Handling Sin
Michael Malone, 1983
Sourcebooks
622 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402239335
Summary
Michael Malone’s Handling Sin is a comic novel whose depths are almost deceptively hidden by a happy-go-lucky exterior. Beneath the improbable story—which concerns a respectable man who must pursue his elderly father on a humiliating wild-goose chase across the American South—is a tale that encompasses complex issues such as racism, the claims of family, and the extent to which "respectability" is a virtue. Readers will laugh at the goings-on in Malone’s whimsical universe, but they may also see in them a reflection of the world they experience every day.
The theme of family in Handling Sin is sure to start many conversations. On the one hand, Malone is a master at portraying the uncomfortable comedy that results when a family contains more than a few eccentrics, and his hero, North Carolina insurance salesman Raleigh Hayes, must put up with an almost endless assortment of relatives who are decidedly not, by his middle-of-the-road standards, normal.
But as Hayes digs deeper into his family's history, he finds that what he’s been quick to judge is far from simple, and his attitudes about family raise issues of real significance, such as identity and race in the modern South, and the conflicts between compassion for others and the need to care for oneself. Raleigh's journey into his family history becomes multilayered and in turn will provoke many to think about the funny and serious sides of every family.
Book clubs may particularly enjoy sharing their ideas about the literary influences behind this almost epic-sized tall tale. The strange quest on which Raleigh finds himself borrows liberally from such masterpieces as Don Quixote and Tom Jones. Readers of John Kennedy Toole’s modern classic, A Confederacy of Dunces, will also spot many of the citizens of that nation among Malone’s southern eccentrics and hopeless cases.
It’s almost impossible to exhaust the hunt for these literary connections in Malone's highly sophisticated novel; and while Handling Sin is too much fun to feel like work, reading group members will discover just how "heavy" the themes in this lighthearted book can become. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Durham, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Syracuse University; Ph.D., Harvard
University
• Awards—O. Henry Award; Edgar Award; Emmy Award
• Currently—lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina
Michael Malone is a novelist as well as the author of short stories, works of nonfiction, several plays, and daytime television drama. He was born in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and his distinctive Southern voice permeates his books, which he describes as "centered in the comedy of the shared communion among very diverse groups of people who are bound together by place and the past."
Michael's writing has been compared to Miguel De Cervantes, Charles Dickens and Henry Fielding. He is the recipient of The O. Henry Award for "Fast Love," the Edgar for "Red Clay" and an Emmy as head writer of ABC-TV's One Life to Live.
Michael lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina with his wife, Maureen, whom he met while they were working toward their doctoral degrees at Harvard University. (From the publisher.)
More
Michael Malone is an American author and television writer, best known for his work on the ABC Daytime drama One Life to Live, his best-selling works of fiction Handling Sin (1983) and Foolscap (1991), as well as the murder mystery First Lady (2001).
Malone was head writer for One Life to Live from 1991 to 1996 and garnered critical acclaim for his storylines, which included a tale involving the tight bond between an ostracized homosexual teenager and a preacher, the creation of villain/rapist Todd Manning and the character's gang rape of Marty Saybrooke, as well as the subsequent rape trial.
One Life to Live was averaging 5 million viewers when Malone left in 1996. His next soap opera writing job was with Another World in 1997. He returned to write One Life to Live from 2003 to 2004.
