1989 Ben's Wayne

1989  Ben’s Wayne. Origins, main characters, time period, seven elements; sent to New York publishers, Good Books publishing, family reaction, John A. Hostetler response, American Booksellers Association (ABA), reviews, Holmes County Amish, Hannah spelling finalist, running for Southmoreland School Board.

   

In interviews after Ben’s Wayne was published, I said that it was ten years in the making, but the ideas came even earlier. In my files is a 1973 Kingview Mennonite Church bulletin with notes on the structure and characters of what was called “the Amish novel.” I’m sure that name came from an earlier manuscript which I called “a Puerto Rican novel,” The latter I showed to Herald Press which chose not publish it, and I remember some conversation with then editor Ellrose Zook that I may try an Amish based novel. Herald Press had been publishing the Clara Bernice Miller novels and had also ventured into a short-lived publication of Jonathan (1973). At that point I was thinking of having the novel in a World War I or II Conscientious Objector (CO) camp setting. The project took on greater meaning during the Bowling Green graduate school year of 1974-75; I would have more time to write.  I worked on some basic plot episodes and characters; I also took a fiction writing workshop from the Master of Fine Arts program. After I wrote these episodes, I often marked along paragraphs in the margin “show don’t tell.” These chapters drew from my growing up years such as a winter fox hunt, a cigarette smoke, the threshing ring, a ministerial visit, and young people’s courtship.

By 1975, some of the main characters were outlined, and I wrote their descriptions to guide me throughout the story. The main character would be a young eighteen-year old Amish youth whom I called Wayne Weaver; the naming was a mistake because of the historical Wayne Weaver, son of Monroe and Elizabeth Weaver west of Holmesville whom I admired and may have been in back of my mind. Still, I was not trying to describe this Wayne M. Weaver who for many years was a physician in Millersburg and later wrote his own memoirs, Dust Between My Toes: An Amish Boy's Journey (1997). No, the fictional Wayne Weaver was closer to home; he was my own alter ego, a personal imaginative construct of what my life might have been like if my parents and family had remained in the Amish church. I also decided on my own version of the anti-hero then in vogue in the arts; whatever excitement and unusual feats the main character would exhibit, he would live within the norms of his Amish culture and church. This heroic definition was intended to honor the quotidian life of person in a close community rather than a   Huckleberry Finn who heads down the river or a defeated young woman at the end of Tillie A Mennonite Maid.

Also, by this time, I decided on a one year span from the summer 1959 to summer June 1960 with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees in the World Series and the Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy presidential election in the cultural background. By 1978 my brother David sent me the price the Holmesville cheese house would have paid for milk for accuracy, and one time when I was in Cleveland visiting my brother James, I went to the Plain Dealer newspaper archives and looked through old issues from the Fall and Winter of 1959-60.

By 1979 under the title “As the Twig is Bent,” the basic story and themes were in place. Throughout my journal for the next ten years are scattered notes of my re-working on this novel which became Ben’s Wayne. So what were some of the basic elements of this novel ten years before Ben’s Wayne was published, admittedly some of this reflection may also be looking back after two decades.

First of all, I wanted it to be a coming of age story, a year in the life of a young 18-year-old person. I think two books especially fascinated me from my early years which served as models; the one was The Learning Tree (1963) by Gordon Parks which I read soon after it was published. The other I had read in college, Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison, both I thought were fierce but tender stories of black youth achieving a voice and telling a story from within a minority community in America. The second element was a love story which ends in tragedy but none the less a romantic love of two young people Wayne and Anna; their romantic life and Anna’s death were purely an imaginative construct in my telling. Third, I wanted this novel to have some authenticity regarding a testosterone-laden young man’s fascination with sexuality. I probably had read too many John Updike novels and the biblical Song of Songs, and it all looks different as I finish my sixth decade as an old grandfather. Still, I confess that the novel’s sexual themes were fairly boiler plate realities for my teen years.

