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American Catholic Fiction After Vatican II Nathan Kilpatrick, Ph.D

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ABSTRACT Personalism and Popular Genres: American Catholic Fiction after Vatican II Nathan Kilpatrick, Ph.D. Mentor: Ralph C. Wood, Ph.D. This dissertation explores the Catholic literary landscape in America after the Second Vatican Council using the framework of former Pope John Paul II’s Thomistic personalism as a theological correction to the aesthetic problem of overly reductive, formulaic fiction of popular genres such as the Western. From within this framework, this dissertation argues that post-Vatican II American Catholics revise and employ popular forms of literature as a means to articulating foundational premises of Christian orthodoxy in a way that is fundamentally different from their Catholic predecessors, Flannery O’Connor or Walker Percy. Indeed, the works by novelists Ron Hansen and Alice McDermott demonstrate a rich and vibrant experience of the faith as it is lived, and their method of positing the truthfulness of Catholicism is to create complex, dynamic characters who reveal the fundamental goodness of each human being when considered in light of Christian teachings and who also disrupt the rigidity of formulaic popular genres. In doing so, these novelists reflect a post-Vatican II concern for the laity and its vernacular expressions that deviates but maintains connections to the larger Catholic tradition. Therefore, this work offers an argument on behalf of contemporary literature that responds to the postmodern aesthetics and modes of literature dominant in discussions of contemporary fiction in complex ways: neither rejecting the technical and methodological insight of aesthetic and philosophical postmodernism, these novels resist the recourse to formalized nothingness that contemporary critics argue is the basis for postmodern religious fiction. The vision of Catholicism more precisely, and Christianity more generally, which emerges from these authors’ works exhibits a careful attentiveness to the particular ecclesial, political, and aesthetic crossroads of the contemporary situation and a faithful reaction to the encroaching nothingness that lifts up small but substantial, tenuous yet tenacious and positive though critical affirmations of the dignity of human beings, created by God and living in communities of the committed, faithful few. Personalism and Popular Genres: American Catholic Fiction after Vatican II by Nathan Kilpatrick, B.A. A Dissertation Approved by the Department of English Dianna M. Vitanza, Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Dissertation Committee Ralph C. Wood, Ph.D., Chairperson Luke Ferretter, Ph.D. Sarah K. Ford, Ph.D. Emily E. Setina, Ph.D. J. Lenore Wright, Ph.D. Accepted by the Graduate School May 2014 J. Larry Lyon, Ph.D., Dean Page bearing signatures is kept on file in the Graduate School. Copyright © 2014 by Nathan Kilpatrick All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii DEDICATION viii ONE Personalism and Popular Genres: American Catholic Fiction after Vatican II 1 The Historical Problem: Recovering the Church in the Post- Vatican II Chaos 22 The Aesthetic Problem: Recovering the Beautiful in Popular Forms 40 The Theological Problem: Recovering the Person at the Heart of History and Literature 54 TWO Finding a Place in the Postmodern and Post-Vatican II Tournament of Narratives: A Survey of Contemporary American Catholic Fiction 61 THREE Am I My Brother’s Keeper?: The Dignity of Human Life in Ron Hansen’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Wild Surge of Guilty Passion 85 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Sacrificing Human Dignity for Public Notoriety 94 A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion: The Sacrifice of Human Dignity for Personal Gain 111 Concluding Thoughts on the Dignity of Human Life as a Literary Concern 127 FOUR Mystical Mysteries: Knowing and Wondering in Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy and Atticus 129 The Mystery of Mystical Experience: Stigmata and Community in Mariette in Ecstasy 145 The Mystery of Mercy: Love and Prodigality in Atticus 171 Concluding Thoughts on Mystery and Mysticism 187 FIVE Truth’s Splendor and Error’s Blindness: Sympathy and Seduction in Alice McDermott’s Child of My Heart 189 Concluding Thoughts on Morality and Sentimentalism 227 v SIX The Holiness of Family and the Beauty of Brokenness: The Marian Shape of the Domestic Church in Alice McDermott’s After This 229 Concluding Thoughts on Family and Suffering 266 SEVEN Epilogue: Discovering Enclaves of Excellence in Contemporary American Literature 268 WORKS CITED 281 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As with raising a child, writing a dissertation requires a small village. Now that I am sending off this project, grown tall and strong, I must acknowledge at least some of those who have rightfully scolded this wayward adolescent