The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Mailman, by J. Robert Lennon
reviewed by Irving Malin

J. Robert Lennon. Mailman. Norton, 2003. 483 pp. $24.95.

Although I have not read his earlier novels, I am so impressed by this audacious work that I will immediately order—by mail!—Lennon’s three other novels. He has captured not only the tortured mind of mailman Albert Lippincott, but the American dream that turns swiftly from comedy to terror (comic terror). The novel fuses the thriller and the philosophical inquisition. Mailman is not sure that he is a man; that he exists; that he is more than the common carrier of news. He is, of course, paranoid, wondering who pursues him and why: “You never know when they’re in there; you never see them. Sometimes you hear their slow footsteps, if you happen to be under the catwalk when they pass overhead. Like a goose on your grave.” And he is, of course, afraid that they will discover his crimes—his thefts of personal mail, his creation of false responses to people waiting in fear or hope for their messages. As we learn more about delivery, we recognize that Lennon is exploring the meaning of communication. Once Mailman was a thoughtful student who made a theory about the nature of things: “everything small was a mirror of something large and everything large a mirror of something small. . . . The future stretched infinitely forward and the past infinitely back, and Mailman . . . was at the very center, he was point zero, the very thing that would divide the age of comprehension from the age of understanding . . . he was the vessel.” Mailman may have an ordinary job—not a profession—but he has divine power and intelligence. (Or does he?) Lennon moves from the onrushing insanity of Mailman to the redemption of his existence. Mail becomes a wonderful symbol of the principle: “Nothing sent is worth anything unless it gets where it’s going.” The novel becomes, in effect, a road novel, or better yet, a pilgrim’s progress, in which we learn to appreciate the courage to exchange letters, to express truths about ourselves living in close proximity (family, nation, planet). Thus the secret of this extraordinary work is that letters—written words—are our salvation. Mailman is, finally, a radiant mirror of the days of our lives—a triumphant work of art.