What makes "Nests in a Stone Image" [in Ghost and Flesh] much more than an indulging of an all-too-writerly propensity to write about one's own writing is Goyen's use of imagery of the life of Jesus. The writer's vigil is patterned on Jesus' night of prayer and doubt in Gethsemane and overlaid with allusions to other aspects of his life. But "Nests in a Stone Image" is not updating of Jesus' story: the writer may agonize, but he is acutely aware of his mortality. Goyen utilizes Christian imagery to show both the writer's capacity to love and his anxieties that preclude loving. Goyen believes that belief is an individual possibility, and that each person can be as vital and dynamic as Jesus himself. Given this hope, Goyen has the writer in "Nests in a Stone Image" seek, as Jesus does in Gethsemane, knowledge of his destiny so that he might pass it on; surreal Christian imagery establishes the debilitating effects of his all too human anxiety.

The significance of "Nests in a Stone Image" is that it identifies the full spiritual implications Goyen perceives in the act of telling. His characters often resemble Jesus in their use of speech to further a sense of community; stories about healing and love treat themes identical to Jesus'…. "Nests in a Stone Image" depends not only upon conventional biblical material, but also upon Goyen's personal understanding of Jesus. Study of "Nests in a Stone Image" in this light reveals Goyen's abiding concern with the restorative effects—upon oneself and upon one's companions and hearers—of the act of telling.

Goyen patterns the writer's vigil upon Jesus' in Gethsemane…. The writer's vigil braids together memories of the woman he has not loved well, other incidents from his past, and goings-on in the hotel. Jesus returns three times to his companions; the writer remembers the woman three times. This pattern of meditation and looking backward informs both stories, and both principals are forced to realize the profundity of their solitude and the inappropriateness of their self-doubt, their looking back. (pp. 415-16)

The emphasis upon Jesus' love of human beings and upon his mistaking their mortality suggests that Goyen sees the writer in "Nests in a Stone Image" as more Christlike than he might seem at first glance. For the writer, too, feels himself fill with compassion for the woman and admits his betrayal of her, his misunderstanding her nature, his fear of her humanness…. (p. 417)

But the writer is not Christ: Goyen's biblical imagery makes that clear. The writer's agony is overlaid with allusions to Jesus' birth, ministry, and passion, causing the reader to understand that the writer is confused and falls back on aspects of Jesus' experience to try to comprehend his own. In fact, he does so consciously—self-consciously, aware of his pretense, but determined to experience a revival of his spirit through understanding what haunts him. Thus, Goyen's surrealism makes Jesus a foil for the writer; furthermore, Goyen's emphasis in A Book of Jesus upon the availability of the "Kingdom of God," in this world, for every person, justifies doctrinally the writer's hoping to be like Jesus. He spends the night to this end: to love and thus restore himself. Keenly aware of his humanness, he eventually does participate in the spirituality he has longed for.

The most obvious biblical imagery is of Easter, rebirth. The story opens "on the Eve of Easter" … and ends when "The morning sun was abroad" and the writer senses that he is part of reviving life…. Not surprisingly, the hotel in which he spends the night reminds him of a "celled, stone skull,"… which evokes the tomb of Jesus as well as Golgotha, the hill upon which he was crucified, "The place of a skull."…

Yet the hotel also is an allusion to the inn at which Jesus was born. The symbol's ambivalence is central to the story and made explicit in the final sentence: "Now he knew that something was all over, that through all the little hotel, in every room, something was finished, and that another long beginning had begun."… Goyen fuses imagery of birth and death from the outset: the writer lies across his bed "like a five-point star in the sky of this city hotel world," this "in all that winter weather."… (pp. 417-18)

Additional allusions to Jesus' life reinforce the writer's attraction to Jesus' potency as message, Logos. The writer wants to bring what he has to tell out of the "darkness" and have it "be like a good word."… Though he constantly compares himself with Jesus, he falls short of the ideal…. Imagery of fishing and the desert are frequent and ironic, parodying the writer's presumption in comparing himself with Jesus. For instance, one woman whose loud talk disturbs him is Mrs. Fisher, and the subject of her conversation is one Finney Robinson. Alluding to two Christian symbols—Jesus as fisherman, Jesus as fish—, these names heighten the taunting effect the overheard talk has upon the writer. Though he tries to see the women as "fiends" and "hellshades,"… he notices that Mrs. Fisher's terrifying laughter resembles "the cry of a woman in childbirth."… Goyen also alludes to the Gethsemane story to deflate the writer's presumption. The writer likens the sounds of a bed during love-making in the room above him to "the breathing of a chased thief hiding in a dark place."… (p. 418)

As the night lengthens—it is, the writer is painfully aware, Easter—, what frustrates him is his failure to love as Jesus said every man could. Upstairs the lovers have "made each other still," and their footsteps cause the writer to observe, "The bridegroom has come forth from his chamber."… Again, he refers to someone else in terms of a metaphor Jesus used for himself …, implying the writer's unresurrectedness. He remains suspended between the hell of the lobby and the earth above where the love-making has culminated.

Before he succeeds in reviving his spirit, events in the hotel more intensely parody the resurrection he desires….

He is able to affirm his love of the world. "He thought how all things glow, glimmer out and fade and fall away and how we must let ourselves be claimed by all passing things, vanishing bit by bit in them, but flourishing in them too…."… The word "glimmer" evokes Fitzgerald's Father Schwartz, who goes mad at the end of "Absolution" because he has tried to suppress his attraction to sensuous things. The writer's relation with his surroundings has the immediacy of the love Goyen sees Jesus preaching: "Jesus loved the physical world and the suffering creature in man. He was so much a part of the substance of nature that it was the very material of his teaching…."…

All along the writer has sought wholeness. He has been dissociated from his home region and felt "the most painful sense of dismemberment" … when he has returned there; he needs to rediscover his "beginnings," which are his "heritage" and his "truth."… "What matter what else he had gained, if he did not possess, as it existed, the shape of his own life …?"… he asks, echoing Jesus' question, "For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the world, and lose himself, or be cast away?" (p. 419)

Self-integration is critical in Goyen's stories: it precedes any form of reaching out. It is also quintessential to Jesus' message as Goyen perceives it: "Curing and healing the afflicted … meant for Jesus making them whole again. He wanted people clean and whole…. He wanted a unity of the physical being as well as of the spiritual being, and he set great stock in mending fragments, putting together what was broken, and so bringing back physical dignity and fullness to the individual."… Once this is achieved, the ultimate goal may be pursued: "Jesus wanted to heal up this society around him by reforming it, and he wanted to restore to all human beings the sense of membership, fellowship, brotherhood, kingdom."…

Like many other characters of Goyen's, the writer in "Nests in a Stone Image" can find relief from confusion. Goyen arrays biblical imagery to depict the writer's agony, but the man, though not Christ, can approach in his resolution of his problems the exuberance that Goyen considers the essence of Jesus…. Goyen writes about many people who are anything but devout, but one must not confuse his work and his beliefs. He speaks repeatedly of the chaotic condition of the world (and devotes Come, the Restorer [1974] to depicting the absurdity of seeking a Messiah when oneself is unrestored), but he hopes because one can love. He believes, despite the fact that those beliefs are not always manifest in human activity. He recognizes that everyone is subject to anxiety—even Jesus—but hopes for the emanation of some word from the whole person. (p. 420)