Mr. Ives’ Christmas
by Oscar Hijuelos
HarperCollins, 1995
ISBN 0060171316

Mr. Ives’ Christmas is a melancholy tale that emphasizes the grayness and coldness of winter. One may not want to actually read it at Christmas depending on whether one’s outlook on the holiday tends to be on the darkish side or not. I read it this past spring, and although most of the story does not actually take place at Christmas time, the setting and tone did seem incongruous with the bright world outside the book. It was quite an enjoyable read however. The story definitely centers on Mr. Ives who is a rather formal, albeit sentimental, man so that the author’s consistent referring to him as Ives or Mr. Ives does not seem unnatural. Ives is passionate about only three things – his Catholicism, sex with his wife (an intensity that somewhat befuddles him) and his son. Unfortunately this beautiful, holy boy is murdered a day or so before Christmas when he was only seventeen and about to enter the seminary (this is the opening of the book so is not a spoiler). Hijuelos takes Ives back to his early childhood as an orphan and brings him forward to the present day to show how this monumental event affected his entire life. And more to the point, his soul.

There are no theological controversies in the book, and no critiques of clergy, religious or Church hierarchy. The story concerns one man’s overwhelming grief and how his spirituality does or does not enable him to handle it. Mr. Ives’ Catholicism is more emotional than rational, but the author points out that this makes his faith more vulnerable to tragedy. Yet, it is this child-like emotionalism combined with an unfathomable mysticism that vies with the rationalism which overtakes Ives after his son’s death.

The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
Viking, 2002
ISBN 0670894605

The Secret Life of Bees is the story of Lily Owens, fourteen years old in the summer of 1964.  Lily’s mother is dead, and she is somewhat precariously cared for by her abusive father and black housekeeper Rosaleen.  Lily, a social outcast and loner, spends a great deal of her time thinking about her mother and her own participation in her mother’s tragic death.  Until Rosaleen tries to register to vote and gets beaten and jailed.  Lily rescues her, and they must leave town, fugitives from the law.  Lily decides to go search of her mother’s past though the only clue she has is a Black Madonna icon with the town name Tilburton, South Carolina stamped on the back.
 

Lily’s search leads her to a group of woman whose lives are focused by a female theology centered on Our Lady of the Chains, their private title for the Blessed Virgin.  Here Lily and Rosaleen find not only safety but the sweetness of life symbolized by the honey production of three sisters known as “the calendar girls.”  But they find that even in safety, no one is protected from pain.  However, the spirituality of the sisters – from the wailing wall to the Mary Day ritual – gives these women strength and hope and joy.
 

The Secret Life of Bees was recently made into a film starring Dakota Fanning as Lily, Queen Latifah as August and Jennifer Hudson as Rosaleen.

Paradise News

by David Lodge

Viking, 1992

ISBN 0670842281

A cultured, British academic joins a tourist group on a “Hawaiian Paradise” vacation package so his father can visit his dying sister.  The British academic also happens to be an ex-priest who is barely making a living as what we would call a part-time adjunct at a second or third rate university.  He is no longer respected as a theologian since he left the priesthood, but he has little faith left to teach or write about anyway.  This is an amusing book but told with melancholy sadness.  This so-called paradise includes a dying aunt and an aging, cantankerous father hoping to inherit his sister’s large fortune.  The setting is tourist Hawaii as well as the realities of Hawaii as a place real people live and love and die.  The tackiness of the tourist package is incongruous with the tragedy of people’s lives.  Even the minor characters have sad lives.  The ending remains hopeful though.   The second rate academic, ex-priest is no more incongruous here in paradise than he is anywhere else. And there are elements of the myth of paradise on earth that are real.  The weather is all sunshine and warmth, and there is a healing aspect to that.  For the most sensitive of readers, the hero is a laicized priest, and there are one or two tame sexual encounters involving him (after his laicization), but for the most part, the book may be a little sad on the subject of faith but is not offensive.    

The Last Catholic in America
by John R. Powers
E.P. Dutton, 1973
ISBN 0829421300

The Last Catholic in America, like Catholics by Brian Moore, has been recently re-published by the Loyola Classics Series.   

