“Waugh was here in March. Said he came to Minnesota to see me and the Indian reservations. He is also interested in Father Divine. He was all right, and his wife, but it wasn’t anything like the bout I’d anticipated from his books. Suppose that’s life.”
— J.F. Powers, letter to Robert Lowell, May 25, 1949
Oh, mercy, good people, it’s always been the same: Catholic writers huddled together in odd places and mostly failing to make a go of it. There’s even a Sister Mary Joseph Scherer who starts up a Gallery of Living Catholic Authors. But it’s a wonderful book, this is.
“Catholic writers huddled together in odd places and mostly failing to make a go of it.”
Well, at least we don’t have THAT problem. I mean with Gerasene it’s….um…well –
Oh, look, a baby wolf!
Wolf?
Wrong canid, bub.
Don’t be so gloomy. After all, it’s not that awful. Like the fella says: In England for thirty years after the Great War they had Protestant prejudice, modernist prejudice, Depression, and the Blitz, but they produced Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the Second Spring. In America after Vatican II they had justice and peace – they had half a century of tambourines and the NAB, and what did that produce? There Be Dragons.
Cue U2’s unheralded Zither and Smirk.
Is that the sound of four men chopping down a Joshua tree?
JOB
I love that he came to see the Indian reservations, too.