A New Masterpiece from National Book Award and PEN-Faulkner Award Finalist Hugh Nissenson

The Pilgrim (Sourcebooks Landmark; November 8) is a gripping account of a love-torn Puritan's spiritual struggle for redemption, the finding of an unforgettable romantic love, and his never ending battle to overcome the burden of sin.

Charles Wentworth, a heart broken Puritan, comes to the New World from England in 1622 in search of salvation and a new beginning. After the tragic death of his betrothed, Charles abandons his faith and revels in lust until his guilt finally overwhelms him. Now he must travel to Plymouth in hopes of being freed of the temptations that torment him.

On his journey Charles falls in love again, this time with a young woman seeking the pious life. In Plymouth, they must overcome a world in which wolves and heathen Indians roam the dark forests, and famine and disease are ever-present threats.

The Pilgrim is a novel of the Puritan world from one of America's greatest living writers. Critics have called Nissenson's writing "exuberant", as well as "moving and thought-provoking."
Nissenson is the author of eight books, including The Days of Awe. His previous novel, The Tree of Life, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN-Faulkner Award. He lives in New York City.

A CONVERSATION WITH HUGH NISSENSON

Q. Your first novel, My Own Ground, concerns a community of Jewish immigrants living on the Lower East Side of New York during the early years of the 20th century. Your second novel, The Tree of Life, takes place on the Ohio frontier during the War of 1812. Both of these books are set during periods of heightened importance in the development of America. After writing The Song of the Earth, which is set in the future, and Days of Awe, which is essentially contemporary, why were you drawn back to American past with The Pilgrim?

A. I've had a life-long fascination with American history, and all my novels explore the American experience in one way or another. As a Jew, I'm fascinated by the continuing importance of the Old Testament in the articulation of our national identity, so in a way, it's no surprise that I would eventually turn to the very beginning of that association. The Separatists who came to the New World (they did not like to be called Puritans) were obsessed with Scripture and considered themselves the Chosen People. I was inevitably drawn.

Q. In The Pilgrim, like several of your previous books, your protagonist lives in a community that is threatened by a hostile environment. What fascinates you about that situation?

A. When I was a young man, I spent several years getting to know a community of pioneers on a kibbutz in the northern part of Israel. It was a formative experience that continues to engage my imagination. I'm attracted to stories about people whose strong belief in the rightness of their cause enables them to create a viable community in an inhospitable wilderness and contribute to the foundation myths of their respective nations.

Q. What was the specific genesis of The Pilgrim?

A. Years ago I read an account of the hanging at Wessagusset, and it stuck in my mind as a perfect example of the fact that even the most valiant attempts by decent God-fearing people to lead a sinless or blameless life are doomed to failure because of accidents of fate or human fraility.

Q. How do you proceed with an historical work?

A. As I began to flesh out the book in my imagination–as I created Charles Wentworth and then his family and friends and the community of Separatists in England and the New World–I needed to have a direct experience of as much of their universe as I could. I bought books, maps, and copied hundreds of pages of documents– many of which eventually turned out to be irrelevant to the book itself, but all of which helped me immerse the period.

I traveled to England–to Dorchester, specifically, which had been home to a thriving Separatist community, to Emmanuel College at Cambridge, and to London. Even though there are very few actual sites that remain from the 16th or 17th centuries, the visits helped me visualize that world and time.

I also sought the help of scholars–both professionals and amateurs–who led me to sources I didn't know about, answered my thousands of questions and caught–I hope–most of my errors in my early drafts.

Q. The book is written in the first person. How did you create Charles Wentworth's voice?

A. Again, I began by reading. Plays, tracts, the King James Bible, anything that diverted the music in my brain from its normal contemporary melodies. Even if I'd been able to do it, I had no intention of actually reproducing the language of the early 17th century. My goal was to give the illusion of a text written by an Englishman writing in that period. As I got under way, it became surprisingly easy–I frequently found myself automatically choosing words and phrases that had an archaic feeling without being obscure or misleading.

And I did strive for accuracy. I relied on the Oxford English Dictionary to eliminate anachronisms as much as possible.

Q. You make a point that the Separatists read the Geneva Bible rather than the King James translation. What is the difference? And why did they prefer it?

A. William Tyndale made the first English translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek originals in the 1520s. For his pains, he was imprisoned by English authorities and burned at the stake in 1536.

In the 1550s, a group of English scholars who had fled to Geneva prepared what was billed as yet another new translation, but which drew largely on the work of Tyndale. This Geneva Bible, as it was known, was the version known to Shakespeare, Milton, and Donne, among others. But because it incorporated annotations by Calvin and his followers, it offended the orthodox Church of England clerics who surrounded King James I of England.

The translation they commissioned, which varied only slightly from the Geneva text and was also largely dependent on Tyndale, was published in 1611 and was the only text sanctioned by the official Church. The Separatists claimed it was too "Popish"–too close to the translation used by the Church of Rome–and they continued to read the Geneva Bible, risking punishment if they were caught.

Q. Talk about the relationship between the English settlers and their Native American neighbors.

A. It was a tragedy. The native tribes had had contact with European traders for several decades, but nothing prepared them for the arrival of people who intended to plant permanent settlements in the New World and who brought a completely different understanding of property, morality, and, above all, religion. The settlers believed that the pagan Indians worshiped demons and were, therefore, demonic savages themselves. In essence, they considered them less than fully human.
Later there was an effort to convert the Indians to Christianity. In the nineteenth century, some Americans like Fenimore Cooper glorified them as a version of Rousseaus's noble savages. This effort was revived recently, notably by those who argue that the Indians were proto-ecologists.

But to get back to the characters in my book. Abigail's terror and hatred of the Indians was the prevailing point of view. Charles is a bit more sympathetic to them because his interest in their languages requires that he examine their lives a bit more closely than his fellow settlers. But overall he shared the common prejudices.

Q. Could you discuss the doctrine of Predestination which so obsesses Charles, his loved ones and the founding members of the Plymouth colony?

A. The notion of predestination was first suggested by St. Augustine and was fully articulated during the mid-16th century by John Calvin in Geneva. The doctrine holds that God determined before the beginning of time who would be damned and who would be saved. It swept through the Protestant communities of Europe. And the first settlers in Massachusetts, both in Plymouth and in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, brought it to America.

The anxiety and the need for constant self-examination that the doctrine imposed on believers was ultimately intolerable. There is evidence, that as early as the 1620s, some Separatists were already questioning the veracity of the doctrine, and within a few generations, it was either abandoned or watered down considerably. But its impact on those first settlers and, through them, on the subsequent religious, intellectual, and cultural history of this country was crucial.

Charles Wentworth comes in the end to believe that forgiveness engenders salvation. He is something of a prophet. His new belief prefigures the next development the next development of American Protestant religious thought.

Q. You created a series of poems which you ascribe to Charles. You've often ascribed poetry you've written to characters in your novels. Can you discuss this?

A. In my late twenties, I read the English translation of Boris Pasternak's novel, Dr. Zhivago. I was inspired by the fact that Pasternak included a body of verse, allegedly by Zhivago, at the end of the book. The innovation fascinated me.

Years later, while writing my first novel, My Own Ground, I wrote a lyric which I integrated into the text. In my second novel, The Tree of Life, I wrote many poems which are attributed to the narrator. In subsequent novels, I continued to compose poems as a function of narrative. And in one book, The Song of the Earth, I created a body of forty-seven paintings, sculptures, and drawings, ostensibly by the main character, which are embedded in the text.

Poems and visual images have given me a new means to dramatize both narrative and character in my work.