Symbolic Jawbone | Glenna Wood, The Jawbone of an Ass

To pass public judgment upon a work after a relatively cursory perusal seems, at best, a bit unfair, for each work, to the author, is more than the final product; and perhaps the reader can only comprehend and appreciate a given work after he too has partaken of some of the anguish that lies behind the final publication. Unfortunately, such empathetic participation is impossible, and author and reader are forced to view a work from separate vantage points. 

Then, too, regardless of the ease or the difficulty of the artistic birth process, a book is written to be read. In the final analysis, it is only the reading that really counts. No matter what the author’s intentions, the real question always is, how does the book reach the reader? Is it stimulating and convincing? Does it have within it an elan that makes the reading an important part of the reader’s life? Only when a book meets these requirements can it be considered successful. There are a few books that come very close to being completely successful. Many books fail utterly. Most books—good books—both fail and succeed. 

Such is the case with Glena Wood’s The Jawbone of an Ass. As the author herself admits, the book was doomed to partial failure at the outset because she had tried to do too much, to cover too much ground. Ms. Wood makes the reader conscious of too much history and geography and theology and psychology and symbolism and sociology and so on and so on. Her effort and desire are more than praiseworthy: surely we have too many Mormon authors who are content to tell little homelitic tales in saccarin prose, and it is refreshing to find a writer like Ms. Wood who wants to produce something of greater emotional, artistic, and intellectual significance. She warns the reader of her intent at the outset: the title page of the novel reads: The Jawbone of an Ass: A Symbolic Novel with an Historical Setting. I would have been happier had it read (and had the novel followed this pattern): The Jawbone of an Ass—A Story with Symbolic and Historical Overtones. In other words, I think that the symbolism and history and theology and all other such things that Ms. Wood brings into the novel too often get in the way of a basically good story. The plot, the characterization, the action all suffer in varying degrees because they seem to be dependent upon a symbolic and historic core rather than vice versa. In my opinion, these intellectual elements were naturally—even unavoidably—a part of the story Ms. Wood had to tell, and she did not need to raise them to the dominance that she did. After all, a novel set in a Mormon colony in Arizona at the end of the last century, a novel which deals with the inner and outer conflicts of a young girl struggling to adjust her life and conscience to the conflicting demands and attractions of her religion, her acting career, and her gentile boyfriend could hardly avoid these intellectual questions. But they could have been presented in a lower key, in a lesser light, if you please, and they would then have fused with the story more happily. 

Do I mean, then, that Ms. Wood’s novel is a fiasco? By no means. But it would have been better had the author not made the reader so constantly and bluntly aware of the symbolism and history. Perhaps there are other readers who will welcome the aid that this emphasis offers. If so, then Ms. Wood has accomplished her task better than I have judged. 

In spite of my objection to the structure of the book, I find The Jawbone of an Ass an interesting novel. For a first novel it is a remarkably ambitious effort. What pleases me most, however, is not the novel itself, but what it is leading to, for Ms. Wood excitedly claims that writing it taught her a great deal about technique and that in her forthcoming sequels (The Jawbone of an Ass is really volume one of a tetralogy) she has narrowed her scope a great deal and focused more intensely on characterization and events. It seems to me that that approach can only make for a more thoroughly successful product next time.

The Jawbone of an Ass. By Glenna Wood, New York: Vantage Press, 1970. 396 pp. $6.50.