Fourth, I wanted to explore mental health and mental illness issues of young boys (especially story’s pre-adolescent boys named Aden, Raymond and Matthew). Whether my own family and my Holmes county community had greater or lesser degrees of mental health issues than other family and community systems, I do not know. What I do know is that like sexuality, mental health, insanity and retardation were an important part of my growing up awareness—even though I also grew up in a high achieving mentally gifted family.  Fifth, I wanted this novel to be an authentic Amish story, an attempt to be fair sociologically and historically to how the Holmes County Amish lived in the late fifties and early sixties; not that the characters are ideal Amish prototypes, but that the characters and community descriptions are plausible and have a ring of authenticity.

Sixth, I wanted it to be a Christian story in that the characters in the story own (consciously or intuitively) the basic elements of the Amish Christian faith and have some conversation with other Christian traditions. This was where I needed an outsider, and I constructed a friendly Quaker student visitor; I had in mind a Gertrude Huntington type who lived among my relatives near Sugarcreek in the early fifties, even though the Malcolm is a fictitious construct. The other less friendly outsider is Wayne’s brother Roy who has departed from Amish Christianity of his family and becomes another foil for the remaining Amish faithful. Finally, during all these years, I called it a pastoral novel because my attempt was to situate it among healthy rustic characters and setting. I was always fascinated by the Shakespeare plays of kings and queens and court life, but some of the most gracious and virtuous scenes were when these characters find themselves in a pastoral setting among virtuous shepherds and goatherds.

In 1979 and 1980 I sent a sample chapter to a dozen New York publishers such as Simon and Schuster, Harper and Row, and Charles Scribner’s Sons. Although some expressed interest, all were ultimately negative. I did a revision of what I called now called “For They Shall Inherit the Earth” but then I put it aside and we left for Venezuela. By the mid-eighties our friends Merle and Phyllis Good of Good Books were expanding their titles to include fiction, having published Sara Stambaugh’s novel I hear the Reaper’s Song. After we returned from Venezuela in September of 1984, I gave them a copy and met with Merle and Phyllis and Melanie Zuercher one day at the Hershey Lodge. They gave many suggestions, especially to increase plot, character and narrative and diminish essay-like description, in other words, more showing and less telling.  They also suggested having a stronger female character, and I tried to do this with Anna and Leona, Wayne’s girlfriend and sister, but I was only partly successful.  By the following March of 1985, I was reworking it into first person story of the fictional Wayne Weaver and again sent a copy to the publishers. The Goods responded with a long letter on specifics of more showing not telling, and were still concerned about greater development of what they called a “solid female character.”

The story was now in my computer where I continued to write and edit, and by Christmas of 1988 Good Books sent me a contract. But at Christmas I also gave a copy to my family members, and here it hit a fire storm, especially from my parents. My mother wrote in her diary that she could not believe her “son would write a book like that.” There were too many recognizable people in the story, many of whom would not be happy with their treatment in the story. The characters and language bartered in too much slang, dialect and sex. I would ruin my reputation and good name, but more than that I was bringing disgrace on the entire family. My parents especially felt my professional siblings would be tarred by association because of autobiographical elements of the story. However much I may have made claims for fiction, it was not read as such in Holmes County. I remember the historian Leroy Beachy told me that he had identified every Holmes County character; well, maybe there was one identity of whom he was not quite sure. I think also unsettling for my parents was that their greatest life move was to leave the Amish, and here was a story by their son at least implicitly revisiting that decision. My mother Mattie would often say that she and Andrew left the Amish because they knew their children would never stay Amish. My brothers and sisters responded variously, but all expressed some pain because of the wounded relationships with my parents.

During the next few months of the editing process, we tried to reduce some of the most offensive scenes and words and character names to make it more compatible to family sensibilities. The editors also took out the fox hunt chapter. Then I wrote my family a long letter noting my rationale for writing in the novel form and the approach I had taken. I told them that I was sorry for the pain I had caused, and that I would understand if they chose to identify less with me for the next period of time. In essence I put myself into an informal ban, and thought that with time relations could resume on a more normal pace. In the meantime, I was caught up in the many events of my life; I was running the Laurelville programs, attending Hannah’s spelling competitions, watching Jacob’s Southmoreland tennis matches, listening to overtures of becoming director of the Mennonite Historical Committee, and running for election to the Southmoreland school board. The New York Times writer Harrison Salisbury had given the book a strong recommendation. Salisbury was a regular at the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster which I also attended, and in November when he saw me, his first question was whether I had been thrown out of the church.

