Frederick Buechner

The Reverend Frederick Buechner
Buechner in 2008
Born	Carl Frederick Buechner (1926-07-11)July 11, 1926 New York City, U.S.
Died	August 15, 2022(2022-08-15) (aged 96) Rupert, Vermont, U.S.
Occupation	Author, Presbyterian minister
Education	Princeton University (BA) Union Theological Seminary (BDiv)
Genre	Novel, short story, essay, sermon, autobiography, historical fiction
Notable works	A Long Day's Dying Secrets in the Dark Godric The Book of Bebb The Sacred Journey The Magnificent Defeat
Notable awards	O. Henry Award Rosenthal Award Christianity and Literature Belles Lettres Prize
Spouse	Judith Buechner (m. 1956)

Carl Frederick Buechner (

Buechner was named "without question one of the truly great writers of the 20th century" by viaLibri, a "major talent" by The New York Times, and "one of our most original storytellers" by USA Today. Annie Dillard (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) called him "one of our finest writers."^[2] Buechner's works have been compared to C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton and have been translated into twenty-seven languages.

Buechner was a finalist for the

Carl Frederick Buechner, the eldest son of Katherine Golay (Kuhn) and Carl Frederick Buechner Sr., was born on July 11, 1926, in New York City.^[8][9] During Buechner's early childhood the family moved frequently, as Buechner's father searched for work. In The Sacred Journey, Buechner recalls that "Virtually every year of my life until I was fourteen, I lived in a different place, had different people to take care of me, went to a different school. The only house that remained constant was the one where my maternal grandparents lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh called East Liberty ... Apart from that one house on Woodland Road, home was not a place to me when I was a child. It was people."^[10] This changed in 1936, when Buechner's father committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, a result of his conviction that he had been a failure.^[11]

Bermuda

Immediately following his father's death, the family moved to Bermuda, where they remained until World War II forced the evacuation of Americans from the island. In Bermuda, Buechner experienced "the blessed relief of coming out of the dark and unmentionable sadness of my father's life and death into fragrance and greenness and light".^[12] For a young Buechner, Bermuda became home.

Bermuda left a lasting impression on Buechner. The distinctly British flavor of pre-World War II Bermuda provided in him a lifelong appreciation of English custom and culture, which would later inspire such works as Godric and Brendan. Buechner also frequently mentions Bermuda in his memoirs, including Telling Secrets and The Sacred Journey.

Education and military service

Buechner then attended the

I really knew two Princetons. The first one was during the war, when everybody was being drafted or enlisting. It was just one drunken farewell party after another. Nobody did any work. I didn't learn anything at all. I was in the Army for two years. When I came back, I was so delighted to be free again that I buckled down and learned a few things.[17]

Literary success and ordination

During his senior year at

While at Union, Buechner studied under such renowned theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenburg, who helped Buechner in his search for understanding:

I wanted to learn about Christ – about the

Presbyterian church, of all places, I had been moved to astonished tears which came from so deep inside me that to this day I have never fathomed them, I wanted to learn more about the source of those tears and the object of that astonishment.^[22]

Buechner's decision to enter the seminary had come as a great surprise to those who knew him. Even George Buttrick, whose words had so inspired Buechner, observed that, "It would be a shame to lose a good novelist for a mediocre preacher."^[23] Nevertheless, Buechner's ministry and writing have ever since served to enhance each other's message.

Following his first year at Union, Buechner decided to take the 1955–56 school year off to continue his writing. In the spring of 1955, shortly before he left Union for the year, Buechner met his wife Judith at a dance given by some family friends. They were married a year later by James Muilenburg in Montclair, N.J., and spent the next four months traveling in Europe. During this year, Buechner also completed his third novel, The Return of Ansel Gibbs.

After his sabbatical, Buechner returned to Union to complete the two further years necessary to receive a Bachelor of Divinity. He was ordained on June 1, 1958, at the same Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church where he had heard George Buttrick preach four years earlier. Buechner was ordained as an evangelist, or minister without pastoral charge. Shortly before graduation, as he considered his future role as minister of a parish, he received a letter from Robert Russell Wicks, formerly the Dean of the Chapel at Princeton, who had since begun serving as school minister at Phillips Exeter Academy. Wicks offered him the job of instituting a new, full-time religion department at Exeter; Buechner decided to take the opportunity to return to teaching and to develop a program that taught religion in depth.