The Last Catholic is typical of the many “I Survived Catholic Schools” memoirs about parochial school life before Vatican II.  It’s humor is affectionate and genial.  However, it does include the usual stereotypes of harsh nuns, obsessive priests, and parents unquestioning of the Church.  Also typical is the drama created by a growing boy’s tension with (and misinterpretation of) the Church’s view of human sexuality.  These are among the book’s funniest scenes including an attempt to buy soft-porn and a talk on the “facts of life” delivered to the eighth graders (segregated by gender) by an octogenerian priest — a talk which mysteriously turns all eight grade girls against the boys.

The Last Catholic in America  is a  refreshingly comic novel although it does have the occasional moment of poignant nostalgia.  John R. Powers followed The Last Catholic with Do Black Patent-Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up which continues his fictionalized memoirs with his adventures in a Catholic all-boys high school.

Catholics
by Brian Moore
Loyola Classics, 2006
ISBN: 9780829423334

Catholics is a very short novel and easy to read, but it is anything but light.  The story takes place at an Irish monastery built on a remote,rocky island on a cold, harsh rainy night.  The stormy weather matches the personal and internal conflicts of the characters. There’s not much plot; instead the narrative consists mainly of conversations and internal monologues.

Catholics was first published in 1972 during the chaotic period following Vatican II.  However, it takes place in a fictional time following Vatican IV. In some of its details Catholics is definitely dated.  Many of the supposedly shocking elements — such as a priest travelling in non-clerical garb — are commonplace now.  Others seem far-fetched — such as private confessions banned by Rome.  One “battle” is timely though — the Irish monks have returned to saying the Mass in Latin, and Father Kinsella has been sent from the Vatican to make them cease and desist. 

The novel is neither a criticism of Vatican II nor an advocation of it. The main point of the story is not how ecumenical the Church should or should not be; it’s not about the Mass in English or in Latin.  It is, rather, a confrontation between two men of authority within the Church which raises questions of faith and it’s source.

Catholics is available at Doherty Library.

Franny and Zooey

by J.D. Salinger
Little, Brown and Company, 1955
ISBN 3-316-76954-1

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (which is actually two longish short stories published together as a novel) is not what’s usually thought of as “Catholic Fiction.”  However, I have a tradition of giving it to my nieces and nephews when they receive Confirmation, along with its companion work The Way of the Pilgrim. 

Franny is a senior in college when she runs across the slim volume The Way of the Pilgrim, a spiritual work by an anonymous 19^th-century Russian Orthodox peasant searching for the means to carry out St. Paul’s directive to “pray without ceasing.”  Franny begins to see, or to think she sees, that everyone around her is, in her words, “all ego.”  (Holden Caulfield would say they’re all “phonies.”).  In other words, she finds that this life, especially its intellectual pursuits, is “all straw.”   However, instead of leading her to higher spiritual insight, this idea leads her to depression.  It takes her brother Zooey, in his epymonious story, to help her find the peace through prayer that she seeks.

The Glass children, of whom Franny and Zooey are the youngest, are half-Irish Catholic and half Jewish, and they were all mentored by the eldest brother Seymour in Eastern spiritualities.  The religious references in the book are eclectic but ultimately Zooey closes the stories with one of the most christian, and catholic, insights I’ve ever read.  Certainly, it lead me to go on to read The Way of the Pilgrim when I myself was a senior in college and then onto the collection of Eastern Christian spiritual writings called The Philokalia studied by The Pilgrim.

On Pilgrimage
by Jennifer Lash
Bloomsbury, 1991
ISBN 1-58234-012-9

This summer Doherty’s first Summer Reading Program for faculty and staff read and discussed the memoir On Pilgrimage by the novelist Jennifer Lash. Although not strictly fiction, Lash’s book is a narrative of the journey she took from Caen to Santiago de Compostela. She sets out on this pilgrimage after being treated for cancer when the disease was in remission. Lash’s narrative focuses primarily on the experience of the moment – she rarely considers the past or contemplates the future. Rather she describes her emotional and physical reactions at each of the places she visits. The only deep questions she delves into are “why am I doing this” and “how do we each approach “C’est un mystère’ or ‘the mystery of faith.’” Lash was born and raised Catholic and visits mainly Roman Catholic shrines throughout Europe (although she does also visit some non-Catholic ones). She, at the time, was a lapsed Catholic but her worldview is still very much formed by Catholicism. The narrative, therefore, has an interesting combination of “insider” and “outside” quality to it.

