An Essay/Review of "The Dean's List"

The next time you pay your cable TV bill, remember that a tiny bit of it is bringing the world of Catholic fiction writing onto the world stage. The first Father Brown detective story was penned in 1911 by the Catholic thinker and novelist G. K. Chesterton; in 2013 the series of Father Brown mysteries put to video—not for the first time--became a staple of the BBC and at present I am enjoying the eleventh season. But the Father Brown books do raise an interesting question: what, exactly, is Catholic fiction? It is a matter of no small debate.
 
I, for one, believe that Catholic novelists of the modern era, the past two centuries—have been the true practitioners of what we have come to call “synodality,” the exchange of deeply held sentiments and insights for the identity and renewal of the Church and humankind. This is no discredit to such insightful minds as Geoffrey Chaucer [c. 1340-1400] who produced the provocative Canterbury Tales before the invention of the printing press. Today’s novelists have considerable advantages over their literary ancestors—time, publishing houses, political safety as a rule, and a populace that can read, though I hedge on that last point.
 
In my lifetime a good example of a Catholic novelist who translating the times and made them better was J.F. Powers, whose works—short stories and two novels—situated in 1947, 1963, and 1980—are commentaries that reflect an intimate knowledge of the institutional and personal shortcomings of the Church from the top down. Powers, a layperson, was a true genius in describing American superiors and priests in the mid-twentieth century who utterly failed [and continue to fail] to stem the withdrawal of millions of Catholic laity from the institutional Church. One wonders where we might be if religious leaders had taken Powers’ novels seriously. In the 1963 best seller, Morte d’Urban, the central character Father Urban, fundraiser for his fictitious order, the Clementines in the Midwest U.S., lays bare almost every decaying branch of consecrated life, particularly the U.S. Church’s anti-intellectualism. Powers’ masterpieces should be required reading for Catholics pining for the “good old days, and certainly in seminaries.
 
We do not think of Catholic novelists as important voices because, truth be told, Catholics don’t know that a goodly number of their confreres in faith are among America’s best novelists. We are not, frankly, a reading Church. Stroll through your parish bookstore some time. Do not blame the store managers for an absence of college level reading, whether Catholic novels, or, for that matter, formative Catholic non-fiction works beyond Confirmation age. Few folks are pounding the doors for Catholic intellectual enrichment, fiction, or non-fiction.
 
In 1955 the renowned Church historian Monsignor John Tracy Ellis stunned the Catholic educational establishment with a 40-page journal piece, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life” [see America’s 1995 analysis here.] Ellis stated, in so many words, that American Catholicism was, well, dumb. As a layperson student, he hoped to earn a doctorate in history at Catholic University but was so disillusioned by the quality of instruction at CU that he attempted to earn the degree in a Big Ten school. He could not afford the tuition, however, and eventually took his degree at CU, where he had a scholarship. Later the school hired him to teach the History of American Catholicism, but he was so embarrassed by the quality of his training that he took a year’s sabbatical at Harvard before taking the Catholic University position.
 
Later, Ellis, along with his other duties, served with accreditation evaluators for the National Catholic Educators Association, which meant he visited many of this country’s Catholic colleges. He was distressed at the abundance of so many Catholic colleges [200-250] on shoestring budgets, with mediocre faculties, marginal libraries, little or no endowments. His own college seminary, St. Viator in Bourbonnais, Illinois, [where Bishop Sheen had studied some years earlier] was graduating classes of under twenty when it closed in 1937.
 
Ellis argued that there were too many colleges and seminaries for the limited funds and particularly suitable personnel available, and he recommended that the American Church close many of them and consolidate into fewer institutions of academic excellence. His writing on Catholic education in 1955 was read by a small professional circle at the time, but for those motivated Catholics—in school but just as importantly, living full lives in adult society—the place to find meaty commentary and intellectual religious inspiration was the Catholic literary world, where usually Catholic authors were published by secular presses. Catholics in the U.S. began attending college in large numbers after World War II with the passage of the GI Bill and other opportunities. Catholics became “whiter collar.” Their tastes were more critical; some had read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath [1939] or seen the movie, though in conservative wartime America and from the pulpit, such books were suspected of anticapitalism and communist sympathies. [The film “Lost Horizon” was banned during World War II for similar reasons.]
 
After the war, though, consider the kinds of books that Americans—particularly Catholics—were buying, reading, and discussing—though probably not from in-house Catholic outlets. Catholic authors were topping the secular American best-seller charts. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain [1949] was the 75th best seller of the twentieth century. Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood appeared in 1952 and her style and influence opened the floodgates for the future works of numerous Catholic authors. J.F. Powers, whom I cited above, released his first volume of short stories, The Prince of Darkness, in 1947, and his national best seller Morte d’Urban in 1962. The English Catholic Graham Greene’s novels were secretly enjoyed by Pope Paul VI, who advised him: ““Some aspects of your books are certain to offend some Catholics, but you should pay no attention to that.”
 