Exeter

In September 1958, the Buechners moved to

In the summer of 1967, after nine years at Exeter and having established the Religion Department, Buechner moved with his family to their farmhouse in Vermont to live year-round. Buechner describes their house in Now and Then:

Our house is on the eastern slope of Rupert Mountain, just off a country road, still unpaved then, and five miles from the nearest town ... Even at the most unpromising times of year – in mudtime, on bleak, snowless winter days – it is in so many unexpected ways beautiful that even after all this time I have never quite gotten used to it. I have seen other places equally beautiful in my time, but never, anywhere, have I seen one more so.^[27]

There Buechner dedicated himself full-time to writing. However, in 1968, Buechner received a letter from

Buechner died on August 15, 2022, at his home in Rupert, Vermont.^[30]

Writing

Early writing

The publication of A Long Day's Dying catapulted Buechner into early and, in his own words, "undeserved" fame. Of his debut novel, Buechner wrote:

I took the title from a passage in Paradise Lost where Adam says to Eve that their expulsion from Paradise "will prove no sudden but a slow pac'd evil,/ A Long Day's Dying to augment our pain," and with the exception of the old lady Maroo, what all the characters seem to be dying of is loneliness, emptiness, sterility, and such preoccupation with themselves and their own problems that they are unable to communicate with each other about anything that really matters to them very much. I am sure that I chose such a melancholy theme partly because it seemed effective and fashionable, but I have no doubt that, like dreams generally, it also reflected the way I felt about at least some dimension of my own life and the lives of those around me.^[31]

Conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein commented on the novel:

I have rarely been so moved by a perception. Mr. Buechner shows a remarkable insight into one of the least easily expressible tragedies of modern man; the basic incapacity of persons really to communicate with one another. That he has made this frustration manifest, in such a personal and magnetic way, and at the age of twenty-three, constitutes a literary triumph.^[32]

A Long Day's Dying continues to be one of Buechner's most successful works, both critically and commercially (it was reissued in 2003). However, his second novel, The Season's Difference, published in 1952, in Buechner's words, "fared as badly as the first one had fared well."

The publication of Buechner's third novel, The Return of Ansel Gibbs (written while on sabbatical from Union Theological Seminary) coincided with Buechner's ordination and move to Exeter, where he began to publish non-fiction.

Nonfiction and memoirs

Buechner's works of non-fiction, which cover several sub-genres including sermons, daily reflections, and

To date, Buechner's corpus of memoir includes four volumes: The Sacred Journey (1982), Now and Then (1983), Telling Secrets (1991), and The Eyes of the Heart (1999). Of all his books, The Sacred Journey and Telling Secrets consistently rank among his bestselling. Of his interest in memoir, Buechner wrote in the introduction to The Sacred Journey:

About ten years ago I gave a set of lectures at

Harvard in which I made the observation that all theology, like all fiction, is at its heart autobiography, and that what a theologian is doing essentially is examining as honestly as he can the rough-and-tumble of his own experience with all its ups and downs, its mysteries and loose ends, and expressing in logical, abstract terms the truths about human life and about God that he believes he has found implicit there. More as a novelist than as a theologian, more concretely than abstractly, I determined to try to describe my own life as evocatively and candidly as I could in the hope that such glimmers of theological truth as I believed I had glimpsed in it would shine through my description more or less on their own. It seemed to me then, and seems to me still, that if God speaks to us at all in this world, if God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks.^[34]

Concurrent with Buechner's delivery of the Noble Lectures, he developed the most significant character of his later career, Leo Bebb.

