Now and Then (1983)
A Memoir of Vocation
Book Description
Buechner’s second memoir invites the reader to journey with him through the highs and lows of faith, family, and authorship from 1950 to 1980.
Beginning with the completion of his first novel, A Long Day’s Dying, and the commencement with his second, The Season’s Difference, Buechner examines his evolving writing process and the life of the novelist, recounting the practices, trials, and accidents that gave birth to several of his greatest works, including The Return of Ansel Gibbs (1958), The Final Beast (1965), The Entrance to Porlock (1970), The Bebb tetralogy (1971-77), and Godric (1980).
Woven in and out of this writer’s story are the details of a remarkable life: his encounters with artists, princesses, and politicians while journeying around Europe; his experiences at Union Theological Seminary, New York, under the teaching of Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenberg; his time as a teacher and chaplain at the Philips Exeter Academy; and his relocation to Vermont. In a book filled with extraordinary discoveries—from the character of Leo Bebb to Saint Godric of Finchdale—above all Buechner finds the words that become the central theme to his oeuvre:
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Reviews
“Strikes to the heart… Unpreachy meditations on life and Christianity at its most profound.”
— People Magazine
“Buechner writes better than almost anyone. This book and its companion, The Sacred Journey, reduce and clarify the who and what and why of his whole life to something not unlike the palm-sized egg of crystal. Deep within it, as we read, the sun shines and the constellations rove.”
— James Merrill, poet
“The humility of this title—the "now and then" that refers to the occasional glimpse of glory but does not claim any more for itself than that—beautifully reveals something of the tone and attitude of Buechner himself. It also suggests what it is about him that readers hold so dear.”
— Doug Thorpe, author
“Buechner is graceful in story and insights.”
— Los Angeles Times
“Candid… wistful… breathtaking images.”
— Christian Century
“Buechner is a worthy member of the great prose stylists: Pascal, Newman, and Merton, who have harnessed their art to a passionate religious faith.”
— Louis Auchincloss, author
