Journeys toward Hope: The Quest of Delbanco's The Real American Dream in the Autobiographical Writings of Anne Lamott and Kathleen Norris

CONCLUDING HIS MEDITATION ON HOPE, Andrew Delbanco reasserts "that the most striking feature of contemporary culture is the unslaked craving for transcendence." ¹ In his next sentence, however, he amends this by telling his readers "[t]o this claim, it might be objected that we are witnessing resurgent orthodoxy among Christians" (Real 114). This implies that perhaps in some way this "resurgent orthodoxy among Christians" could slake that craving for transcendence. Earlier, he quoted Alexis de Tocqueville on religion, that it is "as natural to the human heart as hope itself" (Real 116). Tocqueville continues that "[i]t is by a sort of intellectual aberration, and in a way, by doing moral violence to their own nature, that men detach themselves from religious beliefs; an invincible inclination draws them back" (Real 116). Indeed, according to The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, that is exactly what Americans have done, "detached themselves from religious beliefs" even while continuing the quest for hope and transcendence. Consequently, Delbanco reasons that "some kind of faith will reemerge. The question is, What will it be?" (Real 116). In preempting an objection to his claim, Delbanco may well have answered his own question. In at least two recent autobiographical works, those of Anne Lamott and Kathleen Norris, the protagonists have searched for transcendence, as if mirroring Delbanco's description of the course of our nation, and fulfilled Tocqueville's prophetic projection. Their narratives are also reminiscent of the first spiritual autobiography, The Confessions of St. Augustine, especially in the circular nature of their spiritual journeys and their emphasis on their relationship with Christ as a very present and active force in their narratives.

Both contemporary autobiographers move from a rejection of the institutionalized Christianity of their youth, through the melancholy and hopelessness such a rejection generates, to a faith that, as Norris describes, "does not conform itself to ideology but to experience." ² Like Augustine before them, both Lamott and Norris have returned to the Christianity of their youth and have discovered that in it which is transcendent: Christ himself. Norris writes that "[i]t is this faith in Christ as a living person that is most inexplicable outside of the experience of faith . . . . As a faith in a living person, it retains the freedom to continually renew itself in ancient words and rituals that the sophisticated secular mentality considers exhausted, all but dead" (Amazing 4-5).

One might ask, having read through Delbanco's record of failed avenues to hope, why anyone would return to the first of those: God. Perhaps the answer is embedded in Toqueville's earlier hypothesis that "an invincible inclination draws them back." Interestingly enough, Augustine, in his Confessions, describes this in terms of the cor inquietum, the restless heart. Addressing God, he writes that "our heart is restless till it finds rest in you." ³ The nature of that "inclination" or that "restlessness" is paramount. I think that both Lamott and Norris have described that "invincible inclination," in their own narratives, as the person of Christ. It is through this person Christ that both of them have found that transcendence for which Delbanco states we all have this "unslaked craving." And they are chastised for seeking this transcendence in an area that has already been tried and rejected: Christianity.

As an interesting side note, none of these recent autobiographies title themselves as explicitly Christian, although several of them are highly concerned with Christianity and most delve into it almost exclusively: Lamott's Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith; Norris's Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, The Cloister Walk, and Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. Each title, while pointing toward spirituality in general, does not mention...