The Book of Bebb tetralogy proved to be one of Buechner's most well-known works. Published in the years from 1972 to 1977, it brought Buechner to a much wider audience, and gained him very positive reviews (Lion Country, the first book in the series, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1971). Of writing the series, Buechner says: "I had never known a man like Leo Bebb and was in most ways quite unlike him myself, but despite that, there was very little I had to do by way of consciously, purposefully inventing him. He came, unexpected and unbidden, from a part of myself no less mysterious and inaccessible than the part where dreams come from; and little by little there came with him a whole world of people and places that was as heretofore unknown to me as Bebb was himself."^[35] In this series, Buechner experimented for the first time with first-person narrative, and discovered that this, too, opened new doors. His next work, Godric, published in 1980, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The novel, a historical fiction, is written in the first person from the perspective of Saint Godric of Finchale, a 12th-century English hermit.

Brendan (1987), a work of historical fiction like Godric, draws from the life of the 6th-century

In 2001, Californian rock band Daniel Amos released a double album titled Mr. Buechner's Dream. The album contains over thirty songs and pays tribute to Frederick Buechner, "who has been a major inspiration on the band's lyrics for years."

In the words of The Reverend Samuel Lloyd, former dean of Washington National Cathedral, Buechner's words "have nurtured the lives of untold seekers and followers" through "his capacity to see into the heart of every day":^[44]

Buechner's theological efforts are never systematic treatises but instead short, highly literary productions in most of which he draws explicit links with fiction-writing generally and his own fiction in particular...Buechner's 1969 Noble Lectures at

Harvard, published in 1970 as The Alphabet of Grace, comprise a slender volume which is one of his most important and revealing works. Here the intimate relationship Buechner sees among fiction, theology, and autobiography is first made clear and fully embodied; and the book itself is a thoroughly lyrical piece.^[45]

Buechner's combination of literary style with approachable subject matter has affected contemporary Christian literature: "In my view," writes his biographer Marjorie McCoy, "Buechner is doing a distinctively new thing on the literary scene, writing novels that are theologically exciting without becoming propaganda, and doing theology with artistic style and imagination."^[46] Buechner's earliest works, written before his entrance into Union Theological Seminary, were hailed as profoundly literary works, notable for their dense, descriptive style. Of his first novel, A Long Day's Dying, David Daiches wrote: "There is a quality of civilized perception here, a sensitive and plastic handling of English prose and an ability to penetrate to the evanescent core of a human situation, all proclaiming major talent."^[47] From this promising beginning, however, it has been the application of Buechner's literary talent to theological issues that has continued to fascinate his audience:

Frederick Buechner has been one of our most interesting and least predictable writers. Others might have repeated their success or failures, but he has not. From the sophisticated urban world of that first book, through The Return of Ansel Gibbs with its world of politics and public affairs, to the private, half-haunted pastoral world of The Entrance to Porlock, he has created a series of novels of startlingly different moods and manners, people and places. The one constant has been the masterful use of great stylistic powers to organize and control his highly original and complex vision of life.^[48]

— Christopher Isherwood, USA Today

Of his more recent style, the pastor and author

I have no desire to analyze what makes Buechner's writing and preaching so extraordinary. Neither do I want to account for Bob Dylan's raspy mystique, the peculiar beauty of a rainbow trout in a riffle, or a thunderstorm's magnetic terror. I simply want to enjoy them. They all knock me out of analysis and smack me clear into pleasure and awe.^[49]

Throughout Buechner's work his hallmark as a theologian and autobiographer is his regard for the appearance of the divine in daily life. By examining the day-to-day workings of his own life, Buechner seeks to find God's hand at work, thus leading his audience by example to similar introspection. The Reverend Samuel Lloyd describes his "capacity to see into the heart of every day," an ability that reflects the significance of daily events onto the reader's life as well.^[50] In the words of the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor: "From [Buechner] I've learned that the only limit to the revelation going on all around me is my willingness to turn aside and look."^[51]

Buechner Writer's Workshop at Princeton

Inaugurated in 2008 at King University, the former King College, the Buechner Institute was dedicated to the work and example of Buechner, exploring the intersections and collisions of faith and culture that define our times.

Dale Brown, the founding director of the Buechner Institute, was the author of numerous articles and the recent critical biography, The Book of Buechner: A Journey Through His Writings.