into its more respectable shape. Chief among this is my director Ralph Wood. Under his vigilant attempts to make me a better writer and thinker, I have sought to write as clearly as he expects, a daunting task requiring multiple readings of each word I wrote. However, his kindness and encouragement as I pursued this project gave me the confidence that, at last, it would reach its end. In addition to my director’s guidance, the incomparable members of my committee—Luke Ferretter, Robert Miner, Sarah Ford, Emily Setina, and Lenore Wright—have offered countless clarifying questions, words of cheer, and the necessary encouragement when this manuscript would not behave properly. However, the bulk of the work came from countless conversations with a number of people much smarter and more loving than I aspire to be. I thank Cameron, Danielle, Michael, Wendy, Heather, DeAnn, Ryan, and Lindsay for showing me how to see more truly and write more faithfully, joining my particular task to the work of our Church. Perhaps most importantly, I thank the saints from whom I begged regular intercession, most notably Blessed John Paul II, Saint Anselm, and our shared Holy Mother. May I honor their wisdom and love through my own humble contribution to the work of our Lord. vii For my mother, who loves Precious Moments, and my grandfather, who gave me the novels of Louis L’Amour viii CHAPTER ONE Personalism and Popular Genres: American Catholic Fiction after Vatican II “The world, tired of ideology, is opening itself to the truth. The time has come when the splendor of truth has begun anew to illuminate the darkness of human existence” —John Paul II (Crossing the Threshold of Hope 164-5) In a 1999 letter to all the artists in the Church, Pope John Paul II urged his audience to reconsider the necessity of art for the life of faith. In this letter, Pope John Paul II defined the task of art as “mak[ing] perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. [Art] must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable” (sec. 12). In this definition, John Paul II outlines two distinct tasks for art: making perceptible the world of spirit and, when possible, making that world attractive. These two tasks work in conjunction to translate the inexpressible into a communicable form. In doing so, the artist engages in the task of revelation by uncovering meaning by communicating through a concrete and finite form. John Paul II then continues his work by comparing the task of the artist to the work Christ himself performed during his public ministry: “The Church has need especially of those who can do this on the literary and figurative level, using the endless possibilities of images and their symbolic force. Christ himself made extensive use of images in his preaching, fully in keeping with his willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the unseen God” (“Letter to Artists” sec. 12). Here, the pope recognizes the force of symbolic imagery to convey meaning precisely because he links this image-making with the historical event of the Incarnation. Just as Christ himself 1 images the unseen God, so can literary art manifest truth through narrative means.1 As artists attempt to speak the truth, they elevate their art from the level of simple mimicry to the potential status of icon, inviting the audience into direct relationship with both the image and the reality that image suggests.2 This possible religious dimension to art is recognized by those whose work primarily serves the secular academy. Nicholas Boyle suggests that “[i]n some formal sense every poetic text may be a revelation” (118). In Boyle’s analysis, because each poetic text presents and represents reality, the text’s author must reveal some insight into the nature of reality. How the author does this, though, comes not from his or her intentional illustration or embodiment of certain logical truth-statements, but from the force of the text’s aesthetic suasion. In other words, for Boyle, the revelation of the poetic text does not depend upon the belief system of the author creating it but on the truth as experienced in the narrative by the reader. The artistic presentation demands that “[l]iterature [be] language free of instrumental purpose” (Boyle 125). Neither a well- crafted argument nor a persuasive piece of propaganda can rightly be called literature, if literature truly is language free of instrumental purpose. Instead, an author must first intend to tell a good story for the delight and entertainment of his or her reader, while still allowing for the instruction of a reader.3 1 For a thorough investigation of the numerous ways that narrative constructs and reveals meaning, see Wesley A. Kort’s volume Narrative Elements and Religious Meaning. 2 By icon, I mean what Rowan Williams describes as “a window into an alien frame of reference that is at the same time the structure that will make definitive sense of the world we inhabit” (Lost Icons 2).
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