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Religious Memoir Rolls On Charm

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By AL HUTCHISON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 26, 2008

"Holy Roller: Growing Up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus," by Diane Wilson (Chelsea Green Publishing, $24.95)

Given the fact it's about religion-obsessed people in a tiny Texas coastal village where most of the men eke out a meager living as shrimpers, "Holy Roller" surely qualifies as one of the most unusual books ever to come out of a Vermont-based publishing house.

In fact, it's unusual by almost any literary standard. Even its title demands a second look. The characters are mostly Pentecostal Bible-thumpers who believe they're caught in a daily struggle between Jesus and Lucifer.

Diane Wilson has written "a childhood memoir" that seems deliberately indifferent to most of the commonly accepted rules of literature, yet its stylistic eccentricity accounts for much of its charm.

And it's unlike any memoir most of us have ever read. In fact, it might be more accurate to call it a "remembrance" - and an idiosyncratic one at that. It covers only the years when the author was 9 and 10 and is presented in the manner of a girl not yet schooled in the fine art of writing. While no doubt fitting, it also is a style potentially treacherous for the inattentive reader. It requires the reader's concentration to connect all the dots (and to keep the characters sorted out correctly).

That concentration, however, is rewarded with vivid images of very poor and extremely devout people with low here-on-Earth expectations struggling to cope with life's trials and tribulations.

The most interesting struggle is the author's quest to find a place of comfort somewhere between the suffocating religiosity of her elders and the pleasures of life that are so tempting and so within reach. Her imaginary relationship with movie actor Anthony Perkins underscores the tensions that threaten to pull her away from the church, but at what price?

Some of Wilson's passages give her book a special (and very salty) flavor that conveys a strong sense of the unusual community culture that so thoroughly dominated her childhood. Early on, for example, she describes how her father found religion: "Daddy went nuts for Jesus. He couldn't wait to get born again in the Church of Jesus Loves You. He couldn't wait to get anointed by the Holy Spirit, confess his sins, and get baptized at the bay with Grandma and her four girls and all the church watching. Overnight he became a changed man and swallowed the whole line of social sins: tobacco in all its forms, secret societies like Masons, life insurance, doctors, medicine, liquor, dance halls, theaters, movies, Coca-Cola, public swimming, professional sports, beauty parlors, jewelry, church bazaars, Christmas trees, and the entire idea of Halloween."

In "Holy Roller," there's occasional violence and a constant and casual contempt for the law. The state capital, Austin, is far away, and even the sheriff is seldom a presence. Into this legal vacuum, the game wardens become the supreme authority. Or maybe it's the rival preacher who employs an army of snakes to keep his fear-filled flock on its collective toes.

In the final analysis, "Holy Roller" is a testament to the effects of poverty and blind faith on people who know very little else.

Al Hutchison is a freelance writer living in Citrus County.

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