The familiar story is told ‘through the eyes of a child, now an old man, who lived it’,[1] as Jacob recalls his own sense of fear, sadness, and revulsion at his father’s weeping as he relays the tale of his suffering.
Jacob further remembers attending Isaac’s rituals as a child, entering into a murky and airless tent with him, there to watch his father communicate with The Fear with much wailing and self-flagellation.
Isaac’s shame at having told this lie sees him retreat further into himself, and, as his health begins to fail, the scene is set for Jacob’s great crime: the theft of Esau’s birth right.
Having outstayed their welcome, the family retreat from Gerar, and, as Isaac’s trauma takes further hold of him, Rebekah begins to quietly encourage her son to fool his father into giving over Esau’s promised inheritance.
[2] The subsequent flight to the house of Laban in Mesopotamia, and the startling vision of a heavenly ladder on the way, are vividly recounted by the old man, as he recalls his slow journey across the years back toward The Fear, and his decision to renounce all household gods in favour of the deity who has haunted and blessed his father and grandfather before him.
Jacob’s grief is compounded by justice meted out by The Fear, who first takes Rebekah’s aged nursemaid, Deborah, then Rachel, as she gives birth to her second son, Benjamin.
In his autobiographical work, Now and Then (1983), Buechner recalls the beginning of his fascination with the Old Testament figure of Jacob in a class taught by James Muilenberg at Union Theological Seminary, New York.
[7] Buechner writes that this process informed his view, expressed most clearly in The Son of Laughter, that 'the Bible is not essentially, as I had always more or less supposed, a book of ethical principles, of moral exhortations, of cautionary tales about exemplary people, of uplifting thoughts-in fact'.
He continues: 'I don't think it was so much my words that held them as it was just the haunting power of the biblical narrative itself-the stranger leaping out of the darkness, the struggle by the river bank, the strangled cry for blessing.
In Secrets in the Dark, the author further reveals that this sermon delivered at Phillips Exeter Academy, and his subsequent meditations in Peculiar Treasures, became the source for his novel on the Genesis narrative.
As such, there is a greater sense of discovery in the prose, which brings a sharpness to all the thematic expressions most commonly found within the Buechner corpus: doubt, grief, joy, anger, gratitude, and mystery.
Lore Dickstein, writing in the New York Times, wondered if The Son of Laughter might best be characterised as a 'novelization' [],[15] while James Cooke, in his review for Perspectives, called the novel a ‘flesh-and-blood portrait’.
Linda-Marie Delloff found that the author had an ear for the 'likely sounds of speech from a distant time and place',[21] while Irving Malin, in his review written for Commonweal, argued that Buechner's use of 'simple sentences' enabled him to effectively 'mirror the Hebraic style'.
[24] Annie Dillard offered the further comment that the novel exuded 'profound intelligence’: ‘it displays and illuminates the seemingly unrelated mysteries of human character and ultimate ideas'.
Irving Malin claimed that Buechner is 'at least as important as Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy',[28] while John Bookser Feister wrote in the National Catholic Reporter that the author belonged in the 'literary majors', and that his latest work was a 'masterpiece',[29] a conclusion also reached by Douglas Auchincloss, who likewise labelled The Son of Laughter a 'masterpiece' in a review featured in Parabola.
[30] Dale Brown notes that the novel ‘was honoured as the Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature, a group that had awarded Buechner its Belles Lettres prize in 1987’.