JON HASSLER [1933-2008] AND THE DEAN’S LIST [1998]
 
According to Wikipedia, much of Catholic Jon Hassler's fiction involves characters struggling with transitions in their lives or searching for a central purpose. Many of his major characters are Catholic (or lapsed Catholics), and his novels frequently explore the role small-town life plays in shaping or limiting human potential.
 
In a 2008 obituary piece review of Hassler’s works in America Magazine, the late priest-sociologist-novelist Andrew Greeley summarizes the role of a Catholic novelist: “A long time ago a controversy raged in Catholic journals about whether a “Catholic novel” was possible. The “right” contended that a novel could be called “Catholic” if it presented orthodox Catholic teaching and edifying Catholic people (no “bad” priests) and was written by a “practicing” Catholic author. The “left” said that any quality novel was by definition “Catholic,” like James Joyce’s Ulysses.
 
Most of the French “Catholic” writers were not Catholic enough by these standards—Francois Mauriac and Léon Bloy. Neither were their English counterparts—Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. The rector of the major seminary I [Greeley] attended publicly denounced Greene. Sister Mariella Gable was banished from her monastery in Minnesota by the Bishop of St. Cloud for putting Catcher in the Rye on her reading list. The courses in “Catholic Fiction” disappeared from Catholic colleges and universities, even from Notre Dame, where some writers of allegedly Catholic fiction taught. I went through the catalogues of a few dozen such schools 20 years ago and found that even G. K. Chesterton’s fiction had disappeared from public sight…” Greeley might have added that “the children of this world” are more religiously energetic in their reading than Catholics. I checked the library of the University of Central Florida recently and discovered fifty distinct works of the Trappist Thomas Merton.
 
Later in the piece Greeley refers to Hassler, who died in 2008, as “the last Catholic novelist in America.” As it turned out, Greeley was overly pessimistic: the last half century has seen a renaissance of interest and creativity in fiction written by Catholics. Think Toni Morrison…Flannery O’Connor…Walker Percy for starters. A devout Catholic, Flannery O’Connor [1925-1964] jolted the Catholic literary world with three powerful novels that embodied her belief that the Kingdom of God will be seized by force from the powerful evils of this life. There is nothing dainty here. [O’Connor once stated in a social gathering that “if the Eucharist is merely a symbol, then the hell with it.”] She was an inspiration to her novelist colleagues in a remarkable circle of U.S. authors particularly in the south, a surprising number of whom were Catholic including Percy and Caroline Gordon. It is fair to say that O’Connor was to Catholic novels what Thomas Merton was to mystical monastic Catholic writing in breaking new ground. Merton died just four years after O’Connor, electrocuted in Burma.
 
The Baby Boomer Catholic reading generation [my generation], particularly those of us in Catholic schools and seminaries, were not exposed to a steady diet of contemporary novels in our education. Our superiors fed us classical and safe works for summer reading, or so they thought: An American Tragedy [1925] by Theodore Dreiser was one title I can recall, but years later I read an earlier Dreiser tome, Sister Carrie [1900] on my own time. I discovered that both of Dreiser’s works were banned at various places: Nazi Germany, because of the immoral conduct of the characters [!], and Boston because of the sexual innuendo. Whoever inadvertently inserted An American Tragedy into our seminary summer reading lists need not have worried; most of us were not reading The New York Times Book Review on weekends during high school, anyway.
 
As students in the 1960’s we were not exposed to any of the contemporary giants of the Catholic writing scene from England and the United States, perhaps because our superiors and the Catholic hierarchy in general were disturbed by or did not understand—or were blissfully unaware of--the themes of contemporary “secular” authors, including the Catholic ones. This does not mean we did not read them on the sly. I discreetly read Morte d’Urban in high school but did not understand its purpose at the time. Similarly, many of us read Catcher in the Rye in the 1960s [again, in secreto] as our entry—so we thought—into the revolution of the 1960’s, blissfully unaware that J.D. Salinger began the composition in 1947. I would like to revisit this book and its alienated hero again after having treated depressed young people for a quarter-century.
 
I never heard of the Catholic novelist Jon Hassler [1933-2008] until a year or two ago when I read North of Hope, which I reviewed for Amazon. North of Hope is a teaching drama of the conscience. The Dean’s List [1995], by contrast, is a subtle/humorous/despairing social statement about higher education, seen through the eyes of the aging dean of Rookery State College, Leland Edwards. Kirkus Reviews has a fine plot summary which I heartily recommend, and America describes how Hassler’s Catholic outlook weaves through his writing. “The novelist was not just a Catholic version of Garrison Keillor, chronicling small-town Minnesota. Jon Hassler and his comic Catholic vision exposed the crassness and brutality of postmodern superficiality and post-postmodern cynicism.”
 
