And, of course, the whole thing shall be seen through the eyes of a naive, starstruck young man, brought in from outside.
"Now here's the funny thing — 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,' " she says.
Mystery means there is no spell, no formula — only shadow and impenetrability and hope that one day, to borrow a phrase T. S. Eliot borrowed from Julian of Norwich, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
How this coveted house knew about the poem is anyone's guess, but the implication is that talent will out, that even the most reclusive poet will rise to the top — and that if you go to a prestigious writing program to learn to write, as T. S. Eliot did not, "All shall be well, and / All manner of thing shall be well".
/ Quick now, here, now, always - / A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything) / All shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well / When the tongues of flame are in-folded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one.' The 'facts' can do a lot of things for us, but they can't do this.
Julian of Norwich's text, which includes the famous line "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well", is also rare: the short text, which she is believed to have written soon after her 1373 visions, only exists in one manuscript, also kept in the British Library, while the later text exists in three copies dating to the 17th century.
His righteousness! "His what?" His righteousness! "And all these things shall be added to you".
All is well, he thought, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well, by Tod Wodicka (Pantheon; $21.95).
But Mr. Wodicka's showily titled "All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well" (a quotation from the 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich) gradually exposes Burt's diversionary tactics for what they are.
The thought certainly obsesses Burt Hecker, the narrator of Tod Wodicka's first novel, "All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well," a title whose length and repetitiveness don't bode well for its contents.