The participants in the Summer Reading Program had some lively discussions about the nature of pilgrimage in general, where are the pilgrim sites in the United States, and what Lash gained from her journey.

As an interesting side note, Lash is the mother of actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes. Here’s a link to a page of information about Jennifer Lash that includes “An Evening with Ralph Fiennes, Joseph Fiennes and Sophie Fiennes Reading from Blood Ties and On Pilgrimage.” by Jennifer Lash. New York City, 27 July 1999.

The Cape Ann
by Faith Sullivan
Penguin, 1989
ISBN: 978-0140119794

The Cape Ann begins as an innocent coming of age story about a young girl, Lark Ann Erhardt, preparing to make her First Holy Communion and planning with her mother, Arlene, to build a house based on floor plans called The Cape Ann.  The story is set during the Great Depression, and the family has been living in makeshift quarters in the train depot since Lark was a baby.  Lark is still sleeping in her crib in her parents’ room.  Their plans are complicated by Lark’s father’s gambling the savings away as well as her aunt’s money and love problems.  Along the way towards their dream, Lark and Arlene interact with their community of Harvester, Minnesota, and Lark learns much about humans and human nature, especially compassion and the lack of it.

The Cape Ann uses the Catholic culture of the Depression years as the background for the tale.  Part of the humor in the book comes from Lark’s misunderstandings about theology.  For the most part that is the role Catholicism takes in the book.  However, complicating Lark’s Catholicism is the fact that Lark’s mother is a convert, so she is a device for analyzing the outsider living within a community – half-in, half-out.

Most of the characters know little more about Catholic theology than Lark and also suffer from misunderstandings, from either ignorance or expedience.  They also have a pre-Vatican II view of many theological issues – such as whether a suicide can be buried from the church and on consecrated ground.  Catholics with an understanding of our own history can see these discrepancies, but I always wonder about how non-Catholics or uneducated Catholics read literary portrayals of these ideas.  Do they know what theological issues have changed?  Do they know that Catholics often don’t understand their own faith?  But that’s not the fault of the book.  And probably not it’s responsibility either.  A careful and educated reader will see through the flaws of the characters to find a study of strong women struggling to grow within the confines of their place and time.

I do think it would be fun if some author wrote of growing up as a Catholic in my childhood – what we like to call “the felt on burlap” era.  Changes from Vatican II were just beginning to settle in – most of the fighting and bitterness were over.  It was an odd time – a time of somewhat loose theology and odd liturgical proceedings.  Most of the music was bad and most of the churches were ugly.  Vestments were dominated by butterflies and rainbows.  But it was certainly a time of great enthusiasm and joy and involvement.  As an early teen I was conflicted by my annoyance at the tackiness and my appreciation of the relevancy to my contemporary way of life.  I was conflicted by an enthusiasm for belting out “And They’ll Know We are Christians by Our Love” at the top of my lungs and a longing for the quiet beauty of “Panis Angelicus.”  It’s a great era for a coming of age tale.  I challenge someone to write it. 

Even though I’ve already suggested one book by Jon Hassler (Dear James), since he has recently passed away, I would like to honor him with another entry.  All of Hassler’s works are eminently worth reading, but three of my personal favorites are The Dean’s List, Simon’s Night, and North of Hope.

The Dean’s List is the first Hassler novel I read.  It is an immensely funny depiction of academic life from the point of view of a weary administrator (who’d rather be a faculty member).  Edwards lives with his mother whose death he must soon face; he frequently runs into his ex-wife with whom he still has a friendly and loving relationship.  He occasionally runs into the friends of his teaching days (whose adventures are recounted in Hassler’s earlier novel Rookery Blues).  But something is missing from his life, something that’s been missing since his father was struck by lightening when Leland was fourteen.  He’s the dean of a mediocre university with a more than mediocre president.  His mother, a local radio personality, outshines him and controls him.  Then arrives on campus the noted poet Richard Falcon (a sort of Robert Frost-ish kind of poet)  whom Leland is supposed to keep track of.  Chaos, hilarity and pathos ensue.  And in the process his life changes.

