BOOKS:
Reedy, Robert Leiter, William E. May, Gerard
religiosity? "Men of Emerson's genera- tation took this unpopular stand, as an Swiftian parody of the intellectual tion, South as well as North, habitually unconscious desire to...
...ROBERT LEITER most critical assessments, four of the His mind was never as admirable as finest prose writers of the post-Civil his style...
...spacious" novel, comparable to Tol- attitudes of American writers to the Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard stoy's War and Peace...
...Clyde S. Kilby's change or be changed...
...Her 'Transposition," Lewis once pitied the bogged down and discouraged by their purpose is not to condemn, nor is it man whose "world is all fact and no repetitious setbacks...
...Kilby's introduction to his deja vu...
...Nor dragons and death, against a cosmic is of the essence of evil, even of the is she condemning the human race, as background of cliffs and mountains...
...Steinfels to splendid drawings of Siegfried by Ar- dentists, hopelessly terminal illness, and label scholarship which takes seriously thur Rackham, an early, critical influ- making ends meet...
...religious also implied by Ms...
...was to convert sin, which traditionally argues that although sin may have disFaulkner knew when to let his criminals had been considered a transgression of appeared from serious use in our worklie still among the shadows and have God's law, a ruthless and hurting aday vocabularies "it has not gone from the citizenry of Yoknapatawpha Coun- breaking away from God and from the back of our minds...
...The Un- then one which speaks well of the Conversion an "admirable . . .and written War is not only about the future...
...offers the meaning of life...
...Daly's book...
...Kilby avoids the darker ingly done, is necessary if we are to ice to students of the late C. S. Lewis sides of Lewis' (and Williams') synhave hope that we can be saved from and Charles Williams...
...Rather than impassioned testament of faith...
...my contentions...
...Accepting meaning in fact in read C. S. Lewis because he fought this to construct a philosophy of sisterhood...
...He ap- being ravaged by three violent men...
...And to proclaim this millan keeps the Narnia chronicles and tion," whereby one can actually take message, Menninger maintains, is preeminently the task of the clergy...
...Over the land sun and wind still and move to burn and sway the trees, the grasses...
...published by Eerdthat Menninger describes are by no Many of the topics touched on in the mans-the essays, letters, and sermons means foreign to our experience...
...Our classical writers was a recipient of the William Faulkown fiction, we are tempted, as Aaron simply did not know the land and ner Foundation Award...
...and if one revision...
...What siah...
...guilt ridden, the brother quality-the land has a disturbing quietwriters continue to be influenced by leaves the child in the woods, telling his ude where actuality turns ever so gentFaulkner should now be a dead issue...
...Torrential power" reads the quote on the cover of the paperback version of The Orchard Keeper...
...Howells' case is faith in industrialism, it does not ques- Via the "old themes" (to use Mr...
...For too many American writers, Failed" reflect Twain's way of maneu- is particularly noteworthy...
...Whatever Became of Sin...
...Two with the details of human infidelity, major importance...
...Menninger believes that the sense guilt and of human freedom...
...Steinfels...
...These nessee hill country during the Depression years, but McCarthy's prose allows little period detail to emerge...
...There is no the rest of humanity, into a "crime" Not only does Menninger hold that corresponding reality against which to against the state...
...But to its mis29 March 1974: 90 fortune, The Orchard Keeper bore Outer Dark, McCarthy's second violence of The Orchard Keeper...
...Lester is Why has modern man lost his sense subsumed under verbal artifacts such all there is to Child of God, and for of sin...
...humus a darker pool wherein swirls a approaches his theme with caution, us- Unknown and rarely seen, they are a pale foam with bits of straw...
...ELIZABETH FARIANS, PH.D...
...sister it has died naturally and he has ly into myth without sacrificing the The Orchard Keeper suffers less from buried it...
...America's rich and powerful...
...its Southern origins than from its Irish untrue, that the child is alive, and sets With Child of God, language is a excesses...
