WHEAT THAT SPRINGETH GREEN

by J.F. Powers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 31, 1988

Powers' masterpiece, Morte D'Urban (1956), is about a midwestern priest, Urban, whose confidence and managerial self-regard are whittled down to next to nothing--in scenes of comic brilliance--until he's less a self than an action: a sort of embodied grace-state. Powers' 30-years-later reprise features Father Joe Hackett--but in Father Joe's case, the results are reversed. In the seminary, Joe--short, unprepossessing, in time an alcoholic--was a pain-in-the-neck saint, wore a hairshirt, and out-prayed everyone. But being a secular priest in the 60's coarsened him in no time; given his own parish in suburbia--Inglenook, Minnesota--Joe cares more about where he can buy his liquor most discreetly, and how to furnish his curate's room, and what's the score of the Twins game than about any holy mortification. Yet that's to come, in spades--although in Powers (one of the great modern masters of embarrassment) the more trivial the incident the more his priests agonize. Central here is Joe's chapters-long (and hilarious) attempt to find out something about his brand-new, fresh-from-the seminary assistant. Like his name, for instance--something Joe goes without knowing for weeks. There are other brush-ups--financial desperation, Vietnam-protest conscience-calls, even a defense against sexual scandal--but Powers can't energize them into the center of his story as well as he does the difficult unmasking of Joe's gentle, schmo-like helper-priest. As a novel, this isn't the equal of Urban. Powers has advanced, though, in other surprising directions: there are sections here that rival William Gaddis in how plain speech can be written down as though a complete puzzle; Powers' syntax may be folksy but is never straightforward. What you do miss, as a reader, is a powerfully sovereign sense of Joe--as something more than a collection of eccentricities, weaknesses, and reactions to problems. Yet for all that, any detailed portrait of a Powers priest--some of the most indelible, compromised, and fluid character-creations in American literature--is only welcome.

Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION