Books
Bishop, Jordan & Philips, Robert & Taylor, Mark
! B e l i e v e | # Hope JOSE MARIA DIEZ-ALEGRIA Doubleday, $6.95 JORDAN BISHOP This book is an intensely personal confession of faith, written out of forty years experience as a Jesuit and a...
...J. 8. Rodrigues, St...
...Letters o] not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance o~ being published...
...Even the three novels are composed of separate stories, individual beads drawn together on a common thread...
...With the exception of Faith and her father, and the outrageous Mrs...
...The young may who accepts this offer and becomes a Marianist brother or priest will find a rewarding life in a religious community...
...They resist immaturity, an absence of heroic models, and a low self-esteem...
...Paley's fame, until this year, has rested solely upon one slender book of stories which the public (or her publishers) refused to let go out of print...
...Beautifully printed, with a bibliography and a stirring short autobiographical Introduction by the author, Anniversary Issue Commonweal Paper: 5 The forthcoming November 15 issue will have as its theme "The Struggle for Faith...
...It is an open question whether it be more utopian to expect Christian brotherhood from capitalists or slaveholders---a'he capitalists have been vaccinated against it by centuries of Christendom...
...They seem to share nothing in common but membership in the same generation...
...1-74S, AreJkas Pass, Texas 78336, Theology Godfrey Dlekmann, O.S.B., Louis Bower end Dr...
...The distinction is too neat...
...James Corlden, Department of The- ~ , CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, Washington, D.C...
...The ten pieces included are all splendid, ranging from the fierce intensity of portions from The House o] Breath, to the waspish and campy portrait of Canaan Johnson from The Fair Sister...
...Lay people can take the institution less seriously than clerics, and it allows them a very real, if theoretically ambiguous, freedom...
...Class;fled payable with order...
...Goyen writes with high seriousness (except in The Fair Sister) and shows a quivering sensitivity...
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...Yet this must be seen against the background of a rationalist apologetic, a training that "had been to establish that philosophy and the sciences of history proved with absolute certainty nothing less than the truth of the Catholic faith...
...So while Enormous Changes at the Last Minute adds, finally, a second book to the Paley canon, Selected Writings o/ Wiliam Goyen makes available once again sections from five previously published works, plus some new writing...
...Fowlie's book is given to a tedious, stanza-by-stanza outline of Maldoror, a procedure of dubious benefit under any circumstances and in this case distinctly unreliable...
...For box numbers add S0c per insertion...
...Paley attempted in this new book, having seemingly abandoned the "little disturbances" of households in favor of tackling some of the "enormous changes" in our society today--including politics and strikes, street life and war...
...it betrays some lack of historical perspective...
...Enormous Changes a t t h e L a s t Minute GRACE PALEY Farrar, Straus, $6.95 S e l e c t e d Writings o f William Goyen WILLIAM GOYEN Random House/ Bookworks, $8.95 ($3.95 paper) ROBERT PHILLIPS Could two short-story writers be more dissimilar than Grace Paley and William Goyen...
...Mail the special coupon or a facsimile today...
...For instance, from The House o] Breath one especially misses the soliloquy of the river and the story of the marriage and water-death of Otey...
...There's the hot lunch program in the schools _9 but in Alabama some kids only get to school on days when it rains too hard to work the fields...
...Goyen's characters are firmly rooted in the country...
...The best are the "Faith" stories--"Faith in the Afternoon," "Faith in a Tree," and "The Long-Distance Runner"---with the central character of Faith one who seemingly could move mountains, and a strong alter ego for Grace Paley...
...Whatever you choose to give is tax-deductible...
...First, the Paley collection...
...Participation in ether CIDOC events $3 weekly...
...G1 Box 121, Radio City Station New York, IV...
...If Paley's reputation seems a bit inflated, surely Goyen's literary stock has been undervalued, and one reason simply has to be the readers' inability to lay hands on his books...
...men tend to be superior in others...
...What's happening to this boy-and thousands like him in the rural South today--is hard to believe...