...Osten- squarely faces the Faulknerian over- an old medical dictionary gleaned sibly, the story takes place in the Ten- tones, thereby avoiding the suppressed from the rubbish he picked...
...Steinfels to account 29 March 1974: 94...
...sible by the emergence of a new social . . . Urethra, Cerebella, Hernia If McCarthy can flesh out his next morality...
...A There is much good in this book...
...It is necessary to merely to name the demons, but it is meaning...
...Lewis certainly a review...
...Daly England and Wales through which letters, sermons, and in the photographs as "enemy of the people...
...Early in the once considered sinful and expressive still corresponds to something genuine work McCarthy had interjected brief of a wickedness rooted in the human in human experience, he describes in passages in which the townspeople heart into public crimes punishable by very compelling terms some things men mulled over the myth and actually of legal sanctions, men made it very diffi- do today that surely merit the label Lester Ballard, but he dropped the cult if not ridiculous to speak of them "sins...
...Steinfels anyway...
...But this ade marked by the decline of religious of sin is exceedingly important, indeed work takes a significant step toward publishers and publications, it is heartcrucial for human existence...
...all kinds of people, with all kinds of ROBERT LEITER, a free-lance writer, has interests, talents, and backgrounds...
...He has taken This step was one that was made posday in their crates about the yard realism to the province of folk myth...
...He believes that this malaise doing of what one knows to be wicked...
...Yet the result is his most moving book, one which is both an extraordinary So ends The Orchard Keeper...
...the significance of Dr...
...The first step category of symptoms...
...McCarthy's is a Southern of European experience in his art as A Connecticut Yankee questions our identity hitched to an Irish sensibility...
...Our un- most avoids reference to the European stitutions, beliefs, and believers upon derstanding of Narnia and the universe war going on as it is being written, the women, as "fantasy" is irresponsible...
...Contrary to is, to see his defense of the Chicago people they spoke to and for...
...its eyes and stops its ears to the maintains that sin is a reality, sin in Lester, darkly mysterious, struts about real evils that plague human exist- the sense of a personal, voluntary the novel striking dark notes in the ence...
...general the prose is pared clean: the perfect equivalent to the novel's Outer Dark is an exceptional advance narrative technique where strict chron- over The Orchard Keeper...
...But because of the it and be damned with the Calormenes, And why did Commonweal print such gravity of her remarks, I think it inWeston, and all the rest...
...Worse than that, howford, Cambridge, and various parts of simple humanity is everywhere in his ever, is the cheap portrayal of Dr...
...And it is the War was a metaphysical abstraction...
...To DOUGLAS GILBERT AND very good account of Lewis' conversion recognize that they do is itself im- CLYDE S. KILBY to Christianity, and a pictorial essay of portant, for this recognition is necessary Eerdmans, $12.95 about 170 pages devoted to places and if we are to have hope that we can persons Lewis loved...
...ty capture center stage...
...He excels at fantastically and encouraged by Dr...
...Bal- wise he is diseased at the very root ment of converting sin into crimes and lard romps like a wicked elf, surpris- of his being...
...It is a truth for which men hunger...
...Commonweal: 93 on the pain or anxiety of another, and was not writing novels...
...He could en- unfaced," writes Aaron in his conclud- some of the old ghosts, and has procourage the genius of a Crane and ing chapter...
...His realism, like his tempera- ruled by the House of Morgan...
...Certainly a willing suspension personal attack on the author...
...cumbent upon Ms...
...Although meeting the real questions demanding ening to see new titles continually we can never give a final "why" to answers, and intelligent answers, for brought forward, at reasonable prices, the deeds we do, and although many men today...
...Sin as is quite instructive on this point...
...By making deeds the notion of sin is still valid, that it pit Lester's violent world...
...I know many, many etary distances as "God's quarantine or get thrown away...
...Men of Emerson's genera- tation took this unpopular stand, as an Swiftian parody of the intellectual tion, South as well as North, habitually unconscious desire to cancel out his living in his self-contained world, it is read their personal aspirations, needs, unvalorous withdrawal in 1861...
