An “Eye on the Sparrow?” Joan Didion and C. S. Lewis Read the Prayer Book

Abstract

At the book's core is a recurring motif, a credo, a statement of anti-faith: No eye on the sparrow. Against this set the memory of my mother grandmother in church, singing a duet: eye is on the sparrow. As Pascal says, we make our wager. --John Wilson, (First Things, 43) In the months following its publication in October 2005, the critical reviews for loan Didion's memoir Year of Magical Thinking, a chronicle of the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, her own crushing personal grief, were overwhelmingly positive, at times to the point of near absurdity. New York Times ran three glowing reviews in succession, the first two by renowned critic Michiko Kakutani former American Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, the third featuring an extensive author profile written by Rachel Donadio. That followed two months later by at least two articles mentioning producer Scott Rudin's plan to bring the story to Broadway (McKinley, Downes). In addition to the Times coverage, three of the four biggest names in book-review publications--Publishers Weekly (Rev. of The Year), ALA Booklist (Seaman), Library Journal (Kochis)--all gave it laudatory starred reviews. Only Kirkus Reviews (Didion, Joan:) lukewarm. John Leonard, writing in New York Review of Books, effusive with praise. I can't think of a we need more than hers, he wrote; then, in an echo of Didion's own incantatory style: I can't imagine dying without this book (12). As winter turned to spring in 2006, however, lengthier more equivocal analyses of Didion's memoir began to appear in a handful of publications (for examples, see Gurstein, Nelson, Schulman, Skloot). Few reviewers criticized Didion's prose style, usually agreed to be lyrical (Review, Publishers Weekly), achingly beautiful (Briefly Noted New Yorker), lacerating, yet peculiarly stirring (Yardley, Washington Post). But what several less charitable reviewers noticed--some within religious contexts, such as Wilson's review in First Things quoted above--is that for all of Didion's descriptions of Christian faith practice, particularly the rituals of the Episcopal Church, her repeated references to scripture the Book of Common Prayer, the conclusions she reaches on the far side of her grief are profoundly skeptical of religious belief. example, she mentions in an offhand way her (and Dunne's) disbelief in the resurrection of the (Year of Magical Thinking 149-50). But though this view is manifestly unorthodox, directly denying the Apostles' Creed Didion quotes on the same page, it is not the one that her religious critics most seized upon. Perhaps the contradictory nature of the passage held her critics in check--Didion says just a few lines later that her way of thinking was so muddled as to contradict even itself (150). passage also holds out the possibility that Didion does not reject all hope of life after death--after all, she leaves intact the next phrase in the Creed, and the life everlasting, amen (149). Rather, what most religious critics found more disturbing Didion's revision of a well-known proverb from the Gospel of Matthew, the subject of a popular early 20th-century American hymn: No eye is on the sparrow. original title of the hymn, written by Civilla D. Martin in 1905, is Eye Is on the Sparrow. lyrics of its three stanzas offer spiritual encouragement to those who are, in turn, lonely, doubtful, tempted by sin. central two-line phrase is repeated twice in every verse again in the refrain: For His eye is on the sparrow / know He watches me. Gospel passage which inspired the hymn is often considered part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, though technically it comes afterward, as Jesus draws his disciples aside to prepare them for persecution-filled missionary work: And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul body in hell. …