The Ambitions of Fiction
280 THE COMMONWEAL July 21, 1926 outside of a Boston church to the effect that "if you of the sacraments," he...
...and post-war period would put into his book...
...It is all very well to be men should not become playwrights than that we a realist or a prose-poet, if one has a bent in that direcshould never find a moral doctor or lawyer...
...His theme was constant communion with the sources of Catholic actually the now interesting one of the Catholic novel strength...
...One is a Catholic must mix religion and business, it makes a deal of in the measure that one leads a spiritual existence difference which one you pour into the other...
...And the shame of it is that most of the stories which have presumed to the title so many people who have important things to say justify their claim only by a habit of rather casually lack precisely this kind of education...
...But so tion, but the right to issue a code of inviolable literary far we have provided training only for lawyers and rules does not follow as an immediate consequence...
...In fact, judged by this norm the dramatist himself...
...Here, as in so atrical management as well...
...It is time to extend education ir...
...Every finds it masquing as a pastoral letter...
...Another or great railroad wrecks, or the more constructive difficulty which engages the attention of M. Thibaudet parables of high patriotism and heroic sanctity...
...should do the same thing...
...We should all feel very strange if to Renan...
...and ask yourself what and whom anybody the next pastoral letter of our hierarchy appeared in who wished to write a continuation of it to cover our the guise of fiction, embellished with dialogue...
...In short, the Catholic novel seldom will or ought "~ HERE is no longer any such thing as political to be an authoritative statement of theological docliterature...
...280 THE COMMONWEAL July 21, 1926 outside of a Boston church to the effect that "if you of the sacraments," he believes...
...And plays Orders has not been a literary sacrament...
...In such not emphasize the use of the sacraments, how can it cases, it is not the public that needs the education but be termed Catholic...
...Plato said long ago that the artistic genius which, he finds, "now seems to occupy a privileged is not the best model for a young man who wishes to position...
...A paris z dramatic union many other departments of lay activity, it might be such as that conducted by Monsignor McMahon in well to connect with a point of view like that of M. upper New York is doing an exceedingly constructive Thibaudet, the old and abiding notion of "la verite work in a different field...
...Few regulated and nourished by the sacraments, especially things are more tedious than the average play that Penance and the Eucharist...
...But we have still to see the integrale"-the whole truth, as combined in the destudy of drama and the creation of a new school of posit of tradition or civilization...
...The real object day a new one appears...
...In these words, which con- ought to be, it seems to us, to intensify the liturgical ceal a genteel regret, M. Albert Thibaudet concludes life of those who write, so that their work will bear certain remarks anent the novel, which appeared in a testimony to the purity and sincerity which result from recent issue of La Nouvelle Revue...
...conscious comments...
...Recall the three vol'imes of Politiques trine...
...Fordham University is doing a of style and narrative method is an authorization to splendid work along this line, including not only prac- deal with Catholic life "originally" or, to use a now tice in playwriting but in acting, directing, and the- very common word, "profoundly...
...They do not mentioning religious matters or by stressing morals see that whatever it teaches must be brought out in- which, though recommended by the Church, were dear directly-like the lessons taught by great sea disasters, even to the hearts of men like Aristotle...
...It will do no harm to aver now that before the problem of determining precisely what is the new Fathers of the Church will hardly appear, in this variety of novel...
...Editors possibly the normal man feels just as queer when he have discontinued political series which ruined them, begins to read through a novelist's latest work and and have embarked upon religious collections...
...neat dust covers, to be consumed on the train and "The substance of Catholic life consists in the use after the Epicurean delights of a dinner...
...charity was, for all his doctrinal ignorance, more essentially Catholic than some poseur who introduces the THE AMBITIONS OF FICTION devil for the sake of effect...
...Its genetic definition does not envisage any such et Moralistes by Faguet, that chain of French po- character, and its literary limitations almost preclude litical doctrines which reaches from .ioseph de Maistre such a character...
...Here is where we find the much personal dictatorship has been exercised by those great opportunity of our universities and dramatic who for one reason or another have earned a place clubs...
...But he records his honest embarrassment attain wisdom...
...In doctors and have assumed that playwrights simply the second place, it behooves all to preserve a becomgrow...
...Perhaps a novelist dramatists brought to as high a point: as, for example, like Dickens who revived the memory of Catholic at Yale University...
...drama through- ing modesty and not to assume that a certain mastery out all our schools...
...Such is the fact that while Catholicism is clerical in organievents and such lives are never accorrpanied by self- zation, the new literature is the product of laymen...
...Now a novel which does sets out to educate the public on some t:reme...
...They should picture events These remarks in which aloofness is combined with in dramatic sequence, and leave the comment to the courtesy deserve attention...
...There is no more reason why right-minded as Catholic creative writers...
...They stimulate comment in- Since Massillon stepped from the pulpit, he says, Holy directly-editorials, poems, biographies...
...To begin with, far too audiences and the critics...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 11
