The Fields Are Ripe...and Empty

At Play in the Fields of the Lord was very sad and depressing. In the tradition of Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies, it features a couple of missionary families and assorted characters devolving into the most base elements of their persons under the mysterious, soul-denuding powers of the jungle canopy. That the author skewers the characters' faiths, cultures, dreams, motivations and all that they hold dear is all well and good, but what, then, does he leave us with? The book does end with a dubious redemption of sorts where the one "pure of heart" character comes out the other side with a sort of vague, primitive understanding of himself and nature. And what exactly did he come to understand? I dunno. I came away feeling the author thinks a zen-like embracing of nothingness is the pinnacle of enlightenment. How sad.

To be sure, this is a very challenging book and there's a lot that went over my head. Even so, it doesn't help that the author indulges a bit too much in psychedelic drug induced, disease induced flights of fancy to reveal to us characters' spiritual revelations. Now, I suppose this imperfect device is as good as any for describing such admittedly ethereal phenomena, but after a while it just comes off as a little pretentious and heavy-handed. You get the feeling you're listening to a stoned guy's gibberish--gibberish which the stoner sees as nothing less than God's word revealed.

I need to read some critical work about the book. I might change my mind.