...Lewis hiked...
...It led to an one Lester Ballard who rapes and mur- easy acceptance of "groupthink" and Hawthorn, $7.95 the notion of sin simply as collective ders, has provided Mr...
...But in ing language as a distancing element, dim but everpresent threat...
...McCarthy wishes to describe rather than to Daniel Berrigan relate...
...Our new booklet, "200 Ways to 200 Put Your Talent to Work in the LEONARD KRIEGEL is the author of Working Through: A Teacher's Journey in an Health Field;' tells about careers for Urban University...
...ature...
...He withdrew from active industrialism...
...this has little to do with length...
...Although this is a very hard as 'crime,' 'disease,' 'delinquency,' 'devall his mystery he is not enough...
...go to the works...
...McCarthy is not beyond an basically linear plot, splits it into three alternating scenes depicting the separate occasional flourish, as in this purplish separate strands, and, by means of a wanderings of brother and sister...
...As a result, he wound up as "Anyone who lives in the South, who War period...
...Lester's extravagant violence un- and man requires moral health...
...a mad variation on John Wesley's friendship with his fath- atmosphere...
...And yet, he refused to look Whitman made any effort to immerse society in which the writer's task re- at the War clearly...
...Twain was not ideological in which, along with Adams, he in- enough...
...Steinfels claims to have read the fundamentalist hostility to science, sympathy for most of his characters, Beyond God the Father but her piece whereby Ransom talks about interplan- who either come up to his standards shows no sign of it...
...Early in the book Men- symptoms nor to minimize the extraing young copulating couples in parked ninger describes the spiritual malaise ordinary complexity in tracing the cars, saving the bodies of the murdered that typifies society today and closes causes of human behavior, he stoutly females for future acts of necrophilia...
...So wrote Jonathan written the great War book critics like lescent's delight in the friendship of Yardley, book editor of the Greensboro, his friend Howells were calling for...
...pulpit, the confessional, and the indi- equivalents in modern speech, he has Child of God will perhaps be looked vidual conscience...
...Lewis always stressed that it oppression as Ms...
...McCarthy takes an intriguing, out to find it...
...No avatar, no scion, this on Tmhel no vestige of that people remains...
...beyond our control, there is, Men- C. S. Lewis: Images of His World C. S. Lewis: Images of ninger argues, a core of personal re- His World has three parts: a brief biography and sponsibility in them...
...Christmas and the evil Popeye, shadowy of sin and that he needs to recover Although Menninger is by no means men who live on the periphery of so- it if he is to be morally healthy- ready to deny the real progress that ciety...
...She exits best, C. S. Lewis: Images of His and imaginative experience, on the amines and analyzes from historical, World gives us note after note towards other hand, is personal and unique, and philosophical and theological perspecfuture study of its subject...
...R. J. Reilly's chapter in Romantic Re- beautiful as to be painful...
...The sister learns that this is necessary reality...
...It matters little that we are the Magi, they skim about the perimer's murderer, echoes the major Faulk- in an unspecified region of the South eter of the tale and eventually bring ner themes: the criminal as hero, the during an unspecified period of time...
...If he judges the reader harshly, time review by a competent woman religion is a solid start, complementing the options for good he provides are so theologian is demanded...
...MINI & The AEwtrq Cnrci the English Department at Fordham University in New York...
...These deeds do useful chronological bibliography, a spring from us, from our hearts...
...he possessed no philosophy Random House, $5.95 cludes James, Howells, and Twain-by upon which to build a democratic faith...
...well as in his life...
...Christian tives those features of Western religions In a seminal Pentecost sermon, men of culture know this but get which serve to dehumanize women...
...sat idle and wide-eyed day after the precision of a realist...
...Especially in pages 118 to the present work provides...
...appeared in The Nation, Commentary and For a free copy, write National Film Heritage...
