by Christopher J. Scalia
Since the death of J. F. Powers in 1999, admiring reviewers (all of his reviewers have been admiring) have mourned not only his death, but the general obscurity of his novels and stories. Although his first novel, Morte D'Urban, won the 1963 National Book Award -- over the more familiar names of John Updike, Katherine Anne Porter, and Vladimir Nabokov -- and his work was praised by such major figures as Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O'Connor (more on her later), he is not very well known, even among Catholics whose Church and priests he wrote about with such skill, insight, heart, and humor.
2 comments:
I share your admiration for JF Powers, one of the most gifted American writers of the 20th century. Several years ago the New York Review of Books reissued his Collected Stories and perhaps some of his other work as well. His vivid description of Catholic clerical culture of pre-Vatican II days is both funny and needle sharp, and even now remains timely.
Jim Forest
www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/
I enjoyed his Morte d'Urban greatly.
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