage of the local physician and Furber. This chapter prepares the ground for the third and last, the exasperating, confusing, and tumultuous demise of Furber. A tragedy tests Omensetter's luck for the first time and the book precipitates to its epic ending.Excellent, ultra-modernist within a rural and backwards stage, this novel reaches mythical proportions with a language at the same time crude and rich and, of course, with Biblical resonances.

The wordplay, yes, is Joycean, but the bitterness is all Gass’s own. The first 70 pages or so are flawless—and arguably the two sections those pages comprise should go on longer. There is an indulgent 75-page stream thereafter introducing the untidy and unsavory mind of the Reverend Jethro Furber; shot through with scattered verbal brilliance, it is far too long, though parts are necessary for what follows when, at last, the loose but captivating plot reactivates itself and the final hundred pages or so are relentlessly great. Stay with it till the end and you’ll likely find truth in David Foster Wallace’s judgment of the book: “Bleak but gorgeous, like light through ice.”

Meanwhile, I am continuing my study here of Furber as Trump in Omensetter’s Luck by Gass. For example, Furber, in this 1966 novel, builds a wall, grabs a woman’s private parts, is related to ‘tweetering’, has ‘fiddling finger’ in his hand mannerisms, is successful with his flock whatever he says or does, mispronounces Brackett Omensetter’s name (Barack Obama?) and more!The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.Above is one of its conclusions.

OMENSETTER'S LUCK is an impressionistic steam-of-consciousness novel featuring many voices. A dense yet playful fiction that isn't easy to grasp (never mind keep hold of!). In many ways it is reminiscent of a vivid dream - a dream reflecting a long-lost North American past - quirky, nostalgic, full of merging meaning, colours and scenes. I would say this is primarily a work for prose-lovers: surreal and wondrous descriptions mingle with gritty realism, stark machinations and crazy-clunky confabs. A book to either get joyously lost in or be utterly bemused by.

Weirdly, wildly and at times gorgeously unreadable, Omensetter's Luck cares less about continuity or convenience and more about its feverish impressions. It's the kind of novel you can drown in if you are open to it, at least for twenty pages or so until the text spins into a vortex again and spits you out of the water.There is one chapter here, where a preacher tries to plant doubt into a shopowner's head, that's among the most amazing pieces of stream-of-consciousness-prose I've ever come across. On the other hand, there are passages that I had to re-read three or four times in order to even figure out the basic context of the story.One passage is especially problematic. The preacher Jethro Furber, in effect the main character, is introduced with a long, manic soliloquoy. His thoughts moves between impressions of people sunbathing in front of him, recollections of the time he first came to town, childhood memories, A LOT of bizarre nursery rhymes and a complete breakdown in front of a gravestone. All just a beautiful mess. There is no signposting here, the scenes just bounces into each other at random, and I had a hard time figuring out what was happening, where I was and who was even talking.I barely got through these 80 pages, but I'm glad that I did, because after that, the novel tightens the plotting and turns its attention to the tragedy at its core. But because of chapters like this, in contrast with chapters with more momentum, the novel comes across as a little uneven - a work that could have made a greater impact by being more balanced.As disorienting as the text can be, it also rewards the patient and attentive. Gass's vision is as bold and singular as any you'll ever come across. It's perhaps a shame that just a few tweaks could have made the visionary stand out more than the outright eccentric.