...What this small volume does make clear is the need for a Collected Stories by Mr...
...And whatever you can give is desperately needed...
...I n d i a IN APPEALING for the poor old people he has to "feed and clothe" Msgr...
...In this context the mission of the prophet may be a thankless one not only with respect to the rich and the powerful, but with respect to the poor and the oppressed as well...
...STc, three times...
...According to the author, the second of the two Great Commandments "sets LEARN SPANISH...
...Besides, there is a basic difference between a competition which is ultimately a competition against oneself--as most sports provide--and a competition whose point is merely coming out ahead of others, as capitalism provides...
...Twelve words minimum...
...There is Mrs...
...We assume it was the publisher (and the economics of publishing) which imposed the length restriction upon the author, who made the selections himself...
...Senate committee: "Malnutrition isn't quite what we found...
...Fowlie's bibliography...
...The faith has not waned...
...Address...
...This new work reveals Goyen still has much to tell us about the spirit and the flesh...
...For information write: Brother WalterK...
...We do hope his publishers will reissue the novels and make available a more generous selection of his shorter fiction...
...And not the least of their differences is Paley's Jewish background versus Goyen's overtly Christian one...
...Weekly tuition $50...
...But there is not a word about the most interesting character in the scene, a young man among the passengers who, alone, does pity the child but will do nothing for him, a I November 1974:118 victim of moral paralysis...
...But women could well use some of the experiences football yields...
...Such omissions seem especially grievous when one considers the same publisher, Random House, issued a Selected Writings o/ Truman Capote Commonweal: 117 some years ago, and that author was allowed 460 pages...
...The Church's defense of capitalism hurts him more than it does the legendary Irish millworker in Manchester, with "the crucifix on the wall and the Daily Worker on the table," or the Italian Catholic who votes Communist...
...Was $2.2S, now $1.2S, 2/$2...
...Not quite...
...It is, after waiting fifteen years, a disappointment...
...MARK TAYLOR e e e e e e e e o Michael Novak ( C o n t . ) tinguish between the physical combat of football and the verbal violence the educated practice--the destruction of repuations, personal dignity, and good will...
...magazine, for exampie--are in fact high up in the top onepercent among the Earth's most affluent, highly educated, leisured and privileged class...
...Paul's failure to raise the issue of slavery was "beyond the concrete possibilities of the early Church in the historical and sociological situation of that time" (p...
...Football is not the whole truth about human life...
...Give Commonweal for Christmas 1 $ubJcription, 815 2 $ub,eriptions, 827 Each additional, 812 Commonweal: 119...
...to 75r worth of food aday...
...precise, difficult to achieve, thrilling both to exercise and to observe...
...It is not their "oppression" they seem actually to be protesting...
...Philomena's Institutions, Marikunnu Post, 673012, India (Airmail, 2Lc...
...STAMP SERVICES Box 84, Camillus, N.Y...
...The boys and girls were hungry, weak, in pain, sick --suffering from hunger and disease and, directly or indirectly, they are dying from them--which is exactly what starvation means...
...But to realize that this book is the only Goyen fiction now in print is to mourn certain omissions, works we should have liked--indeed loved--to see restored to print...
...B e l i e v e | # Hope JOSE MARIA DIEZ-ALEGRIA Doubleday, $6.95 JORDAN BISHOP This book is an intensely personal confession of faith, written out of forty years experience as a Jesuit and a student of the social problems that face people--and the Church--today...
...the verbal exaggeration of self-pity, poverty of soul, and narrowness so common among our writers and professors...
...Paley's subjects have become increasingly public and socially-committed...
...For complete catalog, write CIDOC, Apdo...
...It may be this that has been most painful to the author in his commitment to the Church and his quest for the true religion...
...Sic, thirteen times...
...It will run to 56 pages and appropriately serve as Commonwears 50th Anniversary Issue...
...Appearing originally in 1959, The Little Disturbances of Man not only appeared subsequently in at least three different paperback editions--it was also reissued in a second hardback by a different publisher, in 1968...
