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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A writer's writer worth of rediscovery,
By
This review is from: Prince of Darkness (Hogarth fiction) (Paperback)
These ten stories were first published in 1947. They reflect Powers, Midwestern-born and bred, as intrigued by the possibilities of writing about Catholic priests. This slim volume treats as well as what then was called the "race problem" with contemporary African American tensions; baseball; "The Old Bird" where a middle-aged man looking for work during war when he knows it's the only reason he could find the menial temp job he must accept, and a nuanced story, "Renner," about refugees and anti-Semitism. As a Catholic Worker who had been jailed for his opposition to WW2, Powers possessed the moral strength of convictions rooted in signs of contradiction. He also peered about with an unsparing eye for dissembling, and called his fellow Americans to task for it. Yet he remained free of sanctimony, no mean feat, and counted himself culpable too.
No wonder that Thomas Merton admired him; Powers went on with only twenty more stories over a long career. (Born 1917, he began publishing stories in the mid-1940s; he died in 1999). A "writer's writer" who refused to glad-hand or cater to the mass market, his fiction in the post-Vatican II age failed to keep the attention of a fickle readership, but in retrospect his questioning of the insularity of a Babbitry within the separatist mentality endemic to the Catholic Church in the middle of the century may have hastened its own undoing! Powers had enduring ties with those in the Church agitating for social reform and relevant liturgies. His concerns may be muted in his art, but they resonate for an attentive audience today. The best stories here probe gently but relentlessly how moral dilemmas unfold within a superficially trivial job or mundane career, often one in a rectory or chancery. This concentration enriches the collections "The Presence of Grace (1956) & "Look How the Fish Live, expanding the themes of his early stories. and his novels "Morte d'Urban" (1962, winner of the National Book Award) and "Wheat That Springeth Green" (1988) of which build on the promise first shown here, lean towards mordantly tragi-comic scrutiny of clerical life in unnamed Middle America. His thirty stories have been collected, with no additions, as "The Stories of J.F. Powers" in 2001 by New York Review Press in a handsome edition, as well as the two novels each reissued. Painstakingly crafted, the lesser stories in "Prince" about racial tensions date themselves, however, compared to five clerical stories. "The Lord's Day" examines tensions between a domineering pastor and a convent full of cowed sisters. "The Valiant Woman" looks at a meddling housekeeper from a priest's perspective, as they are doomed to live together but remain vastly apart in their curious intimacy. "The Forks" poses a moral dilemma for an upright if uptight curate under a pastor's annoying but worldly-wise readiness to compromise one Gospel truth for another just as compelling. "Lions, Hearts, Leaping Does" offers a heartbreakingly vivid if uncharacteristically lyrical account of a dying friar's last days. It ends with an epiphany equal to any in one of Power's inspirations along with Hemingway and Faulkner, James Joyce's "Dubliners," A no less dramatic final line less ambiguously and more chillingly concluded the longer narrative of a restive associate pastor wanting a promotion in "The Prince of Darkness." This story prepares in retrospect for the fictional dioceses of Great Plains and the wonderfully apropos Ostengothenberg in the later work of Powers. While unfairly consigned today to a mid-20c Catholic ghetto of once respected writers, Powers need not be read only by those interested in religious themes in American fiction. His assured style pares down what he ruefully and slightly satirically often observes while allowing a tenderness and humanity to filter in, akin to stories today of a superficially far different author, George Saunders. Like Saunders, Powers listens to everyday Americans off the beaten track, in nondescript suburbs and featureless tracts, and makes them as worthy of compassion and dignity as any hero of a revered epic.
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Almost Forgotten Master,
By JAK "jk" (nj) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Prince of Darkness (Hogarth fiction) (Paperback)
I bought this book around 20 years ago and finally got around to reading it.It was about time.Powers had the dubious distinction of being a writers writer.That is ,writers read him while the general public largely ignored him.He was respected by Saul Bellow and there are a couple of letters to him in the recently published collection of Bellows letters.The introduction to this volume is by Mary Gordon and it reminds me of why I once liked her.She can be a good critic when she restrains her polemical instincts.Some of the stories here are not all that distinguished.I found RENNER,THE OLD BIRD and THE LORD'S DAY to be little more than competent character sketches.However, LIONS,HARTS,LEAPING DOES is a great story.Although I'm not sure I can say what it is "about".An old priest is dying and he interacts with a none too bright monk who he has long known.This interaction is both moving and intellectually engaging.THE TROUBLE,THE FORKS and PRINCE OF DARKNESS are almost as good.Powers primary focus is American , largely Midwestern ,Catholic life in the mid 20th century.It's a bygone world but Powers observations are by no means dated.He casts an unsparing but I think understanding eye on the foibles of people trying to lead lives in conformance with a moral code. Without necessarily knowing it, they aim to live life deliberately as opposed to living lives of quiet desperation.In their struggles Powers characters can be comical but even the mediocre are trying ,which gives them a dignity and grace they would otherwise lack.
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