Faith in Fiction: The Roundup

A tough act to follow, no?

[This post will be updated and republished as new contributions to the conversation are released. If you know of an online or print piece that warrants inclusion in this list, contact me at nripatrazone@hotmail.com and if it fits what I'm looking for, I'll make the addition.]

In “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South”--what Glenn Arbery notes is a “composite essay published from two of her last public talks”--Flannery O’Connor is prophetic, as always:

The Catholic press is constantly broken out in a rash of articles on the failure of the Catholic novelist: the Catholic novelist is failing to reflect the virtue of hope, failing to show the Church’s interest in social justice, failing to portray our beliefs in a light that will make them desirable to others. He occasionally writes well, but he always writes wrong . . .

when we talk about the Catholic failure to produce good fiction in this country, we seldom hear from anyone actively engaged in trying to produce it, and the discussion has not yielded any noticeable returns. We hear from editors, schoolteachers, moralists, and housewives: anyone living considers himself an authority on fiction. The novelist, on the other hand, is supposed to be like Mr. Jarrell’s pig that didn’t know what bacon was.

If you are new to the game, here are the rules: laments that Catholic fiction is dead are not new, but they are also not useless. Rather, as I mention in the print version of TheFine Delight, I needed a very capable writer (critic Robert Fay) to ask the question for me to (attempt) to provide an answer: Catholic writers are alive, they are doing well, they can come over for a drink (or a prayer).

What follows is a very imperfect list of the many voices in this conversation (including my own...). And by conversation I mean discussions of Catholic fiction that open beyond an individual work; that offer wide theses or pose questions of genre and form. Direct links are provided whenever possible. Some links go to essays, articles, blog posts, reactions, letters, comment threads. As I mention above, I would love the list to grow. I know that the list is going to grow.

Here it is.

Faith in Fiction: The Roundup

1933 "The Catholic Book" by AN Raybould in The Irish Monthly (JSTOR) 

1957 "The Church and the Fiction Writer" by Flannery O'Connor in America

1978 "Catholic Writing: Some Basic Notions, Some Criticisms, and a Tentative Reply" by JC Whitemouse in Modern Language Review (EBSCO)

1981 Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America by David S Reynolds (book)

1985 "The Failed Promise of American Catholic Literature" by Paul R. Messbarger in US Catholic Historian (JSTOR)

1987 "The Demise of Father O'Malley: Reflections on Recent American Catholic Fiction" by Anita Gandolfo in US Catholic Historian (JSTOR) 

1988 The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists by Ralph Wood (book)

1990 To Promote, Defend, and Redeem: The Catholic Literary Revival and the Cultural Transformation of American Catholicism, 1920-1960 by Arnold Sparr (book)

1992 Testing the Faith: The New Catholic Fiction in America by Anita Gandolfo
(book)

1993 "Catholic Fiction and the Modern World" by Heinz R Kuehn in The Sewanee Review (JSTOR)

1994 "Catholicism in Contemporary American Fiction" by John F Desmond in America (EBSCO)

1994 "Writing as Sacrament" by Ron Hansen in Image 5

1994 "The Christian Writer in a Fragmented Culture" by Gregory Wolfe in Image 7

1995 "On Being a Catholic Writer" by Ralph McInerny in Crisis Magazine

1995 "A Conversation with William Kennedy" in Image 8 

1996 "How Realistic Can a Catholic Writer Be?" by Una M Cadegan in Religion and American Culture (JSTOR) 

1996 "The Christian Imagination" by William Dyrness in Image 15

1997 The Catholic Imagination in American Literature by Ross Labrie (book)

1998 "Literature and Belief" by Louis Simpson in Image 21

1999 "American Catholic Arts and Fictions and the New Catholic Scholarship" by Paul Giles in US Catholic Historian (JSTOR) 

1999 "Looking for Grace in All the Write Places" by Patrick McCormick in US Catholic (EBSCO)

1999 Like and Unlike God: Religious Imaginations in Modern and Contemporary Fiction by John Neary (book)

1999 "A Different Discipline: The American Catholic Novel" by Gerald Russello in Renascence (EBSCO)

1999 "The Church and the Fiction Writer" by Patrick Samway, SJ in America (EBSCO)

1999 "The Christian Writer and His Community" by James Calvin Schaap in Image 22 

1999 "Pilgrims and Prophets: The Figure of the Priest in the Fiction of Andre Dubus and Walker Percy" by Patrick Samway SJ in Image 24

2001 "The Last Catholic Writer in America?" by Paul Elie, delivered at the Union Theological Seminary for "Catholicism and the Public Square" conference

2002 "The Catholic Novel: Fact or Fiction" by Peter Quinn in Commonweal (EBSCO it, please)

2003 "The Lunatic in the Pew" by Alice McDermott in Boston College Magazine

2003 The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie (book)

2003 "Writing the Sacred" by Peggy Payne in Image 39   

2003 "The Word Cure: Cancer, Language, Prayer" by Valerie Sayers in Image 41  

2004 "Confessions of a Reluctant Catholic" by Alice McDermott in Commonweal (get thee to JSTOR) 

