MARKINGS ON A LONG JOURNEY WRITINGS OF JOHN J. TIMMERMAN; Rodney J . Mulder and John H. Timmerman, Editors; Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 300 pages, $9.95. Reviewed by John Vander Ploeg.
Timmerman’s excellence in style, his magnanimous spirit that shines through, his knowledgeable comments in the field of literature, and his healthy Christian piety and commitment—all this and more make the reading for the first time or the rereading of his writings, now compiled in this anthology, a truly delightful experience.
Dr. Timmerman, adopted son of CRC minister, Rev. John Timmerman, and his wife, after a long career in teaching, retired as Professor of English at Calvin College in 1975. During his thirty–year tenure at Calvin he was distinguished by a Fulbright Senior Lectureship in American Literature at the Free University in Amsterdam during the school year 1963–1964. He received his Ph. D. degree from Northwestern University in 1948. By way of an introductory tribute to Timmerman’s teaching, Calvin’s English professor, Dr. Richard R. Tiemersma states:
“But what is most to be regretted is that present and future students of Calvin College will not have the privilege of pursuing their education under the guidance and direction of a man who for thirty years exemplified the best that the teaching profession has to offer. For, as one of his former students wrote in 1975, Tim ‘made a difference.’”
We are indebted to John H. Timmerman and Rodney J . Mulder, son and son–in–law of Dr. Timmerman, for collecting and organizing the selections for this anthology. The topics for the articles cover a wide range: from big–league baseball to Sunday observance, from jogging to paying one’s income tax, from sermons to such Calvin College alumni authors as Peter De Vries and Fred Manfred, and from witty comments that bring forth a chuckle to serious observations that sound a warning.
Outstanding in adding the spice of human interest are two articles about Alice and her household –a household legitimate and also illegitimate, black, shiftless, and happy–go-lucky –portraying graphi· cally and amusingly the problems such neighbors impose upon a caring family like the Timmermans who did not stop at going the second mile to help them. Another contribution of unusual interest is the informative article on the rise and fall of Grundy College.
The reader cannot fail to be impressed by Timmerman’s wide knowledge in the field of literature as well as to learn from it. His wholesome piety and also his disgust with much that appears in print is clear from a double-barrelled statement in his article on “The Man Behind the Pen”:
“One gets tired of being pushed around by formalist critics and their disciples. One gets bone-tired of having to admire works whose morality is utterly shoddy, whose religious orientation is impious, and whose reading of life is radically distorted. Why should one be forced to say such corrosive journeys into the repellent are great works of art because they are technically impressive? Art seems to me to become great finally in terms of spiritual and religious perspectives” (p. 275).
Markings on a Long Journey is one of those rare books which the reader enjoys throughout and is then sorry to have end.