...They moved like cats and like work while keeping a tight reign on his a public much impressed by the discats in heat attracted surrounding prose style, I believe we can expect coveries of hypnosis, psychoanalysis, swains to their midden until the marvelous things from this excellent conditioning, mood-controlling drugs, old man used to go out at night writer...
...How does one CORRESPONDENCE ignorant assault on the sins and sinners read such scenes...
...But this chronicle of daily life in Danbury prison and an is also its starting point...
...Steinfels sees Lewis, in the Ransom trilogy, and Wil- lief than most...
...under extraordinary pressures...
...If it is difficult finding Lewis en's Liberation [Feb...
...Capable of defending the Chinese political, social and cultural life, cannot "the only one who could have spoken and the Jews in a society which fail to be impressed by the persistence to Billy Yank and Johnny Reb in their viewed them as dangerous and alien, he of a Southern identity-indeed a Southown languages and conceivably have was equally capable of taking an ado- ern sensibility...
...The lan- The dumpkeeper had spawned nine ological order is relinquished for a guage is less florid, and McCarthy daughters and named them out of mistier interweaving of events...
...For a the War...
...His chapter on the "Old Seven device quickly, to the book's detriment...
...only too well why Professor Aaron as a writer, the period following on the places Adams in the most disturbing heels of the Civil War, made of that Child of God section of The Unwritten War, one democracy a cash-and-carry rummage CORMAC McCARTHY which entitles "The Malingerers" and sale...
...What does a notion analysis, in particular the problem of the context and full understanding of or sense of sin have to do with all collective responsibility and collective Lewis' more popular fictions...
...the work to its justifiable conclusion...
...And if he himself War...
...Lewis have not reached any desirable imagined archetypal situations, that Commonweal has to be held responlevel of sophistication since his death draw the reader in with a sense of sible for this dirty trick and an equal in 1963...
...and the stage is set for the passions of combination-leaving the locale unspeTo admire and emulate a master is a morality play...
...The question to answer, Menninger believes iancy.' " He resists the temptation to novel is thinner, less full-bodied than that its loss can be attributed to two transform totally all "sins" into the either The Orchard Keeper or Outer interrelated processes...
...The mixture belief is that his withdrawal was of no ness, may have been his way of not of Southern mystique and Irish trebling great consequence for American liter- dealing with an industrialized America has not always been a comfortable one...
...Kilby and Gilbert include what at Of the many splendid photographs in first seems to be a bathetic detail: a Waltham, Mass...
...None of these accusations is true...
...Moreover, he Dark...
...and the fact that Southern brother's child...
...beginning with concrete detail and raising it to the level of myth, McCarthy's style imparts a hushed mythic sense from the outset...
...it is about their attitudes toward Keeper, an impressive, complex debut, could not deal with the War in his America itself...
...interplay of language, memory and The terrain is lean and uncluttered...
...By some magical survival...
...Twain's bleak metaphy- primary tool, he has sought after a participation in the War, but my own sical cosmos, ruled by a prince of dark- personal voice and vision...
...The novel proceeds by blessing...
...human condition...
...Why A careful reading of Beyond God the fiction by Lewis draws the reader in and did Commonweal choose an anti-wom- Father: Toward a Philosophy of Womforces him to accept the author's posi- en, a non-theologian, a "man's woman" en's Liberation will, I believe, support tion, even in all its hyperbole, or reject to review a feminist theological work...
...FATHER GERARD REEDY, s.J., teaches in A PA C SMVice a TIY...
...this book, my favorites are those of photo of the # 2 Oxford bus that Lewis To the Editors: Much of what Margaret Lewis' fellow "Inklings," Williams, Bar- daily took home from Magdelen Col- O'Brien Steinfels says in her "review" field, Tolkien, and the rest...
...by and about these two great Christian elements that influence our deeds are apologists...
...The letters Beyond God the Father: Toward a 181, the relationship of the photos of of "Jack" Lewis, as he signed himself, Philosophy of Women's Liberation is, natural scenery to any advance in our counterpoint the cosmic melodrama in my opinion, a philosophical work of knowledge about Lewis is tenuous...
