Wheat That Springeth Green (New York Review Books Classics)

Rating:
Summary: On Not Being Lonely in the Suburbs
Review: I read it in the early fall, a perfect time of year for me to read this sort of book, as it reminded me of my early years as a student at a Catholic elementary school in the suburbs. The book follows the life of a Catholic priest named Joe Hackett who struggles with faith and politics and more than anything else the shattering mundanity of his suburban life. Tree-lined streets, shopping malls, station wagons, vinyl siding, and wall to wall carpeting are Hackett's foils in a book that manages to be charming, melancholy, and very funny at the same time. Reading the book turned out to be a great way to spend a few September weeks. If anyone out there happened to enjoy The Sportswriter and Independence Day by Richard Ford, then you will enjoy this book as well.

Rating:
Summary: perfect
Review: It is nothing short of a tragedy that more readers aren't familiar with J.F. Powers. This book is truly brilliant. Powers is at heart more craftsman than contemporary novelist, which is doubtless why he only published two novels. Wheat That Springeth Green is unlike anything else I've ever read. It's that rare novel that achieves perfection.

Joe Hackett, for all his faults, is one of the most fully-realized and sympathetic characters in contemporary fiction. As he matures, so does the book: from his hilariously overblown pretensions at the seminary, to his ennui and malaise as a pastor, to his subtly glorious final redemption.

In the final analysis, the book is not so much satire as fable about goodness. Despite being about the life of priests, the book is more a moral fable than a simply Catholic one: it's about how to do good in a world where it all seems futile. Joe Hackett is a cynic, but he's also at heart an idealist and optimist. So is J.F. Powers.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding novel of a priest in changing times
Review: This remarkable novel describes the vocation and ministry of Father Joe Hackett. The author, J.F. Powers, carved out for himself a niche as the most perceptive literary observer of the lives, passions and quirks of the Roman Catholic clergy. Be warned: this is a far cry from the florid Romanticism of The Cardinal or the pschological mysticism of Susan Howatch. Powers is a realist, with a pen at once comic and acidic. After a few chapters to sketch his early life and randy adolescence, we encounter Hackett as a self-important seminarian, literally wearing an antique hairshirt and asking (aloud and in public, no less) how virtue can be made as appealing to the common man as sex. But as he is shaped and molded -- by his work as a priest, by the experience of his classmates, and especially by the encounter with a young curate full of Vatican II and Vietnam -- Hackett matures spiritually and otherwise. In the end, he is a few pounds heavier, a little bit wiser and, perhaps, a bit more virtuous.

Rating:
Summary: A world I recognize
Review: Why did it take me 52 years to discover JF Powers? He is, I think, the perfect companion for pre-Vatican Catholics who were out, recovering, or lost. His evidence for the existence of God is how screwed up the ordinary world is--surely, THIS can't be the goal of life and the End of The Road. I think I knew some of Powers' priests, or likenesses of them, 40 years ago. But note well: He is not a Catholic writer alone; Powers is a brilliant, creative writer with a marvellous ear for the language.