...Paley wants to render everything plain, pared down like a peeled potato...
...Popular religion is also "ontological-cultic," and the traditional Church has in fact often identified with the poor, to the scorn of bourgeois intellectuals...
...He has been, from the first, concerned with the short narrative form...
...Through it, $10 in hard cash can be converted into as much as $170 worth of Food Stamps by a volunteer NAACP worker who goes down the back roads and dirt tracks of the 'secret South' to find and feed the starving kids that America never sees...
...More than one of these tales seems a retelling of the familiar Paley mishaps...
...This summary of canto 2, section 4, one of the central episodes in the story, tells us of the imperviousness of the passengers of an omnibus to the cries of a small child pursuing them, and suggests, reasonably enough, that the scene shows "the anguish of the adolescent trying to discover his past, his relationship with adults, and his effort to recover from a sense of alienation...
...Descendent of Byron and Sade, contemporary of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, parent of surrealism, hallucinatory anatomist of evil, cruelty, and sexual inversion, Isidore Duccasse--le comte de Lautr6mont, as he represented himself, when his great opus Les Chants de Maldoror was published in 1869, a year before his death at 2 4 - - has attracted many of the best critical minds in France but has received rather little attention outside that country...
...In addition, he is too close to the Enlightenment identification of religion and ethics, although from his discussion of faith it is fairly obvious that his ethicoprophetic religion is something more than an ethic...
...All are suffused with the fire and poetry and sympathy which mark Goyen's best works...
...Yet those stories which range farthest from Ms...
...Not just by skinny kids and hungr:y kids...
...To compare the two is perhaps to contrast a Malamud with a Faulkner...
...us on the path of an ethicoprophetic religion that is not an opium of the people," but "unfortunately, this Commandment in its deeper sense has been unknown in the greatest measure both to the ancient Israelites and to Christians" p. 70...
...But as a corrective to the emotional falsity of bureaucracies and women-dominated institutions, to false ideals that deny the physicality of human nature, and to lassitude of body and will, football is a humble saving grace, a joy to millions...
...40283...
...Oberster, S.M., Reverend PatrickL.Tonry, S.M., Director of Vocations, 4301 Roland Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland 21210 C l a s s i f i e d RATES: 60c a word, one time...
...Their publishing histories are also radically different...
...As long as it is considered a virtue to write profound and poetic stories, Goyen should be read...
...It is a confession of faith that has its locus in the historic community that is the Catholic Church, by a man who has no intention of abandoning either his faith in Jesus Christ or the Church in which that faith has been nurtured...
...Rather, they seek further burdens, extended responsibilities, higher risks, greater possibilities of pain and failure...
...For many men love football very much...
...Meanwhile, Goyen's three novels and two story collections have been virtually impossible to come by...
...from The Faces o] Blood Kindred, the marvelous novella, "A Tale of Inheritance," which would have been a stronger choice than the two shorter tales included...
...Both are now in their mid-50s...
...The prophet may he called upon to deprive the poor of their opium, of the comfort of false religion, as some radical movements may have had greater success in fighting heroin addiction than have the police...
...479, Cuernavaea, Mexico...
...If Ms...
...Books P r i n t e d BOOKS PRINTED from well-typed manuscripts...
...In the long run such critique is less dangerous than apologetics that prove too much, or the real scandal of institutions at peace with the immorality of capitalism...
...Raferty's...
...In any event, the true religion, now defined by the author as ethicoprophetic, is likely to be a matter of ~lites, not only among the dominant class, but among the exploited classes as well...
...For all its faults, it has won the gratitude of millions...
...Books such as this are not a danger to the faith...
...Raferty, the narrator in "Distance," but we have encountered her before, in the first book, in which we were given the same story, only from Virginia's point of view rather than Mrs...
...10016...
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...It does not help women to encourage them to tell the boys to be good little boys--and to imagine women as good little girls...
...If you really want to learn Spanish quickly, fluently and correctly, and if you have the courage end stamina for Intensive and disciplined study, then coma for at least a month to CIDOC in Cuernavaca...
