Cases of Conscience

...But it does read novels, But those less under the spell of nomenclature than and the novels it reads are those written by the men the New Jersey mayor who makes the happy sugges- whom vogue and popularity have elevated, often with tion to Manhattan's Mayor Walker, will insist on con- scant intrinsic justification, into the role of prophets sidering "noctoriums" (or "noctoria") not essentially and preachers for our time...

...these United States was much needed, indicating, by Viewed from a philosophic aspect, the novel will tints and intensities of tints, the depth to which culture always carry a taint of anarchy...

...The realist takes the world whole...

...standard words on evolution...

...From a Christian (always one supposes, in the opinion of the liberal point of view, it must front the charge of being a posiweeklies) had penetrated beneath the surface...

...and it is impossible to do this without taking count Any conclusions drawn from an examination so of the reaction of supernatural motives...

...thoughtful person must have made, namely, that what It is "to give form . . . to secrets that pass in the might be called, without abuse of terminology, a static human heart, and of which God alone is the Witness...

...porary use of the novel as a pulpit a brazen assumption at which the writers of the "novelle" who inCASES OF CONSCIENCE augurated the genre would have stood aghast...

...that residents of the Bronx, largely just published in Les Lettres, M. Louis Baumann excomposed of families who have graduated into pros- amines the possibilities of the Catholic novel and the perity from this congested neighborhood, vote heavily responsibilities of the Catholic novelist...

...Nocturette" ently it has finished with the ancient and classic wisdom and "noctorium" are among suggestions that find most which brought comfort in its day of stress and penury...

...July 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 233 nates, of which Samuel L. Weiss, of Club Alabam, class, exists midway between the category who are seems to be leader, to sweeten the hectic implication working up from poverty and alien citizenship and contained in the word "night-club" by getting rid of the category for whose appraisal all the world outthe sinister word altogether and replacing it with spreads its intellectual wares, and that it is this first something which, except to patrons cursed with a class which looks for light and leading to the more classical education, will convey nothing that is not al- serious and imposing of our native novelists...

...because its own social problem has largely been solved...

...favor, and perhaps to hint how complete and final is Equally it has not arrived at the status of the class the burial of the bad old past, the term "noctician," so far removed from material anxieties that the culwhose startling affinity with "mortician" will not tivation of the aesthetic side of life can become a busiescape notice, has been preempted for the official whom ness...

...Luckily there are critics, no less Catholic, who serious literature and the older classics still hugs the take a milder and more indulgent view...

...We may see in the contemscent upon a dirty pocket-handkerchief...

...He finds the for such headliners in the independence movement as solution of the problem in the fact that the sincere Dreiser, Cabell, and Lewis, splitting their ticket with Catholic novelist is bound to be both a realist and a books on interior decoration, but turning a blind eye supernaturalist-but never a naturalist...

...preferences and aversions where the printed word is In view of all these difficulties, Catholic critics concerned...

...Naturalism," upon manuals and books of travel ; and that music and says M. Baumann, "tends to reduce a man to a mere drama are the preoccupations of the elect of Park and play of instincts...

...An ex- tive usurpation of the Godlike function of creation...

...amination of the files of the New York Public Library, Writers raise men and women from the dust of their conducted by the New York Times, may not go so far, imagination, endow them with motives and actions, but it throws some light on the different tastes in read- cast them loose among the facts of life, reward and ing to be noted in different sections of the Empire City, punish at their will, and, should the whim seize them, and incidentally, from the very fact that it yields re- are empowered to make of their romance a sheer sarsults which can be locally tabulated, suggests that eco- casm upon lives as God has made them and willed nomic reasons may lie at the root of a good many them...

...abroad, not at all unfriendly to the medium, have been The purpose of this brief article is not to reexamine known to assert that a novel is a case of conscience, the reading proclivities of the population of Long and that a really Catholic novel is a contradiction in Island, but it may be noted in passing that a love for terms...

...Appartogether fresh, dewy, and crepuscular...

...upper Madison Avenues...

...more fragrant under their new title than Tartuffe after We may regret this elevation, on general no less confession, Moore's famous shattered vase, or the than personal grounds...

...But we cannot, if we are clear-sighted, ignore it, and we A YEAR or so ago the suggestion was made in one will not, if we be wise, discard its possibilities for an of New York's liberal weeklies that a map of apostolate...

...Works on sociology do not greatly interest it, a cruder generation was content to call the "bouncer...

...In an article lower East Side...

...The main necessarily cursory are apt to be misleading, but the difficulty, concludes M. Baumann, is one with which Times survey reinforces an observation that any any writer worthy the name should not fear to grapple...

...The device of clearing oneself of a bad name by giv- Having evoluted, it does not take the old interest in ing oneself a pretty one will appeal to some people...