Godric by Frederick Buechner was first published in 1980 by Atheneum, and was a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize, that notwithstanding, when I looked for it on The Greatest Books of All Time site, the algorithm presents it, only without a rank, either it is floating somewhere above the likes of The Stranger, Ulysses, or, more likely, it is so bad for the GOAT they did not bother to assign it to, I don’t know, the 23453rd place- you may want to visit my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Godric by Frederick Buechner was first published in 1980 by Atheneum, and was a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize, that notwithstanding, when I looked for it on The Greatest Books of All Time site, the algorithm presents it, only without a rank, either it is floating somewhere above the likes of The Stranger, Ulysses, or, more likely, it is so bad for the GOAT they did not bother to assign it to, I don’t know, the 23453rd place- you may want to visit my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

6 out of 10

 

Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html is my favorite author, the absolute Magister Ludi aka Master of The Game (which comes from Glasperlenspiel by Herman Hesse, yet another Magister) and he had some poignant commentary on writing:

 

‘Any decent writer sees his first concern as the rendering of what he takes to be permanent in human nature, and this holds true no matter how 'contemporary' his material…reading is a sort of social experience, in the sense that it is like having somebody talk to you’ so let us apply this to Godric and Frederick Buechner

In my case, I was not happy with what I see as complicated, archaic style – I could be dead wrong, maybe it is in fact postmodern, it is just that I could not follow it, or else, take pleasure in a flowing ‘conversation’- https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi.html this is a wonderful book

 

Flow looks at the elements necessary for the state of Maximum, Peak Experience and they are- you are in control, nothing else matters, it is autotelic, there are clear meaningful goals, you are between boredom and burnout, time is relative, just as Einstein demonstrated, and then feedback is continuous and instant

I like to see if these check for the books I read, especially when there are doubts, or the inclination to ‘abandon ship’, which is alas, the case here, where it is not pleasurable, I am not in control, for I do not get it, and now this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/to-hermitage-by-malcolm-bradbury-author.html

 

Time is relative, is explained by Einstein for the hoi polloi by comparing the feeling of putting the hand on a hot stove and being with a nice woman, the former feels an eternity, while the latter has time passing by as if there are only seconds, with Godric, it would be such a slow, I am tempted to say torture, but that would be too much

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life. As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality. Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author’ such a wonderful paragraph, and the lesson is to look for the advantages of fiction, do we find them in Godric, if you ask me, the answer is no, although Newsweek says "From the book's opening sentence...any sensible reader will be caught in Godric's grip...Godric glimmers brightly."

 

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