...Much can be done to improve their lot...
...Paley possesses a wicked sense of humor and a tough sensibility...
...Doesn't the government take care of that...
...What one misses most in this collection is vivid characterization...
...the defense of private ownership of the means of production by the modern Church has imposed a "tremendous burden" on his conscience...
...While the Superbowl turns out to be a dud, the playoff games are (usually) almost perfect enactments of comradeship, team unity, split-second execution, and most intense physical confrontation-- they are as lovely a communal art as humans have ever invented...
...Address: Msgr...
...Y. 10019 Commonweal: 115 "the cry of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, the spirit of an age deprived of spirit, the opium of the people...
...Let women invent their own equivalent to football, suited to their natures and their aspirations...
...After all, football itself was only recently invented...
...About a quarter of Mr...
...They think they are helping women by attacking football...
...Paul Minear are three of the visiting professors for the Spring Term, 197S, Department of Theology, Catholic Universih/, Washington, D.C...
...Not one of the five ever sold to 1 November 1974:116 paperback here (though the~ are widely distributed and sell well in English, French, and German editions abroad...
...To attack football--or even the principle of excellence--is not to help the cause of women...
...The apologetics have been found wanting...
...11/1/74 Selected Writings o/ William Goyen deserves a place in the library of anyone who cares for highly individual literary achievement...
...That's why the NAACP Emergency Relief Fund was started...
...Enough damaging rhetoric is already current...
...Religious, Xmas, Vatican City stamps...
...Goyen strives to make splendor...
...This is not a "scandalous" book...
...Paley's prose style is terse and constipated...
...Contact: Fr...
...An Offer You Can Refuse "Give away what you h a v e . . . and come follow me," Jesus said...
...But "equal" is a tricky ideal...
...And too bad we were not able to communicate to you the sense of commitment and hope that is ours...
...Paley is guilty of including inferior bits and pieces to pad out a second book, the opposite principle seems at work in the contents of Goyen's Selected Writings...
...That it was the occasion of disciplinary action against the author is more scandalous than the book...
...The women in America at present most concerned about their own expression-subscribers to Ms...
...This writer is more comfortable with Rahner's sinful Church than with the author's distinction of religions...
...Either way, they have not, somehow, been transformed into stories...
...Hegel-Shtein, there are no personages to complete with the likes of Shirley Abramowitz, Eddie Teitelbaum, and Charles C. Charley from the first collection...
...Documents DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN II, 7811 pages...
...Women are not treated in America as the equals of men...
...Goyen has remained an intensely personal, private writer...
...The apparatus of the Church has lost its identification with the poor and become compromised with the powers that are...
...NAACP Emergency Relief Fund Dept...
...Once this had been proven by reason and the sciences of history, a man could and should accept the faith" (p...
...Whereas the stories in The Little Disturbances o/ Man were uniform in excellence, the several really fine pieces in the new collection are surrounded by much slighter stuff --extremely brief sketches which either seem to just end, or to end with a trick...
...And there's the Food Stamp Program.., but a lot of people living on fatback, field peas and biscuits never heard of it, and some that have just can't squeeze the cash to buy stamps out of a Mississippi welfare check that gives a widow $60 a month to house, clothe and feed four hungry children...
...The Road Runner in Woolworth's," from In a Farther Country, is included, but in truncated form, missing the last seven pages...
...This is all the more disappointing when one considers what Ms...
...As the product of an unfulfilled demand for happiness on the part of the people, it is the creation of the people---the poor, suffering people---as an illusion of escape from a hard and cruel world...
...e e e e o e e o e CORRESPONDENCE (Continued /rom page 99) life...
...I prefer a full-year subscription and the Anniversary Issue at $15...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...How can one present a representative sampling of William Goyen's lifework in 177 pages...
...Their success may be tied to the commitment to radical social change--to revolution...
