Frederick Buechner

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Carl Frederick Buechner (BEEK-n?r, born July 11,1926) is an American writer, novelist, poet, autobiographer, essayist, and theologian.

He is ordained as a Presbyterian minister and the author of more than thirty published books.

His writing has spanned more than six decades, including fiction, autobiography, essays, and sermons.

Buechner's books have been translated into many languages for distribution around the world.

He is best known for his books, including A Long Day's Dying, The Book of Bebb, Godric (a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize), Brendan, his memoirs, including Secrets in the Dark, The Magnificent Defeat, and Telling the Truth. "Major talent" and "...a very good writer," New York Times writer Michael Farley describes him as, "one of our most original storytellers" by USA Today, he has been dubbed "Major talent" and "one of our most original storytellers."

"Frederick Buechner is one of our finest writers," Annie Dillard (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek). Buechner was also a finalist for the National Book Award presented by the National Book Foundation and the Pulitzer Prize, and he has been given eight honorary degrees from Yale University and the Virginia Theological Seminary.

In addition, Buechner has been named in the American Academy and Institute of Letters as the recipient of the O. Henry Award, the Rosenthal Award, the Christianity and Literature Belles Lettres Prize, and has been honoured by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

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Life and career

Carl Frederick Buechner, the eldest son of Katherine Golay (Kuhn) and Carl Frederick Buechner Sr., was born in New York City on July 11, 1926. Buechner's family moved often as Buechner's father searched for work during Buechner's early childhood. Buechner recalls that "virtually every year of my life before I was 14 years old, I lived in a different place, had different people take care of me." The only house that remained unchanged was the one where my maternal grandparents lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh called East Liberty.... Except for the one house on Woodland Road, home was not a place to me when I was a child. It was people." This all changed in 1936, when Buechner's father died of carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of his conviction that he had been a failure.

Following his father's death, the family migrated to Bermuda, where they remained until World War II ordered the evacuation of Americans from the island. Buechner's "the blessed gift of coming out of my father's life and death into fragrance and light" in Bermuda. Bermuda became home for a young Buechner.

Buechner's lasting impression on him. Hel's distinctly British style of pre-World War II Bermuda gave him a lifelong appreciation of English history and culture, which would later inspire such works as Godric and Brendan. In his memoirs, Buechner also mentions Bermuda, including Telling Secrets and The Sacred Journey.

Buechner later attended Lawrenceville, New Jersey, graduating in 1943. He met James Merrill, the future Pulitzer Prize winner; their friendship and rivalry fueled both poets' literary aspirations. "Their friendly competition was an impetus for any becoming a writer," Mel Gussow wrote in Merrill's 1995 obituary. Buechner was enrolled at Princeton University when he was first admitted. "All of it in the United States" (1944–46) in the Army during World War II, including a post as "chief of the statistical section in Camp Pickett, Virginia," interrupted his college career. After the war, he returned to Princeton and graduated with an A.B. After completing a 77-page senior thesis titled "Notes of the Function of Metaphor in English Poetry," he was published in England in 1948. However, he was still identified as a member of his original Class of 1947, despite being an alumnus. In an interview, Buechner discussed his time at Princeton: In an interview, he said, "Itael" and his time there: "In an interview," Buechner said.

Buechner won the Irene Glascock Prize for poetry during his senior year at Princeton University, and he also began writing his first book and one of his finest literary accomplishments, A Long Day's Dying, which was released in 1950. Buechner's success with his first book and his second's commercial demise, The Seasons' Difference (1952), a book with characters based on Buechner and his adolescent friend James Merrill that developed a more concrete Christian theme, was palpably felt by the young novelist, and it was on this note that Buechner left Lawrenceville to focus on his writing career. Buechner began lecturing at New York University in 1952, winning the O. Henry Award in 1955. He also began attending the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, where George Buttrick was pastor at the time. Buechner knew the words that inspired his ordination from Buttrick's sermons: "among confession, and a lot of laughter" was present in those who believe in him. Buechner's influence on him was so profound that he attended Union Theological Seminary in 1954 as a member of the Rockefeller Brothers Theological Fellowship.

Buechner studied under such respected theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenburg, who aided Buechner in his quest for knowledge while at Union:

Buechner's decision to enter the seminary came as a surprise to those who knew him. "It'll be a shame to lose a good novelist for a mediocre preacher," George Buttrick, whose words had inspired Buechner, expressed regret. Nonetheless, Buechner's ministry and writing have never failed to enrich each other's lives.

Buechner decided to postpone his writing during his first year at Union. Buechner met his wife Judith at a dance held by one of his family friends in the spring of 1955, just before he left Union for the year. They were married in Montclair, New Jersey, by James Muilenburg, a year later, and spent the next four months in Europe. Buechner also wrote The Return of Ansel Gibbs, his third book in this series.

Buechner returned to Union to complete the two years necessary to receive a Bachelor of Divinity after his sabbatical. He was ordained on June 1, 1958 at the same Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church where he had heard George Buttrick preaching four years ago. Buechner was ordained as an evangelist or minister without charge of pastoral care. Robert Russell Wicks, formerly the Dean of the Chapel at Princeton, who had previously served as school minister at Phillips Exeter Academy, wrote to him a few weeks before graduation, considering his future as minister of a parish. Wicks was given the opportunity to join teaching and to develop a curriculum that taught religion in depth.

Buechners immigrated to Exeter in September 1958. Buechner was faced with the challenge of establishing a new religion department and a rigorous curriculum that would challenge his students' often cynical views. "My job, as I saw it, was to protect the Christian faith against its 'cultured despisers,' to use Schleiermacher's words. To put it better, it was to carry out the faith as well as skillfully as I could." Buechner taught courses in both the Religion and English departments, as well as minister. The family also grew to three daughters during this period. Buechner's fourth book, The Final Beast, was published in 1965, during the school year 1963-2004. The Final Beast was Buechner's first book after his ordination, a new style in which he mixed his callings as minister and author.

"We were there for nine years with one year of absence tucked in the middle," Buechner says, and by the time we left, the religion department had grown from one full-time teacher, myself, and three others to four teachers, and even more in the neighborhood, with three hundred students or more." Among these students was future author John Irving, who included a quote from Buechner in his book A Prayer for Owen Meany. Marjorie Casebier McCoy, one of Buechner's biographers, explains the effects of his time in Exeter as follows: "Buechner's sermons were designed to appeal to the "cultured despisers of faith." For the most part, the students and faculty at Phillips Exeter had been there when he first enrolled in the academy, but it had been they who compelled him to sharpen his preaching and literary skills to their absolute best in order to obtain a hearing for Christian faith."

Buechner and his family migrated to Vermont in 1967, after nine years at Exeter and having established the Religion Department. In Now and then, Buechner describes their home:

Buechner devoted himself entirely to writing. Buechner, a chaplain at Harvard, wrote a letter in 1968 inviting him to attend the Noble Lectures collection in the winter of 1969. Richard Niebuhr and George Buttrick were among his predecessors in this role, and Buechner and his mother, Sophie Loud, were both shocked and astonished at the prospect of joining such prestigious companies. Price replied that he should write "something in the field of'religion and letters,'" when he expressed his doubts. Buechner writes in Now and Then: "as the alphabet by which God, of his mercy, spells out his words, his meaning," he writes about the daily activities of life." So there was the Alphabet of Grace, which was the intention that I had chosen, and I wanted to try to sum up a single day of my life in a way that would have to reveal what God wanted to hear about it."

Buechner's last book, A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory, was published in 2017. It's a collection of essays. All but one of them have been revealed before.

Buechner died in Rupert, Vermont, on August 15, 2022.

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