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Myron Kriegman: a call-back

 


A year ago I devoted a post to the name "Myron Kriegman". Just for the heck of it, because it is the middle of August and a time traditionally devoted to something less than full seriousness, I will reproduce that post here. The illustration, of a random mnemonic device, is new for this year. 

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 Myron Kriegman!  I had a moment recently in which I had been blocked looking for the name for a certain character in the John Updike novel ROGER'S VERSION (1986). 

Now I am determined not only to remember the name but to make it the subject of a blog post. So ... here it is!  

I no longer have the book around: I may have donated it to a library at some point in recent years. The novel turns largely on a three-way argument over God and the worshipper: whether there is a God and whether that question can be answered by reason or requires faith. Kriegman occupies the "no to God -- and yes to reason" position in the triangle. The titular Roger (last name Lambert, although we are supposed to connect this to Roger Chillingworth, from Hawthorne) occupies the "yes to God -- and no to reason" PoV. Roger sees himself as a follower of Karl Barth in believing in a hidden God, who cannot be reached by human ratiocinations. 

The third character in the triangle is Dale, a name reminiscent of Reverend Dimmesdale, also from the Hawthornian source material.  Dale is a computer scientist turned evangelist. He believes that the mathematical parameters of the Big Bang must have been "fine tuned" to make Earth, life, and intelligence possible. As scientists come to understand the fine tuning better, God is "breaking through" and cannot hide any more. So: yes and yes, on the above two questions.      

I'm quoting from distant memory here, but I'm sure that at some point Roger says something to Dale along the lines of: "If He is omnipotent, He can hide if He wants to." 

Anyway: Myron Kriegman!  I have created this post to implant that name in my neurons. Don't call him "Ron," please, he asks somewhere.

Aside from the explicit sex scenes (part of the Updike formula) and the Scarlett Letter call-backs, and as one might expect the characters named Esther and Pearl, aside from all this, the book may be said to be about a half-acknowledged alliance between Lambert and Kriegman to undermine Dale. 

So far as I understand the point of view of the novel, it is that this alliance is doing something valuable (Dale is trouble), yet it is best LEFT unacknowledged.  

  

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