Simon’s Night begins at what Simon Shea assumes is the end of his life.  He’s eighty now and having difficulty living by himself.   He has lived alone since his wife abandoned him years ago.  Simon’s commits himself into the Norman Home for the Elderly, a place filled with the most amusing old people ever described by a warm and loving author.  These are not caricatures or stereotypes of crazy old people – although they are to some extent crazy.  They are very much real people with faults, annoying habits, and deep, sympathetic souls.  Much of Simon’s story is his remembrances, and these flashbacks contain one of the most beautiful descriptions of making a choice between, not really good and evil, but between a good and The Good ever written.  Simon is ultimately faced with another choice in this novel – a choice between wasting his life or beginning it anew.

North of Hope is perhaps Hassler’s darkest novel, and it is also perhaps his masterpiece.  There are still amusing characters, however, such as the old parish priest who feels compelled to spend most of his day praying for all the people he once said he would pray for and all the souls of the dead he has ever buried through the years.  He questions at what point a person can stop praying for another, but since he has no answer, he continues in his duty though it leaves him little time for anything else.  Father Healy, the assistant pastor, originally chose the priesthood because it was his mother’s dying wish when he was eleven.  When this familial legend comes into question, his whole vocation comes into question.  He is the one in this novel faced with the choice – the choice between love and Love.  He must choose between a vocation that has recently left him empty and weary and a woman whom he has loved since a teenager and who now  desperately needs him. 

We have lost a great storyteller in the passing of Jon Hassler, one who so eloquently and sympathetically delineated our choices between good and the greater good.  Choosing between good and evil isn’t all that hard, but choosing between two loves can be.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. 
And may perpetual light shine upon him.

Requiescat in Pacem.

The Poems of Alice Meynell
Scribner’s, 1925

April is National Poetry Month, so even though Alice Christina Meynell did not write fiction, I’m going to recommend her Catholic writings anyway.  The first time I ran across Meynell, I was in a gift shop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I discovered a delightful little book of love poems illustrated with paintings from the museum.  I didn’t buy the book because it was too expensive, but I quickly memorized Meynell’s name and the first lines of her two poems in the collection and found them the next day using Granger’s Index of Poetry.  They became two of my favorite poems.  I give them to you here:

Renouncement

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,

I shun the love that lurks in all delight–

The love of thee–and in the blue heaven’s height,

And in the dearest passage of a song.

Oh, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng

This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;

But it must never, never come in sight;

I must stop short of thee the whole day long.

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Must doff my will as raiment laid away,–

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

I run, I run, I am gather’d to thy heart.

After Parting

Farewell has long been said; I have forgone thee;

I never name thee even.

But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?

For thou art so near Heaven

That Heavenward meditations pause upon thee.

Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;

My trembling thoughts discern

Thy goodness in the good for which I pine;

And, if I turn from but one sin, I turn

Unto a smile of thine.

How shall I thrust thee apart

Since all my growth tends to thee night and day–

To thee faith, hope, and art?

Swift are the currents setting all one way;

They draw my life, my life, out of my heart.

Meynell converted to Catholicism in 1868, and there is a romantic story that she fell in love with the priest under whom she received her instruction and that these poems are addressed to him.  We do like our poets and their poems to have such tender stories attached to them.  How delightfully melancholy to be torn by the paradox of a love which makes you a virtuous person (as true love should) but a love that you cannot as a virtuous person have.  Most of Meynell’s poetry is Catholic in subject matter and “closely examines the human role in constructing and celebrating the Catholic faith, and it repeatedly explores the relationship of faith and art.”*  Meynell married her husband Wilfred Meynell in 1877 and together they edited and wrote for the Catholic publications The Weekly Register and The Tablet.  Meynell also contributed essays to The Spectator, The Saturday Review and The National Observer.  Her poetical output was actually rather small and during her life she was admired as much as an essayist as a poet.  She counted among her close friends the other members of the Catholic Literary Revival of the 1890’s including G.K. Chesterton, Francis Thompson, and Hilaire Belloc among others. 

Doherty Library has two collections of Meynell’s poetry and one collection of her essays.  I haven’t read her essays yet, but intend to do so this weekend.