Relation of My Imprisonment Book

Literature has an assortment of genres and sub-genres. One is the relation. Popular among 17th Century Puritans, a relation is the retelling of a personal experience. It was usually the retelling of the author's spiritual conflicts and tribulations, quite often involving imprisonment as religious persecution. The narratives were designed to be exemplary as a test of faith and didactic for the instruction of other true believers and for the benefit of their salvation.

I first learned of this niche in literature when I read The Relation of My Imprisonment (1983) by Russell Banks. Banks is a contemporary, of course, but he wrote in the imitative style of the 17th Century. The language is ornate and decorous with long convoluted, formulaic sentences. The unnamed first-person narrator was the devotee of a somewhat creepy death-worshipping cult. His sect is ill-defined but rather evocative and the reader is left with many questions. There are quotes from scripture and interesting citations from Craig, The Book of Discipline, Dirk, Carol, Trib., and Carol.,

The narrator's travails stem from the fact that his religion is illegal. He describes his eleven-year imprisonment in great detail, focusing not so much on the suffering itself, but on his own reaction to it and how his attitude of obstinate perversity affects his spirituality. In a theme of redemption though suffering, he begins to welcome further adversity as a source of opportunity to prove his strength of faith. His legal situation is nightmarish and especially notable is a rather Kafkaesque court scene. All this leads to an eventual deterioration of memory and of self.

The Relation of My Imprisonment is one of three novels in a volume entitled Outer Banks. In the "Preface" Banks provides an interesting essay about his autodidactic journey as a writer. He writes that the three early novels were written so long ago they seem to have been written by someone else. He then goes on to describe his earlier, younger self and the journey taken to become the recipient of multiple awards, medals, and prizes and induction into scholarly academies.