Until the Christmas reaction, my biggest concern about the book had been not my family members but our Amish authority and their public defender John A. Hostetler. Already in 1979 when I was thinking of a New York publisher, I had shown it to Hostetler, and he said the language should be more polite so it could be aimed at a Women’s Garden Club reader. But now in the Spring of 1989 I sent a copy again to Hostetler, thinking that at best I wanted his commitment of support or at least neutrality. I knew he did not like fiction and had banned several other works. His most recent project of trying to stop the movie “Witness,” had given him a special animus towards the Goods. On the weekend of April 8, I was on a panel at a Lancaster Conference church architecture seminar (my title listed as “program director and generalist”), and so I called Hostetler who joined me at dinner in a polished nickel colored diner near Elizabethtown on Friday evening of April 7.

Hostetler was now director of a new Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown and strong on land preservation issues in Lancaster County. He had prepared a slide presentation on Lancaster’s vanishing farm land; in fact, he had just been out to one our Laurelville farm conferences showing his Lancaster land use slides that winter. He handed me the Ben’s Wayne manuscript and said something about my family perhaps not being too happy with parts of it, and asked about various family members. He knew our family and was a good friend of my brother Paul.  Hostetler loved a cause but his current  interests were Lancaster’s land preservation and his new Catholic friend Randy-Michael Testa from Boston who had taken on the cause of defending the Amish in Lancaster. Testa was writing a book which became After the Fire: The Destruction of the Lancaster County Amish (1992) and had also become a good friend of Joseph and Sadie Beiler near Intercourse. Hostetler was much more interested in these family relationships, and I had the impression he was tired from his earlier fiction and “Witness” fights.

Good Books featured the title at American Booksellers Association (ABA), a huge convention in Washington, D.C. on the first week in June. ABA’s annual convention was a heady mingling of authors, publishers and book buyers at the time when the association was at its zenith and independent bookstores were still going strong, pre the big box stores and Amazon. One might run into writers such as the aging humorist Art Buchwald, sports writer John Feinstein, All I Needed to Know I learned in Kindergarten Robert Fulghum, the Berenstain Bears’ Jan Berenstain, Gospel singer Debbie Boone, and the spy novelist John LeCarré. My own book signing went well with a long line for the hour duration. Jacob went with me, and in the late evenings some of us would go to movies with the Goods. Merle was an entertaining movie critic who was also dabbling in screen writing, as well as having produced a movie of his own book Happy as the Grass is Green, later called Hazel’s People. I remember we went over to Georgetown late one night to see the 1988 French movie Chocolat, a coming of age film of a girl in French West Africa.

In July Good Books sent me on a whirl-wind book tour of Cleveland, Columbus and Pittsburgh, giving interviews on TV and radio, and during the rest of the year, the reviews began to come in. The South Bend Tribune reviewer said: “Levi Miller’s first novel is a small masterpiece that deals with six months in the life of an Amish teenager. It could become a modern classic.”  The copy editor reviewer at Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer found typos, but allowed that “you can learn much about the Amish in Holmes County, Ohio, in this novel.” Alas, Cleveland baseball’s Tito Francona had mistakenly become a Mennonite Franconia. The religious press was positive. The ecumenical The Christian Century said “Those who dismiss religious novels out of hand will likely revise their estimates of the genre through this example.” The Youth for Christ magazine Campus Life said “Ben’s Wayne explores feelings, frustrations, struggles and joys common to us all.” I enjoyed seeing the review beside one of born again Christian Bob Dylan’s 1989 album “Oh Mercy.” The Friends reviewed it in Friends Journal “heartwarming and enjoyable,” and in Quaker Life: “This novel brings to life the richness of the Amish lifestyle and beliefs, their reverence for and stewardship of the land. It is also a thought-provoking commentary on our own society.” The latter thanks to my old Malone English professor Lauren A. King. The Mennonite journals and media outlets gave similarly positive reviews with The Mennonite saying: “Miller has given us a funny, wise, and authentic story.” I also got a good number of letters from readers, thanking me for the book.

