The Eyes of the Heart (1999)
A Memoir of the Lost and Found
Book Description
Buechner’s fourth memoir reflects deeply on family and friendship, celebrating the ordinary, seeking out joy in the patterns of life, and drawing meaning from regret and tragedy.
Beginning in his library, the Magic Kingdom, the author summons long-gone relatives and mentors, engaging them in powerful conversations about the past and future. As his hand hand roves along the shelves of his library, Buechner considers the profound influence that authors such as Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne, and Anthony Trollope have had upon his craft, remembering in particular the process he underwent in researching and writing his tenth, eleventh, and twelfth novels, Godric (1980), Brendan (1987), and The Son of Laughter (1993).
These exchanges are interwoven with moments of recollection, vignettes through which the reader glimpses Buechner’s memories, such as his profound friendship with the poet, James Merrill, and their summer together following graduation when each composed their debut publications. Throughout, he also pauses to reflect on eternal matters—the significance of life, the experience of death, the nature of doubt and faith, and the world to come:
We are all of us like clay jars is the way I remembered it, and as time goes by, each jar gets cracked and broken and eventually crumbles away until there is not a single thing left of it except for the most important thing of all, the only thing about it that is ultimately so real that nothing on earth or heaven has the power even to touch it, let alone to destroy it, and that is the emptiness that the jar contained, which is one with the emptiness of all the other jars and with Emptiness itself. Nor is that Emptiness ever to be confused with nothingness, but is rather whatever of its many names we call it by-nirvana, satori, eternal life, the peace of God. Suddenly then, in that pitching plane some thirty thousand crazy feet up in the sky, I found myself not only not afraid of what was going on, but enormously enjoying it, half drunk on the knowledge that yes, it was true. There was nothing to worry about. There was no reason to fear. It was all of it, all of it, and forever and always, good.
Reviews
“Unlike some Christian writers, Frederick Buechner has never claimed to have a ringside seat to the truth. ‘I have seen with the eyes of the heart the great hope to which He has called us,’ he writes, ‘but out of shyness...I rarely speak of it, and in my books I have tended to write about it for the most part only obliquely.’ This very reticence, however, is one of the qualities that most endears this writer to his fans: we trust him all the more because he does not deny his own doubts.”
— Doug Thorpe, author
“Old friends and new readers alike will be delighted...in this extraordinarily moving and beautifully written memoir [in which] Buechner reflects on life, faith, friendship, and family.”
— Bookpage
“An impressive addition to Buechner's oeuvre.”
— Pam Kingsbury, Library Journal
“With humility, empathy, and honesty, Buechner invites us to see life, and death, with the 20/20 vision offered by the eyes of the heart.”
— Boston Globe
“Frederick Buechner is one of my favorite writers. The Eyes of the Heart is beautiful and wise, full of insight, charm, and tenderness.”
— Anne Lamott, author
“How beautifully written is this thin volume, above and apart from the current of our times and deeply within the current of the truth. It is the author's remarkable genius for the truth that gives his deceptively simple memoir the heart and soul of a great book.”
— Mark Helprin, author
“In this deeply moving memoir, filled with mortality, gratitude, and joy, Buechner invites us to see (as he has seen) with the eyes of the heart.”
— Marcus J. Borg, theologian
“It's a splendid book, a genuinely spiritual memoir which avoids the lugubrious and the sentimental but invites the reader into a level most other memoirs do not. He demonstrates a capacity to cope with tragedy that will be immensely helpful to other people when faced with similar woundings.”
— Harvey Cox, Thomas Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School
“Profound, beautiful, wrenching at times, and unassumingly wise—The Eyes of the Heart will be one of my book treasures. I will probably read it once a year, and I suspect many other Buechner lovers will do likewise. I recommend it to everyone. It has the feel already of a classic.”
— Gail Godwin, author
