Now and Then by Frederick Buechner

First published: 1983

Type of work: Memoir

Time of work: The 1950’s to the 1980’s

Locale: New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont

Principal Personages:

• Frederick Buechner, a novelist and a writer of popular theology
• Paul Tillich, ,
• Reinhold Niebuhr, ,
• Martin Buber, and
• James Muilenburg, theologians who helped shape his worldview

Form and Content

By age twenty-six, Frederick Buechner had become widely known as the precociously successful writer of two critically acclaimed novels, A Long’s Day’s Dying (1950) and The Season’s Difference (1952). Bursting on the literary scene as “a new Henry James,” Buechner, with his mandarin, contemplative narrative style, seemed to capture the essence of angst-ridden and God-forsaken America of the 1950’s. Arguably, Buechner seemed destined to take his place among those despairing voices within American fiction—William Styron, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote—who looked bleakly heavenward but discovered only an empty sky bereft of divine comfort or direction. Buechner’s conversion to Christianity and his subsequent seminary education altered his course irrevocably, however, and Now and Then, Buechner’s second memoir, depicts a novelist reborn not only in spirit but also in prose style and thematic concern. The characters and predicaments of Buechner’s postseminary fiction clearly reflect a new humanness and humor uncharacteristic of the somber, tortured protagonists of his earliest novels, and this second memoir chronicles the force behind this dramatic change.

Now and Then thus completes the autobiographical reflections Buechner began in The Sacred Journey (1982). The Sacred Journey details key events of Buechner’s childhood and adolescence—primarily the traumatic experience of his father’s suicide—and recalls the formative influences he encountered during his undergraduate years at Princeton University. This first memoir concludes with Buechner’s recounting of the composition and unexpected critical acclaim of his first two novels and his eventual conversion to Christianity. Now and Then begins with his days as a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and moves on to an account of Buechner’s unlikely development of three different vocations after his graduation and ordination: a chaplain and teacher in a private academy for boys, a religious novelist, and a popular theologian. Along the way, Buechner’s subtext concerns the profound changes that took place in his thinking after his conversion to Christianity and how he adjusted to these shifting currents of his life within his calling as a writer.

Rhetorically, Now and Then, like The Sacred Journey, is quite terse; its scant 109 pages are divided into three chapters, each titled for one of the Buechner family’s residences: New York, Exeter (New Hampshire), and Vermont. At each stop Buechner gives the reader tantalizingly brief glimpses into people, places, and events that hold meaning for him—as if one were looking out of a passenger train accompanied by the shy, modest Buechner as a tour guide. To be sure, these glimpses are poignant, well chosen, and ably reconstructed by the mature Buechner. Yet he uses the absolute minimum of verbiage to capture these scenes, occasionally leaving even the most sympathetic reader wanting more expansive treatment. Perhaps Buechner follows too well his own advice for writing that he shares with readers toward the end of the book: “If you have to choose between words that mean more than what you have experienced and words that mean less, choose the ones that mean less because that way you leave room for your hearers to move around in and for yourself to move around in too.” As in any Buechner text, more important than the ostensibly important personages and conversations is the hidden meaning—the “alphabet of grace” operating within the moments recalled—that bespeaks the presence of the Divine in every human life.

Both the serendipity and the inevitability of Buechner’s Christian conversion lurk behind every anecdote or character sketch in Now and Then. Nevertheless, in form Now and Then represents spiritual autobiography in almost its purest form in that it concentrates almost entirely on the believer’s gradual, agonizing, and ambiguous groping toward God—the mundane pieces of daily life that when woven together form a tapestry of faith and hope. Taken as autobiography, this brief volume and its predecessor comprise a scant 210 pages, compelling the reader to place more interpretive weight on each line than would be expected or appropriate for a more expansive work. The details with which Buechner chooses to deal are those that contribute directly to an explanation of his spiritual journey and its implications for his life, work, and family life. The resulting focus does not yield the typical fare of much twentieth century biography—that characterized by obsessive concern for gossip, shockingly private revelation, or the lampooning of prominent or famous individuals.

Critical Context

The primary audience for Buechner’s work comprises two groups of readers: those for whom his Christian experience is both instructive and illuminating of their own faith and those who—with little regard for his religious conviction—admire his effortless prose and skillful depiction of the tensions and anxieties of modern life. Buechner has often said that his books are too religious for secular readers and too secular for religious readers. The truth is that throughout the winding path of his literary career, Buechner has had a consistently enthusiastic, though admittedly modest, readership among both kinds of readers.

Now and Then, though, clearly does represent a full circle in the canon of works he has created. Buechner once told a reviewer that his writing was a kind of ministry—a substitute pulpit for one ordained as a Presbyterian minister but without a congregation to shepherd. As noted already, he has argued in various works that storytelling reveals the form of human life, a pattern of events that upon investigation would divulge a divine presence and care. In his fiction, he has created credible living characters whose stories and themes exemplify this narrative vision. In The Sacred Journey and Now and Then, Buechner has exploited these narrative gifts in illuminating how his own life has unfolded. Buechner emerges in Now and Then as a compelling character himself; the bemused writer stands beside his own life as if producing a third-person narrative, chronicling the personalities, events, and circumstances that have given him meaning.

A rather retiring, tantalizingly modest, and unprepossessing personality emerges from this memoir. He who has had famous teachers and won prestigious literary awards shrinks from the public spotlight to allow his life—or, rather, the sometimes mundane details of his life—to speak for itself. Buechner’s conviction that life is a story to be both celebrated and endured, but always a story to be told, is never more evident than in Now and Then. No one who has read even a small portion of Buechner’s work can come away from it knowing less of himself. Now and Then calls attention not to Buechner as a celebrity or novelty but, paradoxically, as a notably ordinary man whose story is really no more remarkable than the reader’s might be. The difference is that Buechner has taken the time to listen to the alphabet of his days. His reader may be blessed in learning how to do the same.

Bibliography

Davies, Helene. Laughter in a Genevan Gown: The Words of Frederick Buechner, 1985.

Gibble, Kenneth. “Listening to My Life: An Interview with Frederick Buechner,” in The Christian Century. C (November 16, 1983), pp. 1042-1044.

Library Journal. CVIII, February 1, 1983, p. 201.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. January 16, 1983, p. 4.

McCoy, Marjorie Casebier. Frederick Buechner, 1988.

McCoy, Marjorie Casebier. Review in The Christian Century. C (March 23-30, 1983), p.280.

Nelson, Rudolph. “‘The Doors of Perception’: Mystical Experience in Buechner’s Fiction,” in Southwest Review. LXVIII (Summer, 1983), pp. 266-275.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXII, November 19, 1982, p. 66.