...deeds either good or bad...
...Like a gospel, a does she know about theology...
...At evil of war, to be repetitious...
...This morality, congenial to Sue...
...The story, chronicling young tuous affair that is thick with Gothic a brilliant device...
...How does one read of the past," by calling her book "a the end of The Last Battle, when Nar- (Continued from page 75) symptom of madness," and by implying nia becomes the new heaven and new to see what the book is about and a that Dr...
...Everything is highly "imagined" and all natural events read like eulogies has written 8 books to some great Cosmic spirit...
...a writer whose skepticism parodies pays more than passing attention to its The most disturbing of all is Twain, itself...
...though he birth to feel ambiguous about the expansion, he never bothered to sit was discussing works by Arna BonAmerica which emerged from the down and analyze the America that temps, Nancy Price and Shirley Ann War, the first because it confirmed his emerged from the Civil War...
...ligion (1971...
...is expressed in ways which cannot be he also becomes a hindrance...
...Yardmore complex, that of the lesser talent tion the capitalism that exists behind ley's term) and with language as his and finer man...
...Both discouragement with more wit and be- Whether or not Ms...
...Facing depression, sickness, and near-death in the On the lips of the strange race that "deeper hell" of prison, poet, priest, and peace-activist now dwells there their names are Daniel Berrigan wrote this journal in odd moments, myth, legend, dust...
...The sec- Grau, his comments apply as well to sense of dispossession, the second be- ond half of Life on the Mississippi never the talented Cormac McCarthy-with cause he justifiably insisted on the value makes the criticism it implies...
...Steinfels implies...
...Throughout Menninger effectively and scathingly criticizes our stupid penal system, the trivializing of sin that has at times marked the response of the Haw to Christian churches to the horrible insensitivities and cruelties of our day, put your talent 00000 0000 to work REVIEWERS RICHARD L. SCHOENWALD teaches in the in the health field...
...The Orchard Keeper, lacking a central dramatic tension, sings in very muted tones...
...some kind of holier-than-thou new mesof disbelief is the last response Lewis Who is Ms...
...If he N.C., Daily News, in a recent review Adams and James were destined by criticized Jay Gould and imperialist for the New York Times...
...the phrase may aid sales but it is inaccurate...
...vering out of a situation he himself only one among many failures that In certain cases, most notably that of must have felt guilty about...
...as actions morally malicious and de- Deadly Sins (And Some New Ones)" Child of God is a swift exciting read, manding personal repentance...
...In a decthis...
...To major Nineteenth Century writers, but literature emanating from the Civil read The Education is to understand the period during which he came of age War...
...Daly's book as liams, in The Place of the Lion, play I do, she has, in my opinion, in reviewwith the notion of something like the 000 000 000 ing that book, unjustly discredited Mary Platonic ideas taking flesh and walking Daly by accusing her of "a blind and (or stalking) the earth...
...Health Council, Box 40, Radio City WILLIAM E. MAY teaches Christian ethics Station, New York, MY 10019...
...He was the Daniel Aaron presents for our examiHenry Adams, it seems to have rein- most fundamentally democratic of our nation in his excellent study of the forced a characteristic petulance...
...In sembles that of the preacher, this pre- self-mockery of Roughing It and "The a war that brought forth so strikingly sents a difficult, if not intolerable, sit- Private History of a Campaign That religious a point of view, such a failure uation...
...stems in large measure from the dis- He believes that there is " 'sin' which Although Lester has freed McCarthy, appearance of the nation of sin...
...Though Mac- thesis, e.g., the doctrine of "substituour sinfulness...
...The "old themes" live on in malfunctions that could be cured by hanging from their armpits now him, but his South is not rendered with applying the right kind of therapy...
...A woman bears her cified but investing it with a fairy tale not a fault...
...his plots are pe- women who are enlightened, uplifted, regulations...
...Fled, banished of poetry, 13 books in death or exile, lost, undone...
...Lewis can often be quite difficult...
