New Bearings in the ‘Catholic’ Novel

Extract

This is an important book. For beginning with this ejaculation from the litany of ‘blurb’ writers I have a reason; it is to underline at the outset the fact that whatever disagreements one may have with Mr O’Donnell, his book marks the first serious and detailed attempt to consider the issues raised by the remarkable group of contemporary novels which have been written by Catholics. One avoids, carefully, labelling the group, although it is clear they possess a certain unity. Maria Cross (the title is named after a Mauriac character) in offering the first account of this aspect of contemporary fiction raises the fundamental questions: what is the relationship between ‘belief’ and fiction; in what way does ‘belief’ modify and colour the sensibility of an individual writer; is it possible for the Catholic novelist to take over Maritain’s dictum, namely to have compassionate understanding of the sinner without collusion with the sin? The general impression that Mr O’Donnell’s book leaves is that he sides with Newman rather than Maritain, for whom literature was ‘the Life and Remains of Natural Man, innocent or guilty’. I say ‘general impression’ advisedly because Mr O’Donnell works for the major part of his book in terms of particular novels and novelists, and consequently such generalized dicta never become explicit. There is no affinity in approach between Maria Cross and Art and Scholasticism.