...Gregory Baum--"Faith after Auschwitz--and after Belfast" Daniel C. Maguire--"Personal Ethics" Peter J. Henriot--"Social Ethics" Claire Hahn--"Culture and the Future of Belief" Joseph A. Fitzmyer--"Belief in Jesus Today" Richard P. McBrien--"Theology and Belief" Peter Hebblethwaite--"Changing Concepts of the Church" Bernard Cooke--"Christian Ministries" What better occasion for starting a subscription to Commonweal than with this very next issue...
...Paley creates urban characters and cityscapes...
...from Ghost and Flesh, "The Letter in the Cedarchest," "Pere Perrie," and "The Grasshopper's Burden...
...The author's brief critique of sexual morality as taught in the Church is as sound as it is moving, and much closer to Thomas Aquinas than to the legalistic catechism morality that he criticizes...
...The author may still in fact be looking for the "true religion," the ethicoprophetic religion, one that is not the opium of the people...
...3031...
...That is why record-keeping is so important an element in sports--one is ultimately competing against one's own performances...
...It is perhaps a bit much to expect more of (say) Leo XIII than of Paul, and if Paul, by "formulating radical spiritual and religious denlands in the area of master-slave relations, laid the base for further progress" (p...
...It is here that Marx and the author converge: the establishment did not invent popular religion, any more than it invented opium, but if the alternative is revolution, the establishment may feel benign towards opium peddlers...
...These stories, rich in detail and background, suggest fragments from a novel about Faith and her family, a novel which the author perhaps could not or chose not to finish...
...One-time rellistration fee $100...
...95), the same might be said of Leo XIII...
...JOHN O'BRIEN, 1828 Garvln PI., Louisville, Ky...
...the "true religion" is the opium of the people, the captive of what the author calls "ontological-cultic religion," the religion of the mystery cults of the Roman Empire, to the prejudice of the Judaic and New Testament tradition of "ethicoprophetic" religion...
...4c, seven times...
...The book will not do much to strengthen her reputation, but it does contain three stories which deserve to stand beside her first and best book...
...The author is less kind to later churchmen...
...Rodrlguas also seeks funds for _9 $1,S00 t er available In his country "to plough and cultivate our little land...
...As a white Southern doctor reported to a U.S...
...R e l i g i o u s Stamps COLLECT RELIGIOUS STAMPS...
...Marx's opium of the people is not a capitalist or bourgeois conspiracy, but We'd like to raise his allowance...
...And, unlike Grace Paley, William Goyen is an artist whose work continues to grow, as evidenced by "Figure Over the Town," an admirable allegorical story about society and the individual, published here for the first time in book form (as well as by his other recent stories in Transatlantic Review and Southwest Review, omitted here...
...City, State, Zip...
...Goyen, a much larger book which more completely presents his considerable accomplishments in the genre...
...Leading feaures will include: David S. Toolan--"What Is Faith...
...Goyen's, rambling and loose...
...Billie Jean King and other women athletes are no less "humanized" because they love the challenge of competition and the struggle against themselves their sports entail...
...Fortunately, one needs neither French nor a plot outline to get fairly close to Maldoror, for there are at least two good editions available in English (published by New Directions and Crowell)--a fact oddly not noted in Mr...
...He misinterprets Marx in the process...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 IN BRIEF LAUTREAMONT, by Wallace Fowlie, Twayne (Twayne's World Authors Series), $5.95...
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...24 Australian Xmas stamps 1957 thru 1972 plus Rwandehe Popes Plus Xl, XII, John, Paul for 30r with approvals...
...Football was invented to provide some correctives for these deficiencies among men...
...Fowlie's book thus has the virtue of reminding American readers that Lautr6amont is a considerable presence in literary history, but in its mechanical and heavy-handed approach to him (a defect it shares with other monographs in the Twayne series) will scarcely stimuate his general discovery here...
...Too bad you missed those hours of hammering out specific plans (much more important than resolutions...
...S. MAGGIE FISHER, RSCJ National Assembly of Women Religious Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...But they can only do the job if you supply the cash...
...Women tend in many ways to be superior to men...
...Paley's personal experiences are least effective...
...By starving kids...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 5