The Buechner Institute sponsored weekly convocations in Memorial Chapel on the campus of King University that featured speakers from a variety of backgrounds who examined the ways in which faith informs art and public life and cultivate conversation about what faith has to do with books, politics, social discourse, music, visual arts, and more.

Additionally, the Buechner Institute sponsored the Annual Buechner Lecture. The following is the list of lecturers invited to speak thus far:

• 2008: Frederick Buechner (inaugural lecture)
• 2009: Barbara Brown Taylor
• 2010: Ron Hansen
• 2011: Katherine Paterson
• 2012: Marilynne Robinson
• 2013: Kathleen Norris (poet)
• 2013: Doug Worgul

A summer symposium on the work of Frederick Buechner, Buechnerfest, was featured in 2010 and 2012. Attendees from around the country spent a week of reading and entertainment on the Virginia/Tennessee border.

The work of the institute was guided by a local governing board and a national advisory board. National board members included Doris Betts, Walter Brueggemann, Scott Cairns, Michael Card, Elizabeth Dewberry, Tim Gautreaux, Philip Gulley, Ron Hansen, Roy Herron, Silas House, Richard Hughes, Thomas G. Long, Tom Lynch, Brian McLaren, Carrie Newcomer, Kathleen Norris, Katherine Paterson, Eugene H. Peterson, Charles Pollard, Barbara Brown Taylor, Will Willimon, John Wilson, Philip Yancey, Doug Worgul, and others.

In 2015, after the death of Dr. Dale Brown, founding director, and at the request of the Buechner Literary Assets, LLC, the Buechner Institute became the King Institute for Faith and Culture. The King Institute for Faith and Culture is a continuation of conversations between faith, art, and culture started by the Buechner Institute.

In the media

Buechner's work has been praised highly by many reviewers of books, with the distinct exception of his second novel, The Season's Difference, which was universally panned by critics and remains his biggest commercial flop. His later novels, including the

Bibliography

Main article: Frederick Buechner bibliography

Selected bibliography

• ISBN 978-0972429542
  )
• ISBN 9780060611743
  )
• ISBN 9780060611569
  )
• ISBN 9780062517692
  )
• ISBN 9780060611620
  )
• ISBN 9780060611835
  )
• ISBN 9780060611781
  )
• ISBN 9780060611811
  )
• Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner, 1992 (
  ISBN 9780060698645
  )
• Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, 2006 (
  ISBN 978-0-06-084248-2
  )