My Holmes County Amish relatives, however, were not impressed; in fact they were offended and embarrassed when they read the book. Between June and the end of the year I got notes from extended family, generally beginning with the verse: ^“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” My gentle Aunt Esther lamented that although non-Christian people may give favorable comments and some of the story may even be true, these readers do not realize that the author was “plucked out of the Amish church after the 4^th grade and the writing is partly imagination and hearsay.” She encouraged me to write something worthwhile rather than garbage. My cousin David R. Schlabach sent me a note and also a response to a favorable review by Marie Wiens in the Mennonite Weekly Review, citing how it misrepresents the Amish. Most responses understandably came from the New Order Amish. First, they saw themselves as spokespersons for the Amish and Ben’s Wayne was hardly their self-understanding; they also were the most likely to read it while many Old Orders may have reacted similarly but simply ignored it. Second, the Holmes County New Order beginnings in the fifties “Amish Mission Movement” were based on raising moral and doctrinal standards, precisely the other side of the more relaxed folkways and theology of the novels’ Old Orders (1951, 1952).

Although this conversation goes on within the novel, overall, the story assumes the ethos of the traditional Amish. I had actually admired the contribution my cousin Rob Schlabach (David’s brother) had made in his widely distributed booklet against bundling called Ein Risz in der Mauer: A Treatise on Courtship; I simply did not see Ben’s Wayne as a vehicle for that project. My father Andrew had his own approach to trying to maintain our Miller family brand. He kept my brother Paul’s law office photocopier warm in making copies of family letters which he sent to Mennonite leaders, employers, and colleagues where I was known. I suppose, the spirit of his effort was to say he had done what he could to prevent the publication of this book. During the next year it was not unusual for me to appear at an office and a person would somewhat apologetically hand me an envelop saying, here, you may want these; there is no return address but they appear to be your family’s letters.

Connellsville’s The Daily Courier carried a front page Ben’s Wayne photo and story on the book and then on the inside carried a second story, “Spelling Whiz with Father/Writer Doesn’t Hurt.” It was a photo story of Gloria and me with daughter Hannah after she had won the annual spelling bee of Westmoreland County for the third year in a row. From her first place county championship she went on to Pittsburgh to compete in the western Pennsylvania regional finals, the last stop before the national finals in Washington D.C.

On Saturday, April 15, we went to the Pittsburgh Catholic Auditorium in downtown Pittsburgh where 37 finalists with a crowd of parents and well-wishers gathered for the western Pennsylvania finals. Hannah had been here three times before and had studied the various word lists. Slowly after two hours of intense competition they went down with only Hannah and her final competitor, a Sarah Sulkowski, left standing. The next morning’s paper said “Hannah Miller, 14, a three-time finalist from Southmoreland Junior High in Scottdale came within a whisker of winning the crown when Sarah missed ‘renege’. Hannah spelled it right, but missed ‘Kaumographer’ which would have been the clincher.” However, Sarah also missed it and back and forth they continued until Hannah missed on “nephalism.” 

As runner-up Hannah won a $50 United States savings bond and had gone through jawbreakers such as cryptophytes, micrurgy, miljee, goitrogenesis, recrudescent, oracy, dimissory, and stereotomy. We soon left and drove out the parkway to the Monroeville Mall where we could catch our breath and get something to eat.  I remember I stopped the station wagon and turned off the motor, but no one got out; we could hear Hannah sobbing. We were all so proud of her but also so sad for her. None of us were hungry, so we just drove home. But her disappointment was short-lived; when news of Hannah’s achievement seeped into the Scottdale community over the weekend, her friends, neighbors and teachers rallied to her and by the next week the local paper carried a front page headline: “Scottdale 8^th Grader Spells S-u-c-c-e-s-s,” Hannah was quoted: “I had a great day and it made me feel so good when I got home because a lot of people called to congratulate me. I appreciated it.”

Public schooling was a big part of our lives as Elizabeth, Hannah and Jacob were outstanding students, and Gloria was teaching and taking courses for a University of Pittsburgh Master’s degree in Spanish.  By this time the two older ones were especially good on the quiz teams, with Hannah on the junior high and Jacob was on the junior varsity which won first place among the Westmoreland County schools. So when some friends and school board members encouraged me to serve on the school board, I thought I should. But first one has to get  elected. School elections are spirited contests in our community, and we put out little signs, passed out cards and placed a few ads.

