The Spirit and the Flesh by Pearl S. Buck

I recently came across an old copy of the above named book and have spent the last few Sundays (about the only time I get to read nowadays) reading it. I initially dipped into it casually but then became more and more absorbed. The book is a compilation of two novellas written by Buck. They are thinly described semi-fictionalized portrayals of her parents who were Presbyterian missionaries in China for most of their adult lives. Buck explains in the preface that she wrote “The Exile” (about her mother) first as a kind of life history for her children who never knew their grandmother. She goes on to say that after people read it they came away disliking her father ( who is best described as a very religious man without a whole lot of compassion for others). To counter that a bit, she wrote a portrayal of her father called “Fighting Angel.” The two were then combined into the one book “The Spirit and the Flesh”. Wisely, “Fighting Angel” comes first and then “The Exile.” Wisely, because Buck plays very fair with both her parents: not afraid to describe their weaknesses but also their strengths. I was glad to have read “Fighting Angel” first because despite the fact that Buck doesn’t really pull any punches in describing her father’s rigid way of looking at and interacting with the world, you still come away with the impression that she loved her father despite his deficits as a husband and parent. I’ve pulled a couple of quotes from the book below:

Conversion does not really change the needy human heart.

I know–I know how hard it is to be good–especially when no answer comes and one goes on waiting in the dark.

The reason I describe this book here is twofold: first, the missionary experiences described by the couple, despite being carried out in the context of another religion, reminded me strongly of some of my own missionary experiences. Second, the two stories seem to me representative of the way that life histories should be written: honest while still honoring the person who is the subject. Of course, we can’t all write as well as Buck but it does set a standard that we could aspire to. It’s a nice change from the rather sanitized stories we sometimes hear in the context of the Church.