Rookery State College [I love that name] is a Minnesota public college, not a Catholic institution, but it manifests all the decay of dying colleges described so aptly by Monsignor Ellis forty years earlier. Dr. Edwards the Dean knows this to some level, but he is chained to the wonderful ice fishing of the north country, and the possibility of entering a late-in-life marriage. He is also chained to the care of his elderly mother, who is still spry enough to host a local radio talk show and create fuss; one of her causes being her son’s ascendancy to the college presidency. Rookery itself is not as spry as Mother Edwards. All the vital signs of a fruitful legacy are missing. The faculty cited in the story are empty-headed, eccentric, past their prime, antisocial, narrow, and in some cases all the above. The current president of the college believes that Paul Bunyon was an alum. There is no endowment to speak of, and it seems that the future of the school—and the identity of the next president—will rest upon some extraordinary event to put the school in the regional, even national, eye.
 
At Rookery, there is a school of thought led by the athletic director and his supporters on the board of trustees that the key to the college’s financial future is its emergence as a sports power. Granted, the school’s only salvageable sport is hockey. But the AD has made friends with sports mammon, specifically a brewery with name recognition which he believes will lift the college’s reputation and its cash flow. [My college engaged in a similar strategy, but it linked itself to the Koch Brothers instead. Rookery, in retrospect, aimed too low.]  
 
Dean Edwards, however, in a move to highlight the liberal arts potential of the school, counters with the idea of a campus visit [and famous author in residence?] by the nation’s preeminent poet, Richard Falcon. Surprisingly, the appearance is agreed upon. Perhaps too easily. A public reading and lecture by Falcon are scheduled and promoted in every coffee house and bookstore north of Sioux Falls. Miracle of miracles, the poet arrives in one piece, and 5,000 avid Falcon admirers arrive hours early to gather in the new hockey arena with the giant neon beer ad blazing full tilt.
 
However, Edwards discovers that there is more, much more, to Falcon than his poetry, popular as it is. Falcon, no surprise, is a chain-smoking, unpredictable artist. More problematic is his history, due to his self-imposed alienation from the Internal Revenue Service. Falcon arrives at Rookery with the FBI closing in. Edwards finds himself harboring a fugitive; the last thing Rookery needs is a dramatic arrest in front of thousands of families.
 
By this time there are plenty of loose ends for the reader to digest. I will not spell out the endings except to say that, under the circumstances, Rookery probably labored on for a time after the events depicted in this novel, but its future is anyone’s guess. ]By the way, Erie Community College outside of Buffalo will be demolished as the new Highmark Stadium is constructed for the Buffalo Bills football team.]
 
So, what does a Catholic take away from The Dean’s List? First, it is artful writing. Not Dr. Zhivago, but worthy of the investment. Art is embedded in the Catholic charisma.
 
Second, dear old Rookery is failing miserably in its mission as a liberal arts college to bring what the Greeks would have called “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” After this book was published at the end of the last century, we have seen a push for more small colleges to become “vocational tech schools,” the argument being that today’s college aged population would be better served by schools that empower their graduates to make a decent living and serve the national economy. I get that. At the same time, such a pivot denies our citizenry substantive exposure to the basic truths of human experience. The American Founding Fathers, as I understand it, believed that democracy would survive only with an educated citizenry.
 
The flame of scholarship at Rookery has already died in the breasts of most of its faculty in this narrative. Why? [During Falcon’s lecture, Dean Edwards is incensed that none of the English Department faculty is in attendance.] I served as a public college adjunct instructor for eight years in two departments, religion, and human services, and in that entire time there were no faculty meetings in either division—none. Rookery clearly has no common mission statement or common mission, either, but for that matter, neither do many Catholic dioceses. In many ways a diocesan mission statement is more important than the parish statement, particularly in areas such as faith formation beyond First Communion and Confirmation. We have no structured plan or program for religious education emanating from my diocese as of this writing. We are becoming a religious stepsister of Rookery in terms of sustaining and enriching what we love.
 
Hassler does not play the prophet, but he does give hints of where he thinks colleges are heading as American institutions. This book was published in 1995. In 2024-25 Vanderbilt University’s annual room and board fee will approach $100,000. The television contracts for large conference football and basketball programming extend today to many billions of dollars. On the philosophical side, recent Congressional hearings revealed that on matters of major American life—a surge in antisemitism, for example—some of our leading institutes of higher learning cannot sort out even the most basic principles of human sanctity and respect.
 
Jon Hassler died in 2008, but I doubt that he would be surprised by the collegiate changes in our current generation of schools because, where it counts, he brings a Catholic mind to the subject.