Oh, deary dear. I reviewed A. N. Wilson's Unguarded Hours for Ignatius Press Novels, as it is the only religion-themed novel I have had time to read lately, and the fact I reviewed it has caused consternation among IP fans. It's not that I endorse the novel--I state clearly that it is not for the young or the sensitive--it's that I mention it AT ALL. And yet my Facebook critic would not have known that it was unsavoury in any way unless I had explicitly condemned it as such.
Wilson is rather Waughian in his tone, although (as I mention in the review), he picks not on modern society as much as on the clerical wing of the then-modern (1978) Church of England, which was full of atheist-socialist posturing and, not to put too fine a point on it, gay camp. The novel is devoid of faith in Christ, and the spiritual underpinning of the book is merely a fear that Christianity is all a crock, and all there is under Christian words and ritual is a bottomless nothingness.
I find that very interesting. I'd be wincing in humiliation if a disgruntled Catholic ex-seminarian exposed unsavoury elements in his training in that very British, mocking way. Catholics in Britain seem to think that would be dirty pool, though, and confine themselves to dinner party anecdotes. What I have heard about one Scottish prelate I would not care to repeat--although it would make a very funny... No.
Anyway, poor old Ig Pr is getting yelled at because of me, so would you all be angels and go here to respond intelligently to the review? I mean it. Two minutes out of your day to gladden the hearts of some good people. Before I got chucked out of a certain stuck-in-the-1970s Catholic newspaper, the editor suffered very greatly on my behalf, thanks to its "retired" editor, her mentor, who had kittens at such words and phrases as "Benediction" and "Sacrifice of the Mass." Oh, and while you are at it, browse the Ignatius Press catalogue and see if there's anything you'd like to give someone (including yourself) for Easter.
The critique is on the Ignatius Press Facebook page. If you feel like weighing in there, be nice to the weaker brethren.
12 comments:
those comments are patently ridiculous - he's seriously suggesting that we shouldn't pay any attention to bad things... because that works really really well for the kids who grow up too sheltered and then come out of Bible college and face a world they're utterly unprepared for. This is the information age. Also, someone commenting so many times on that and saying the mention of a bad book basically ruins IP is clearly a little too firmly ensconced in a very very small world.
Oh, dear. What silly ideas. They remind me of the father of a couple of my students (home schooled). When informed I'd be teaching them about Karl Marx in a history of philosophy class he was up in arms because "Catholic children shouldn't be exposed to that." No, because ignorance and defensiveness are the best weapons we have.
Haha, Lydia, exactly!
If "no publicity is bad publicity" as the enraged commenter claims and talking about something is the same as promoting it, why is it that stopping talking about sin in church for a few decades hasn't produced a vast flowering of virtue?
(Actually, I'm spoiled. The priests at my parish are fantastic preachers and their homilies generally strike an appropriate balance between comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.)
Done! Though I had to use my Facebook identity because Catholic Bibliophagist only exists in the blogshpere.
--C.B,
Done.
I rather wish someone would write a similar book about the Catholic seminaries in the 60s and 70s. A rousing satire of the theological and sexual insanities of that era would be most welcome. Sin cannot bear to be mocked, and there is much fodder for mockery there. I can see it now: "Goodbye, Good Men: The Musical!"
Thank you both!
Leo, that is a really interesting wish. I'm not sure if we could get a rollicking farce out of it--"Unguarded Hours" is supposed to be a rollick farce, and maybe Anglicans think it is. However, "Good-bye Good Men" was the examination of a tragedy.
If someone were to take on the horrors of the 1960s and 1970s (and 1980s and 1990s) in a comic vein, it would have to be the blackest comedy ever.
I don't think I could do it. I have had friends who suffered too much from it, including being scolded for objecting to a gay ordinand saying he had deliberately looked for child porn to see if he'd be attracted to it.
In fact, I know Catholic men who are literally homophobic, as in, do their very best to avoid any homosexuals because they are literally afraid of them, thanks to what has happened in the clergy.
I don't think "camp" culture within seminaries--anything that comes close to resembling the "Queens' Bench" refectory table in Wilson's novel is at all funny, and I have never gone along with it. Any male religious who refers to himself as "she" or "Auntie" or "Mary" or "a girl" gets an immediate verbal slap from intolerant me. As a real woman, I don't particularly care for men colonizing female language and imagery to express what they fondly imagine is an analogous identity involving sexual attraction to men.
That man is daft. Who does he think is looking at IP's blog that's going to see "not a good novel" and think, "ah, there's my reading list!"? On the bright side, I've made my name untypeable in English so he could only respond to me obliquely. I put my two cents in twice this morning so let him shout about trying to look reasonable.
Added my own two cents now that I am able to get back to facebook. Didn't bother responding to the indignant guy, just tried to increase the signal to noise ratio a bit.
I agree with Nzie. That man is daft. What does he suggest we all do? Quarantine ourselves from the world? Talk only to the "pure"? Refuse to read anything at all depicting sin? (Well, there goes almost all literature.) Frankly, I wouldn't listen to anyone who invokes the opinions of Padre Pio on the immorality of "unsuitable material" in the context of literary criticism of a book he clearly has not read. (I'd also be curious to know if he would react quite so vehemently to a satire of other kinds of sin - for example to Waugh's satire of imperialism in Black Mischief. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine him claiming that a review of that novel would result in readers of that review suddenly feeling an uncontrollable urge to go and indulge in acts of violent colonial conquest.) Don't worry about him, Seraphic. He's clearly not someone you can reason with.
I agree with Nzie. That man is daft. What does he suggest we all do? Quarantine ourselves from the world? Talk only to the "pure"? Refuse to read anything at all depicting sin? (Well, there goes almost all literature.) Frankly, I wouldn't listen to anyone who invokes the opinions of Padre Pio on the immorality of "unsuitable material" in the context of literary criticism of a book he clearly has not read. (I'd also be curious to know if he would react quite so vehemently to a satire of other kinds of sin - for example to Waugh's satire of imperialism in Black Mischief. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine him claiming that a review of that novel would result in readers of that review suddenly feeling an uncontrollable urge to go and indulge in acts of violent colonial conquest.) Don't worry about him, Seraphic. He's clearly not someone you can reason with.
I think perhaps he and others had a brain freeze when they saw the word "homo-eroticism." It might have conjured up visions of, I am not sure what, a gay "The Thornbirds?" Of course, I never read "The Thornbirds" and I can't read minds, so that is just a guess. In short, he must have thought this somehow had to be a pornographic novel because I used the word "homo-erotic" of the author's seminary days.
Actually, 20th century British literature is full of gay characters. They're in Agatha Christie's novels, in Evelyn Waugh's novels, and in Nancy Mitford's novels. Normally "what they do" is never described, of course, if they are indeed sexually active.
Although it is indeed strongly suggested the gay characters are unchaste, for the most part the comedy around them is their insistence on calling each other by girls' names and pondering obscene topics despite their utter devotion to Anglo-Catholic church ritual.
I'm not bothered for ME. I bothered for any sensitive souls at Ig Pr.
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