“The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham” by Robert Hudson

A friend who had worked in academia before joining the corporate world once told me what a relief corporate politics was after university life.  

“A relief?” I said, somewhat shocked. Our workplace politics was not known for being benign.

 

He nodded. “It’s worse in academia. The smaller the pie, the more vicious the politics.”

 

That exchange happened more than 40 years ago, but I was reminded of it while reading the new novel by Robert Hudson. Novels about academic life aren’t my favorite genre of fiction, but if more of them were written like this one, I could easily change my mind.

 

Hudson’s The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham is simultaneously one of the funniest and thought-provoking novels I’ve read this year. It’s also disquieting, especially when you begin to see some of yourself in a few of the characters – and they’re not necessarily the characters you want to identify with.

 

Martin Bonham is chair of the English Department at Cupperton University, a small religious / liberal arts college in an unnamed region of the United States, possibly the Midwest. Cupperton also has an associated seminary and theology school, chaired by the Rev. Dr. Cornelius C. Dunwoody, who considers the seminary the final word on all things theological. 

 

The “trouble,” if one can call it that, is when a seminary student named Katie Westcott brings her troubled soul to Dr. Bonham. She doesn’t feel God in her life, she says. She doesn’t love him. She’s not angry at him. She’s simply not experiencing him in any way in her life. And this is not a concern she can bring to her seminary professors.

 

Robert Hudson

Katie’s question leads to a brainstorm. Theology is all about the knowledge of God. What if, Bonham wonders, they could create an interdisciplinary department that would be all about the love of God? They could call it the Department of Theophily, a complimentary enterprise to the School of Theology. The lecturers could be drawn from the staff of the liberal arts and sciences in the university. 

 

Bonham and Katie map the plan, submit it, guide it through the university’s approval system, and with a few strokes of good fortune, get their new department approved. That approval, however, has not been without the staunch opposition of one Dr. Dunwoody, who doesn’t see the new venture as complementary but as competitive. Not content to lick his wounds in academic defeat, Dr. Dunwoody goes to war. And Dr. Bonham, for his part, rises to the challenge.

 

What ensues is a series of one-upsmanships, prank following prank following counter-prank. Neither Bonham nor Dunwoody are prepared to call a truce, and the reader (or this reader) rather hoped the war would go on forever. It is that funny and entertaining. But, of course and unfortunately, it can’t. Something or someone will have to give, or yield.

 

What Hudson is depicting in fictional form is an age-old battle within the church told within an academic setting. Both men (and viewpoints) are right. And both are wrong.

 

Hudson has published 12 previous books, including Seeing Jesus: Visionary Encounters from the First Century to the Present, The Poet and the Fly: Art, Nature, God, Mortality, and Other Elusive Mysteries; Kiss the Earth When You Pray: The Father Zosima Poems; The Monk’s Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966; The Art of the Almost Said: A Christian Writer’s Guide to Writing Poetry; Beyond Belief: What Martyrs Said to God; and Thomas Dekker’s Four Birds of Noah’s Ark: A Prayer Book from the Time of Shakespeare. His articles and poetry have been published by Christianity Today, The Other Side, The Mennonite, The Seneca Review, Mars Hill Review, and other magazines and literary journals. He lives in Michigan.

 

The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham will have you smiling, laughing, and occasionally frowning in recognition (“Hey, wait a minute, that’s a little too close for comfort”). It’s something of an achievement by an author when a reader recognizes something of himself in both the protagonist and the villain, but Hudson adroitly pulls it off. 

 

Note: The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham will be published Nov. 14. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon.

 

Related: 

 

Robert Hudson Explains the House Fly – and Poetry. 

 

Seeing Jesus by Robert Hudson.

 

Robert Hudson: What Thomas Merton Had on His Record Player.

Some Monday Readings

Louise Gluck, Nobel-winning poet of terse and candid lyricism, has died at 80 -- Associated Press.

Saving St. Louis One Block at a Time – Rachel Ferguson at Acton Institute.

 

It can happen at Harvard: Hamas is inside the gates of American campuses – William Jacobson at The Spectator.

 

Ed Gray’s Innocence & Experience – Spitalfields Life.

 

In defense of the Dark Ages – Samuel Rubinstein at The Critic Magazine.

Poetry Prompt: Beginning "Ab Obo" or "From the Egg" -- Tweetspeak Poetry.