See also

• C. S. Lewis
• Henri Nouwen
• John Milton
• Emerging church

References

1. ^ McFadden, Robert (August 15, 2022). "Frederick Buechner, Novelist With a Religious Slant, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 15, 2022. Retrieved August 16, 2022.
2. ^ Annie Dillard Log: Blurbs Archived December 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
3. ^ The National Book Awards Winners & Finalists, Since 1950. PDF. Retrieved November 5, 2009. Archived June 20, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
4. ^ Yale Honorary Degrees Since 1702. Retrieved December 17, 2018. Archived June 1, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
5. ^ Faith Gateway: About Frederick Buechner Archived April 3, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
6. ^ Random House: The O'Henry Prize Stories Archived August 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved on December 17, 2018.
7. ^ American Academy of Arts and Lectures Archived June 24, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved on August 3, 2011.
8. ^ Buechner Institute Biography. Retrieved on August 3, 2011.
9. ^ The Nassau Herald. 1950.
10. ISBN 9780060611835
11. ^ "What You Need to Know about Frederick Buechner".
12. ISBN 9780060609368
13. ^ The Wheaton Archives Archived April 20, 2020, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved on December 17, 2018.
14. ^ Gussow, Mel (February 7, 1995). "James Merrill Is Dead at 68; Elegant Poet of Love and Loss." Archived June 29, 2018, at the Wayback Machine The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2018
15. ISBN 9780310351900
16. ^ Buechner, Frederick (1948). "Notes of the Function of Metaphor in English Poetry". Archived from the original on June 28, 2020. Retrieved June 24, 2020. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
17. ^ Reidy, Maurice Timothy (November 14, 2012). Pay Attention to Your Life Archived April 20, 2020, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 17, 2018
18. ISBN 9780060611835
19. ^ Merrill, James. A Different Person, A Memoir, Knopf, 1993, p. 62.
20. ISBN 9780310351900
21. ^ Hodges, Sam (July 19, 2008). With Current Generation of Pastors Close to Retirement, Leaders Seek Young Clergy Archived December 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
22. ISBN 9780061974533
23. ISBN 9780310351900
24. ISBN 9780061974533
25. ISBN 9780061974533
26. ISBN 9780060653293
27. ISBN 9780061974533
28. ^ Smith, L.A. (2018). Year of Reading Buechner: The Alphabet of Grace Archived December 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. The Blog of L.A. Smith. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
29. ISBN 9780061974533
30. ^ McFadden, Robert D. (August 15, 2022). "Frederick Buechner, Novelist With a Religious Slant, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 15, 2022. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
31. ISBN 9780060611835
32. ^ Buckingham Books Overview. A Long Day's Dying Archived July 25, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
33. ISBN 9780061146619
34. ISBN 9780060611835
35. ISBN 9780061974533
36. ^ "Glascock Participants by Year". Mount Holyoke College. Archived from the original on March 12, 2014. Retrieved October 16, 2015.
37. ^ "The O. Henry Prize Past Winners". Randomhouse.com. Archived from the original on September 5, 2017. Retrieved September 30, 2017.
38. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved August 17, 2022.
39. ^ "National Book Awards – 1972". National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
40. ^ "The Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes — Columbia University. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
41. ^ "Awards". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Arts and Letters Awards. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
42. ^ "Book of the Year Award". Christianity and Literature. Retrieved August 18, 2022.
43. ^ "Lifetime Achievement Award". Christianity and Literature. Retrieved August 18, 2022.
44. ^ Lloyd, Samuel(April 5, 2006). The Art of the Sermon: a Tribute to Frederick Buechner.
45. ^ Woelfel, James (October 3, 1983). "Frederick Buechner: The Novelist as Theologian." Theology Today. Vol. 40.
46. ISBN 9780060653293
47. ^ Daiches, David (January 8, 1950) New York Times Book Review.
48. ^ "Accolades". Buechner Society of Bermuda. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
49. ISBN 9780061146619
50. ^ Lloyd, Samuel (April 5, 2006). The Art of the Sermon: A Tribute to Frederick Buechner.
51. ISBN 9780990871903
52. ^ DeMott, Benjamin (December 25, 1983). "Godric." New York Times Book Review Archived December 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
53. ^ Price, Reynolds (April 11, 1982)."The Road to Devotion" Archived March 10, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
54. ^ Shapiro, Anna (March 11, 1984). "In Short" Archived April 13, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
55. ^ Holland, Cecilia (1987). Washington Post Book World.
56. ^ Barlowe, Rich (July 5, 2008). "Minister Sees Divine in Everyday Struggles" Archived September 11, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. The Boston Globe. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
57. ^ Kauffman, Richard (September 11, 2002). "Ordained to Write: An Interview with Frederick Buechner" Archived December 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 17, 2018.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Frederick Buechner.

• Frederick Buechner Center
• Buechner, part of a film made about Buechner in 2003
• A faith to live and die with | Sojourners | Find Articles at BNET, A faith to live and die with by Dale Brown
• Frederick Buechner Papers, 1926–2006 | Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections, The Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections
• The Buechner Institute at King College
• Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . PROFILE . Frederick Buechner . May 5, 2006 | PBS, Profile: Frederick Buechner
• Interview with Frederick Buechner on Dale Brown's "The Book of Buechner" by ReadTheSpirit.com
• Interview with Frederick Buechner on the gifts of aging and "Yellow Leaves" by ReadTheSpirit.com
• "The Opening of Veins", 1990 Whiting Writers' Award Keynote Speech
• Frederick Buechner at
  IMDb
• Frederick Buechner discography at Discogs