J.F. Powers: Catholic literature’s forgotten gem

Over the last Christmas break I had lunch with my old high school English teacher, Mr. Studer.  (Mr. Studer has a first name, but it still feels impious to use it.)  More than anyone else, Mr. Studer is responsible for getting me interested in writing.

At the end of our lunch, Mr. Studer gave me a small stack of books by J.F. Powers, a collection of short stories and two novels.  The pages of the books were brown with time, and one, Morte D’Urban, was held together with a rubber band.

I had read an odd J.F. Powers short story here or there before, and my last pre-Jesuit job was at St. John’s University in Minnesota, where Powers spent most of his career.  Powers wrote only two novels, Morte D’Urban and Wheat That Springeth Green, in addition to several collections of short stories—an understated literary output that in some ways seems appropriate.

Powers is a master craftsman; in terms of tightly constructed prose—taut, subtle, perfectly pitched—he surpasses even Flannery O’Connor, though his subtlety and understatement mean that his work never packs quite the same explosive punch as O’Connor’s.  Powers’ subject matter is the Catholic Church of the Midwest in the middle of the twentieth century, and his mastery of his material is flawless.  He seems especially fascinated by priests—and by all the petty ambitions, joys, politics, and frustrations that occur within the walls of a rectory.

“Because I could not stop for death …”

+AMDG+

Death is never convenient, no matter how long anticipated or how stoically accepted.  I experienced this to some small degree as I boarded a red-eye flight last week, bound for Georgia and my grandfather’s funeral.  His body had been failing steadily over his last months, and the family had received frequent updates on his condition until the very end.  Nonetheless, when death finally came, it demanded recognition with its customary imperiousness.

Perhaps because of the interruption that death inevitably entails, there is something fitting about the Southern custom of pausing for funeral motorcades.  The neighbors of the bereaved participate at least for a brief moment in his experience. It is hard to imagine a courtesy of this sort in Boston or New York.  Granted, it might not happen on the interstates of Atlanta either (which is full of former Bostonians and New Yorkers anyway).  However, as we processed down the two-lane highways of Dearing, Georgia; where white, clapboard churches are as common as urban Starbucks, and every gas station doubles as a “feed and seed” or a “bait and tackle;” unfamiliar cars dutifully took their ease.