2004 Cathedrals of Bone--The Role of the Body in Contemporary Catholic Literature by John Waldmeir (Project Muse-it)

2004 Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction by Farrell O'Gorman  (book)

2004 "A Writer's Faith" by Harold Fickett in Image 42  

2004 "Why Have We Given Up the Ghost? Notes on Reclaiming Literary Fiction" by Bret Lott in Image 43

2005 Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph Wood (book)

2005 Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination by Mark Bosco, SJ (book)

2006 "Catholic Minds of the South: A New Concert" by Bryan Giemza in The Southern Literary Journal (Project Muse)

2006 "Don DeLillo's Latin Mass" by Amy Hungerford in Contemporary Literature (Project Muse) 

2006 "Introduction to Paul Horgan's Things As They Are" by George Weigel at Catholic Education Resource Center 

2007 "Revisiting the Catholic Literary Imagination" by Douglas Robillard in Modern Fiction Studies (Project Muse)

2007 "The Catholic Novel" by Bernard Bergonzi in Commonweal (EBSCO) 

2008 American Catholic Arts and Fictions: Culture, Ideology, Aesthetics by Paul Giles (book) (this one is not cheap)

9/2008 "The State of Catholic Letters: Part 1, Part II, Part III, and Part IV" by Gregory Wolfe at the Image blog. 

9/2008. "Catholic Fiction - One. More. Time" by Matthew Lickona at Godsbody

9/2008. "Catholic Letters: The Last Shout" by Matthew Lickona at Korrektiv

2009 "The Yoke of Sympathy: the Fiction Writer and Her Characters" by Mary Kenagy in Image 53  

2010 Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion Since 1960 by Amy Hungerford
(book)

2011 Between Human and Divine: The Catholic Vision in Contemporary Literature by Mary R Reichardt (JSTOR)

2011 "Writing with so Great a Cloud of Witnesses" by Bret Lott in Image 69  

11/28/11 "Where Have All the Catholic Writers Gone?" by Robert Fay in The Millions

2/19/12 "Liturgy, Literature, and Lisicky's Famous Builder" by Nick Ripatrazone in Pilgrim Journal 

4/12 "What Happened to the Catholic Novel?" in French Studies (Project Muse)

Summer 2012 "Catholicism and Metaphor: The Catholic Fiction of David Lodge" by Marian Crowe in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture (Project Muse) 

6/15/12 "The New Catholic Fiction" by DG Myers in Commentary

6/29/12 "The Literature of Conversion" by DG Myers in Commentary

9/13/12 "Small, Good Things" by Casey N Cep in The Paris Review

12/19/12 "Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?" by Paul Elie in The New York Times

12/19/12 "Faith and Fiction" by Alan Jacobs in The American Conservative

12/20/12 "The Novel of Belief" by DG Myers in A Commonplace Blog

1/10/13 "Faith in Fiction" Letters to the Editor in The New York Times

1/10/13 "Whispers of Faith in a Postmodern World" by Gregory Wolfe in The Wall Street Journal 

1/11/13 "Faith in Fiction: Should We Shout or Whisper" by Bernardo Aparicio in Dappled Things 

1/12/13 "Faith and Fiction" by Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak in Commonweal (blog) 

1/23/13 "Has American Fiction Lost Sight of God?" by John Daniel Davidson in First Things

1/28/13 "Belief, Religion, and Piety in Fiction" by Noah Millman in The American Conservative

3/11/13 "Jamie Quatro's Stories of Adultery" by James Wood in The New Yorker 

4/16/13 "Counter and Strange: Contemporary Catholic Literature" by Nick Ripatrazone in The Millions

4/19/13 The Fine Delight: Postconciliar Catholic Literature by Nick Ripatrazone (book) 

4/13 "Our Essential Disfigurement and the Reparation of Fiction" Joshua Hren in conversation with Joseph O'Brien in Dappled Things

4/13 "A Novel Vocation: A Conversation with Ron Hansen" by Joseph O'Brien in Dappled Things 

7/18/13 "Faith in Fiction" by Randy Boyagoda in First Things

7/18/13 "Pulpit Fiction" by Matthew Schmitz in First Things (First Thoughts Blog) 

7/13 Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South by Bryan Giemza (book)

8/15/13 "Top 10 Living Religious Novelists" by Artur Rosman in Cosmos The In Lost 

9/13 "Image Top 25 Contemporary Writers of Faith" at Patheos

10/16/13 "How Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy Helped to Invent the South" by Nick Ripatrazone at Marginalia

11/19/13 "Capturing the Paradox of Distaste and Desire" by Nick Ripatrazone at Marginalia 

12/13 "The Catholic Writer Today" by Dana Gioia in First Things 

12/13 "Shards of Faith" by Nick Ripatrazone in America 

12/13 "Restoring Faith in Fiction: A Visit with Walker Percy and Paul Elie" (interview) by Joseph O'Brien in Dappled Things 

1/14 "The Catholic Writer: Then and Now" by Gregory Wolfe in Image

1/14 "Screeds, or Essays for the Near Future?" by Paul Elie at Everything that Rises
 

Now that is a cover.