Henderson the Rain King

Sorry to keep you waiting so long for a post, Lebron, but I knew you were in Vegas indulging yourself, and I didn’t think you’d make the time to read, so I cozied up to a book in a way slightly different from the way you allegedly cozy up to waitresses. Before you proceed any further, Lebron, I have two words for you regarding waitresses and hostesses and other ambitious young women: Tiger Woods.

So I started Henderson the Rain King, and I have to be honest, I had a hard time liking it. But given that you call yourself a King, I thought it would give us something to talk about. About 80 pages into it I decided that come heck or high water I would finish it, that I would approach the experience the way a diligent student might approach being assigned a book she didn’t like. So I plugged away at it.

The problem was the narrator, the eponymous Henderson. He’s not really very likeable, and if you’ve read my other book-based posts, you know that I need to find something redeeming in a character in order to like the character. Henderson’s problem is that he’s an asshole. He’s a button pusher incapable of resisting his impulses.

There are mitigating factors, however, in his assholity. He’s very aware of himself, very knowledgeable and very passionate, not just in feeling but in action. So he is prone to debate his impulses with an awareness of the effect his actions would have on other people, realize what harm might happen, decide to do the right thing and then, without fail, give in to the initial impulse. He absorbs himself in his passions to the point of ignoring everyone around him. On those rare occasions when he parents his children, he doesn’t quite understand why they don’t respond to him as he thinks they should.

When you take this lack of consideration of others, and you combine it with his physical size and presence, you create a picture of a bully, but one who can explain himself, one who is aware of just how much of a bully he is. Given that we are defined by what we do, and not what our intentions are, or what our regrets are, Henderson is thus defined by the pejorative above.

But I’m glad I kept going, because now I have some momentum that I think can push me through the last one hundred pages in a day or two. Where got I this momentum? Funny you should ask. I got it from the themes, and for some reason, from the allusions. I’ve written and talked a lot about how people need someone to provide a way in to those works they feel excluded from, and Saul Bellow gave me that way in through Oedipus and Hamlet. Before I go there, I should mention that some of Henderson’s reflections on solitude kept me going when I was at my furthest remove from the book; I thought that fate might have picked out this book for me as a follow-up to One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Anyway, Henderson finally undertakes his journey into the deepest parts of Africa, and much of what he thinks and notices echoes Marlow’s observations in Heart of Darkness. I probably should have mentioned that in the preceding paragraph. And Henderson makes clear that his physical journey is really a journey within, a journey that is going to explain the Truth to him so he can overpower the “I want, I want” that drives him to his boorish behavior. He is as much a wanderer as Oedipus, seeking to avoid a life fated for him at home, and he, after one comic failure, does for the Wariri what Oedipus did for Thebes. The comparison isn’t mine; Bellow has Henderson consider himself in the role of Oedipus at Colonnus at the end of the trilogy. The Wariri believe that Fate brought Henderson to them at their moment of need.

Like Hamlet, Henderson is full of every sin that has a name. He takes all the taints and blames Hamlet places on himself in his “You should not have believed me” speech to Ophelia, and he makes those things his own. But as he journeys, he has an epiphany about the difference between Becoming and Being. He considers himself to be Becoming, and believes that that’s why he’s so awkward, so uncomfortable in his own skin. I folded over the page in which Henderson reflects on this distinction, and I hope I’ll find the time to transcribe it.

Found it! Here it is. Not only does Bellow use language directly from the play, but he also attaches it directly to a key theme in both texts: whether or not our free will is powerful enough to make us who we want to be. And so, in the moment when Henderson seeks permission to move the immoveable Mummah, he says to Dahfu:

“I’m a pretty good judge of men and you are a fine one. And from you I can take it. Besides, truth is truth. Confidentially, I have envied flies, too. All the more reason to crash out of prison.
Right? If I had the mental constitution to live inside the nutshell and think myself the king of infinite space, that would be just fine. But that’s not how I am. King, I am a Becomer. Now you see your situation is different. You are a Be-er. I’ve just got to stop Becoming. Jesus Christ, when am I going to Be? I have waited a hell of a long time. I suppose I should be more patient, but for God’s sake, Your Highness, you’ve got to understand what it’s like with me. “  (191)

Part of Henderson's solitude is that he feels alone everywhere, and he feels alone everywhere. To Henderson, Civilization is a prison.

So now we’re a little over 200 pages into the book, and instead of trying to empathize with a character I don’t particularly care for, I’m reading for an understanding of the themes that occupy so much of literature: fate v. free will, belonging and unbelonging, the power of the journey. The next time you read, Lebron, I may have some specific things to say about those things, provided I don’t leave the book in the poolbag in the car and decide I don’t want to run outside to get it. Or, I might write about my trip last weekend to America’s Hometown, and a reflection on family.

Now, however, I better get up to the pool so my children aren’t running ragged and unsupervised. Perhaps I’ll take Mr. Laptop with me. Later.