MILLICENT BELL
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instruction. But the most persuasive of modern biographies is that of
Stephen B. Oates, who, in 1970, proposed an undeified John Brown who
moved erratically towards his messianic destiny yet remained an awesome
and tragic figure.
Banks has denied that he seriously proposes any sort of historical revi–
sion-like Oliver Stone in his movie about the Kennedy assassination. He
takes no part in the battles of the historians over Brown's character and the
significance of his career. Just the same, the novelist, by the design of his
narrative, fictively positions himself among those who seek out the truth.
In an old-fashioned gesture to suggest veracity, his book presents itself as
the confession of a lone survivor, Brown's son Owen, who almost did live
long enough to be interviewed, as he claims, by one of Villard's researchers.
This fictional Owen aims to shed light on the question of his father's san–
ity and the nature of his influence over others. Above all, to make him real,
to show him as a man variously capable at many trades-a skillful subsis–
tence farmer, a tanner and a sheep raiser, a cattle trader, a wool trader, and
a land speculator-and also a Bible literalist convinced of the satanic
nature of slavery. Plausibly, he depicts Brown as a prototypically divided
American: "Much as he wished to be a warrior against slavery, he also
wished to be, like most Americans, a man of means"-and he evokes for
many pages the episodes of Brown's forays into speculations that just
missed success-like an attempt to capture the international wool market
when he took 200,000 pounds of American wool to London. Most of
these commercial efforts were failures, and Brown was pursued by angry
creditors and was the subject of suits for broken agreements for years on
end.
Banks does a good deal to provide that density of incident and descrip–
tion true history longs for but can seldom achieve in the presentation of
established facts. He extrapolates from the known to the unknown to give
us the Brown family members, especially those five sons who moved with
their father to Kansas in 1854-JohnJunior,Jason, Watson, Salmon, Oliver,
and Owen-differentiating their strongly individual personalities while
making their father's hold on them credible. Old Brown remains impene–
trable as ever, like the formidable and invariably identical photographs of
him with a fixed stare and set mouth that represent him again and again.
All we know is what has always been evident from the outside-his armor
of staggering pride and conviction.
Owen's personal account of himself is Banks's invention. As a reimag–
iner of the John Brown story Banks freely pretends, novelistically, that he
can break history's code with the sort of guesswork that may tempt the
historian at his peril-and fantasizes a secret true account only known by
this mysterious loner son, Brown's most loyal lieutenant. Unfortunately,