While writing One Life to Live, Malone wrote a novel called The Killing Club, which was tied into the show. For months, viewers watched character Marcie Walsh (Kathy Brier) write the book. The book was published in February 2005 with the authors listed as Marcie Walsh and Michael Malone. To explain this, Marcie said she took the book to "Professor Malone" at Llanview University, who helped her re-write it. After Malone's departure from the show, Dena Higley continued this storyline, as a copycat killer murdered characters on the show exactly as had occurred in the book. In its first week of publication The Killing Club went to #16 on the New York Times bestseller list for Hardback Fiction, and later to #11. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Demonstrating a spirited grasp of the genre, Malone (Dingley Falls) has written a "romance novel'' in the original sense: a long tale of chivalrous heroes and extraordinary events. This madcap book bubbles with a frenzy from the first pages, an initially disconcerting pace that rarely allows the reader to catch a breath. With a wink to Cervantes and Dickensas well as the Marx Brothersthe narrative recounts the two-week odyssey of Raleigh Whittier Hayes, an upstanding citizen of Thermopylae, N.C., and Mingo Sheffield, his Sancho Panza. They encounter a bizarre cast of characters during their adventures, including Raleigh's criminal half-brother Gates, his prison buddy Weeper Berg, and aging jazzman Toutant Kingstree. Their quest, to unfairly simplify it, is to recapture Hayes's ailing father, who has escaped from the hospital with a young black woman, and who has left Raleigh a strange set of tasks to fulfill before a planned rendezvous in New Orleans. While tantalized by the promise of a secret treasure at the end of the journey, Hayes uncovers family secrets and Raleigh is granted a large measure of self-enlightenment. This is a highly refreshing tale in which Malone has managed to make the bizarre hilariously credible
Publishers Weekly
With braggadocio, Malone says in his acknowledgments that he expects a major movie company to buy Handling Sin. And his novel's scenario does seem designed to outdo Cannonball Run, Peyton Place and, at times, Porky's. It stars Raleigh W. Hayes, Baptist Church stalwart, Civitan regular, staid insurance agent, who miraculously metamorphoses overnight into Bruce Lee/Rocky/Rambo as he totes a pistol, battles the KKK and the other gangsters, poses as an FBI agent, and shades of Mickey Spillaine, has sensuous women swooning as he travels from Thermopylae, N.C. to New Orleans with excessively contrived adventures. This episodic novel panders with explicit sexual encounters, manipulated incidents/coincidences, and flagrant reliance on deus ex machina. But, alas, there is little reading pleasure in it. —Glenn O. Carey, English Dept., Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Library Journal
Michael Malone’s Handling Sin is a comic novel whose depths are almost deceptively hidden by a happy-go-lucky exterior. Beneath the improbable story — which concerns a respectable man who must pursue his elderly father on a humiliating wild-goose chase across the American South — is a tale that encompasses complex issues such as racism, the claims of family, and the extent to which "respectability" is a virtue. Readers will laugh at the goings-on in Malone’s whimsical universe, but they may also see in them a reflection of the world they experience every day. The theme of family in Handling Sin is sure to start many conversations. On the one hand, Malone is a master at portraying the uncomfortable comedy that results when a family contains more than a few eccentrics, and his hero, North Carolina insurance salesman Raleigh Hayes, must put up with an almost endless assortment of relatives who are decidedly not, by his middle-of-the-road standards, normal. But as Hayes digs deeper into his family's history, he finds that what he’s been quick to judge is far from simple, and his attitudes about family raise issues of real significance, such as identity and race in the modern South, and the conflicts between compassion for others and the need to care for oneself. Raleigh's journey into his family history becomes multilayered and in turn will provoke many to think about the funny and serious sides of every family. Book clubs may particularly enjoy sharing their ideas about the literary influences behind this almost epic-sized tall tale. The strange quest on which Raleigh finds himself borrows liberally from such masterpieces as Don Quixote and Tom Jones. Readers of John Kennedy Toole’s modern classic, A Confederacy of Dunces, will also spot many of the citizens of that nation among Malone’s southern eccentrics and hopeless cases. It’s almost impossible to exhaust the hunt for these literary connections in Malone's highly sophisticated novel; and while Handling Sin is too much fun to feel like work, reading group members will discover just how "heavy" the themes in this lighthearted book can become. —Bill Tipper
Barnes & Noble
Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the novel, on the Ides of March, Raleigh Hayes receives the following fortune in a Chinese cookie: "You will go completely to pieces by the end of the month." In what ways does the fortune come true, and in what ways does it not?
2. Aristotle has famously said, "Character is action." Characters will act in certain believable ways because of their established natures. How does the character of Raleigh Hayes lead to his response to the situations in which he finds himself? What qualities in his personality make Raleigh's father feel he needs to be sent on the journey he takes?
3. The first section of the novel is called "The Quest." Earley Hayes is sending his son on a quest for certain objects, but the quest is really to teach Raleigh what lessons about life and faith?
3. The objects Raleigh must "find" and bring to New Orleans (the gun, the bust, the Bible, Jubal himself, etc.) are all connected to the Hayes family past: How?
4. Why do you think that Earley set up such an elaborate journey for Raleigh instead of just coming out and telling him what he wanted him to do and why?