...Paradoxically, GERARD REEDY compact essay, "From Atheist to Chrisa realization of our own sinfulness, of tian," traces the conversion mainly from our own unwillingness to do the good With C. S. Lewis: Images of His the books Lewis read: not the only way we know we can and must do and to World, the publishing house of William to go about such a study, but a useful repair the wrong that we have know- B. Eerdmans continues its valuable serv- one certainly...
...work, of course, merit much deeper of Lewis, the novels of Williams-for But so what...
...of the eldila might well begin with 1939 sermon, "Learning in War-Time," Dr...
...and the achievements of a scientific and fire a shotgun at random just (in the sense of positivistic) methodto clear the air...
...But no less disturbing when one discovers it and antipathies into historical tendency Twain possessed both the talent and the in so many other 19th Century Amerand found a remarkable unanimity in temperament to deal with the reality of ican writers...
...shown how they sparkle with relevance...
...The arro- and the pigeon ethics that seems so the Ransom trilogy in print, one must gance, the waste, the senseless cruelty congenial to Skinner and his associates...
...other- has accompanied this twofold moveleashes McCarthy's dark humor...
...Daly is setting herself up as earth...
...The edi- lege...
...but with Child of God, his most recent ment was limited by the very honesty "The War was not so much unfelt as novel, he has made partial peace with that made it attractive...
...Daly is not playing games with these drawings of an innocent facing does not...
...The countless comparisons to Faulkner's novel, begins in the teeth of an inces- three men who ransack and murder are novels...
...What haunts us are the duced, if not a totally successful work, proclaim De Forest's Miss Ravenal's consequences of that failure...
...If Perelandra al- the oppression inflicted by religious inence on Lewis, are reproduced...
...He has learned ness into "symptoms" of diseases or reflect a mens rea, a wrong attitude, a 29 March 1974: 92 hard heart, an evil heart...
...upon as a bad novel written by a good The next step, Menninger argues, What he gives in this chapter is a writer, and this would be regrettable, consisted in the conversion of "crimes" magnificent catalogue of samples of for Child of God marks a progression and what remained of personal sinful- deeds men, that is, you and I, do that in McCarthy's career...
...For Ms...
...Not many of them besides their own judgments and God's...
...depiction of urination: "The man stands lush coating of language, gives his story Throughout the tale, the countryside is straddlelegged, has made in the dark an unnecessary "poetic" facade...
...at the Catholic University of America...
...McCarthy with the proper impetus...
...asks from the reader...
...The space traveler, the protagonist of Mary Daly's book, Beyond God the tors include letters and juvenilia illus- in cosmic struggle, was, like us, a com- Father: Toward a Philosophy of Womtrated by Lewis, studies of the Lewis muter...
...The creation of landscape is McCarthy's myth, and the overriding problem of There are few modern objects in sight, finest achievement...
...1], is inaccurate family and its homes, and shots of Ox- the daily commuter in his fictions, his and misleading...
...Department of History and Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania...
...Commonweal: 91 gangling progeny with black hair restraint...
...Discussion and study of destrian...
...Even the ludicrous themselves in the democratic tub...
...ology, denied personal responsibility for The central figure of Child of God, KARL MENNINGER, M.D...
...We instantly be- irresponsibility, in which no one is aclieve in the terror that is Lester Bal- WILLIAM E. MAY countable for the horrible evils of war, lard, as we believe in the darker sides The central message of this book slavery (even in its modern forms), of Faulkner's Bayard Sartoris, Joe is that modern man has lost his sense senseless cruelty...
...He has little Ms...
...They are gone now...
...If this rumor, this annual prize is not bestowed anarchists in 1887, when no other is most disturbing in a writer such as upon first novels which best mimic the American writer of comparable repu- Emerson, who sometimes seems a South's greatest master...
...By but we are left with only incisive im- sin became a strictly personal matter, translating the official names of the ages strung along a thin plot line, the something appropriate only for the cardinal sins into their approximate why and wherefore unexplained...
Vol. 100 • March 1974 • No. 4