As a side show, I used the little Laurelville Ford tractor and hay wagon and drove through the entire district one Saturday electioneering. The children, a few of their friends, and Tom Zeller, a friendly anarchist, went along and passed out leaflets. When people mentioned to me afterwards that they remembered this unusual tactic, I told them I was angling for the farm vote. Jerry and Audra Shenk of Brilharts Hardware were especially helpful in behind the scenes work. In May I won on both on the Republican and the Democratic ballot, hence assured of the Fall election.  In fact, this was the first primary in which Gloria and I had ever voted; we had always been independents, but in Pennsylvania, only registered party members can vote in the primaries. Now, we both registered as Democrats. But more change was to come. By the end of the year, Jacob was heading for Central Christian High School in Kidron, and I was going into historical work for the Mennonites, but all that and then there was the actual work of the school board, but all that can wait to another year. 

Most of the background on the development of Ben’s Wayne comes from my journals, “Notes on Life” and personal files of the early seventies until publication in 1989; one whole box contains the manuscript’s various drafts and letters. A photo story of the book’s first introduction at the American Booksellers Association convention appeared in Gospel Herald (September 12, 1989, 660). Stories and critical review of Ben’s Wayne are listed here alphabetically: Akron Beacon Journal “What Motivates the Amish? Novelist Examines Culture that Keeps Roots so Strong” (August 27, 1989, B1,6); Bookends (September, 1989); Bookstore Journal  (Date Unknown); Campus Life (November, 1989, 59); The Christian Century (October 11, 1989, 917);  Christian Living (April, 1990, 30);  Friends Journal (January, 1990); Greensburg Tribune-Review Sunday Focus magazine (October 22, 1989, cover, 8-9); Scottdale Independent Observer (July 5, 1989, 1), Journal of Mennonite Studies (Volume 8, 1990, 213-214); Laurelville Breezes (August 1989); Mennonite Weekly Review (November 23, 1989, 4); The Mennonite (January 23, 1990; 41 and November 28, 1989, 459-50); The Mennonite Quarterly Review (July 1993, 373-374); Mennonite Reporter (May 28, 1990); The Ohioana Quarterly (Winter, 1989); Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage (April 1990, 37); The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer (October 10, 1989);  Provident Book Finder (November/December, 1989, 39); Publisher’s Weekly (May 5, 1989); Quaker Life (November, 1990); Women’s Missionary Service Committee (WMSC) Voice (December, 1989, 7); South Bend Tribune (November 5, 1989, B13).

My mother’s diary response to the Ben’s Wayne manuscript appears in an entry on December 30, 1988. My mother’s diaries are with John D. Roth at the Mennonite Historical library of Goshen College. The Bible verse the Holmes County Amish respondents often quoted ^“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true…” was from Philippians 4:8 (King James Version). The Marie K. Wiens’ review “Novel Has Authentic Feel of Amish Life Experiences” appears in Mennonite Weekly Review (November 23, 1989, 4); David R. Schlabach’s response is “Book’s Depiction of ‘Shameful Practices’ Misrepresents the Amish” (December 28, 1998, page 4). Rob Schlabach’s Ein Risz in der Mauer: A Treatise on Courtship (n.d. but printed in 1980) was widely distributed by Schlabach Printers, Sugarcreek, Ohio; Raber’s Bookstore, Baltic, Ohio; and Pathway Bookstore, Lagrange, Indiana. The story of my novel and Hannah’s spelling achievement appears in “Spelling Whiz with Father/Writer Doesn’t Hurt,” The Daily Courier (July 28, 1989, 1, 3). Accounts of the Pittsburgh regional spelling finals appeared in “Trinity 7^th Grade Speller Is New Queen Bee,” The Pittsburgh Press (April 16, 1989, A 12) and “Scottdale 8^th Grader Spells S-u-c-c-e-s-s,” Independent Observer, April 19, 1989, 1). Reports on the Southmoreland School Board election appeared throughout the 1989 year in Scottdale’s The Independent Observer, “Miller Seeks Post on Southmoreland Board” (April 12, 1989, Section 2, page 2) until Tuesday, November 7, 1989; stories also appeared in the Greensburg and Connellsville dailies: The Tribune-Review and The Daily Courier.