5. Raleigh's journey takes place during Lent and climaxes on Maundy Thursday (the gathering in New Orleans), Good Friday (when Earley dies), and Easter (when Earley is "buried"). How is this significant?
6. The author has said that characters often insist on following their own destinies. For example, he did not originally plan for Mingo to accompany Raleigh on his journey. How do you think Raleigh's trip would have been different if Mingo had not joined him?
7. It has been said there are really only two stories. In one, a stranger comes to town (as Mr. Darcy does in Pride and Prejudice); in the other, somebody leaves home, as Dorothy does in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Which is true of Handling Sin? Does the novel contain both elements?
8. Images and characters of a religious nature show up often in Handling Sin. One of the most important of these has to do with Earley's position as a former minister. Would you consider the Hayes family to be religious? In what other ways do the doctrines and rituals of Christianity play a central role in the novel?
9. The name of the novel is Handling Sin. Why? What does Earley want his son to learn by going into the world and handling sin there (becoming engaged in the clutter of life, accepting his own imperfections, and forgiving those of others)? What are some examples of how Raleigh's journey leads him to participate in the seven "sins" (lust, anger, etc.)?
10. There are seven chapters in the book that are meditations, taking Raleigh back to memories of his childhood. These chapters are named for the seven sacraments: Baptism ("How Raleigh Received His Name"), Confirmation ("How Raleigh Was Confirmed in His View of the World"), and so on. Talk about the purpose of these chapters.
11. In the memory chapters, there are two central figures (both women, both intellectual and moral "guides" to the young Raleigh). One is Flonnie Rogers, the family maid; one is Raleigh's aunt Victoria. Early in the novel, Raleigh turns to Victoria Hayes to be a kindred soul, a reliable ally amidst a madcap family. In what ways is Raleigh wrong about his picture of Victoria? What do they both learn?
12. Flonnie and Victoria have long kept a deep and dark family secret (that Victoria and Jubal Rogers had a child). Raleigh's journey is to unravel that secret. What does the discovery of "Billie" do to the characters in the novel?
13. Discuss the similarities and differences caused by race between Victoria Hayes and Flonnie Rogers. From where did they draw their strengths, and how did these strengths affect the courses of their lives, for better or for worse? How have Flonnie and Victoria's attitudes about life informed Raleigh's own?
14. Handling Sin has been compared to the great picaresque novels like Don Quixote and Tom Jones. It shares many qualities (and even narrative scenes) with the cherished comic epics on which it is modeled, yet it is set in the modern American South. In what ways does the novel mix elements of old and new narrative styles to make the story realistic and contemporary, yet fantastical and classic?
15. Race and religion are two of the major themes of Handling Sin. How do these issues interact? What do you think the novel is trying to say about the complicated histories of Southern communities?
16. Gates Hayes, Raleigh's free-spirited brother, is one of the novel's most engaging characters. Do you know anyone like Gates? Why are these people so engaging despite their irresponsibility?
17. The cover description refers to Mingo (the novel's Sancho Panza to Raleigh's Quixote) as Raleigh's "irrepressibly loyal friend." Would Raleigh agree with this description at the beginning of the novel? At the end? Is it possible for two people so different to truly be friends? How does Raleigh learn to appreciate Mingo's human gifts?
18. Through the course of Handling Sin, Raleigh begins to better understand his own family-in the beginning of the novel, he seems to be contemptuous of his Hayes relatives and to know little about what's going on with his wife, Aura (who's running for mayor), or his twin daughters, Caroline and Holly. How many different types of families does Raleigh come to have in Handling Sin? How do Raleigh's changing attitudes toward the Hayes family reflect real-life family relations?
19. How would you describe Raleigh and Aura's relationship? Does Aura's activist work disturb Raleigh as much as you would expect? Why do you think this is so?
20. Willa Cather said, "Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet." Michael Malone is a Southerner and his novels are almost always set in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, where he grew up. How is this Southernness manifested in Handling Sin?
21. The novel travels southward through very specific Southern cities (Charleston, Atlanta, Montgomery) on its way to New Orleans. What are some of the reasons for these choices?
22. Handling Sin is filled with hilarious and quirky characters. Besides the main characters, who was your favorite person in the novel? How did this supporting character affect the outcome of the story?
23. What do you think of the contents of the Civil War treasure chest? What treasure did Raleigh receive at the end of his journey?
24. How would you summarize the spiritual "message" of Handling Sin?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)