Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2008 A Good Catholic Is Hard to Find: Roamin' Catholic Sensibility in Toole, Mccarthy, and Delillo Peter C. Kunze Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES A GOOD CATHOLIC IS HARD TO FIND: ROAMIN’ CATHOLIC SENSIBILITY IN TOOLE, McCARTHY, AND DeLILLO By PETER C. KUNZE A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2008 The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Peter C. Kunze defended on April 21, 2008. ___________________________________ Andrew Epstein Professor Directing Thesis ___________________________________ Timothy Parrish Committee Member ___________________________________ Christopher Shinn Committee Member ___________________________________ Elaine Treharne Committee Member Approved: ___________________________________ R. M. Berry Chair, Department of English __________________________________ Joseph Travis Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii To my mother, who shows me the beauty of faith in a higher power and to my father, who thinks it is all nonsense. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my thesis director, Dr. Andrew Epstein, for allowing me to explore this topic freely and for his detailed, insightful criticism. His commitment as a teacher and a director was a model for excellence in academia. I cannot imagine a more helpful, dedicated, and professional thesis director. I thank Dr. Christopher Shinn, Dr. Timothy Parrish, and Dr. Treharne for serving on my committee. Individually, I would also like to gratefully acknowledge Dr. Shinn’s willingness to meet with me to flesh out the argument in its early stages, Dr. Parrish’s feedback on my Cormac McCarthy chapter and his course on postmodernism, and Dr. Treharne’s encouragement and readiness to meet with me on matters of Catholicism. Their supportive, yet instructive comments in my defense made this experience all the more rewarding. I am grateful to friends who checked in on me, even as I slipped into seclusion to finish this thesis. I would be remiss if I did not thank two friends in particular, Valerie Wetlaufer and Cameron Williams, for providing me with company while I wrote this thesis, offering a sympathetic ear when I slipped into impassioned rants, and generally keeping me sane. Their friendship has been one of the highlights of my time in Tallahassee. I also have to thank my students for considerately keeping their nagging and whining to a minimum this semester. They were among the most intelligent, motivated, and conscientious groups I’ve taught in my time here. Working with such bright, pleasant individuals made teaching a pleasant diversion from this project. I am forever indebted to Dr. Timothy Viator of Rowan University, for his continued mentorship and friendship. He was among the first individuals to open up the world of academia to me and to show that being a professor goes far beyond lecturing and grading papers. He represents all that I want to be in this profession—selfless, knowledgeable, engaging, gracious, modest, dedicated. Without his encouragement, I would not be in graduate school and for that, I (gratefully) blame him for all the hours of stress and misery. iv And finally, my parents, Jack and Suzanne, my fiercest champions, for their undying love, fervent support, and unrelenting confidence in me. The only thing that exceeds your pride in me is my pride in being your son. Everything I do, everything I’ve done is a direct result of your generosity, affection, and support. Thank you does not begin to express my appreciation, but it is all I can offer here. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………...……vi INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER ONE IN THE NAME OF THE “FAT TURD”: A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES AND MOURNING FOR A RELIGION LOST……………………………………………………………………….13 CHAPTER TWO MR. STRANGE LOVE: OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE CORPSE: CHILD OF GOD AND THE REJECTION OF RELIGION…………………...……34 CHAPTER THREE BUT I STILL HAVEN’T FOUND WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR: MAO II, FALLING MAN, AND THE SEARCH FOR NEW FAITH……………………………………..…………………53 EPILOGUE………………………………………………………………………………………76 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………..79 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………….87 vi ABSTRACT Studies of Catholic American literature have preferred analyses of authors whose work demonstrates a reverence to the faith they openly acknowledged. However, with the exception of Paul Giles’s American Catholic Arts and Fictions, most studies have ignored the Catholic influence in works of nonpracticing Catholics. This neglect limits the scope and undermines the complexity of Catholic American fiction to works by the religious, about the religious. In this study, I will examine non-practicing Catholic authors whose Catholicism has received little or no attention in order to explore traces of former faith n their work and expand the definition of Catholic American literature. The culture of the 1960s radically changed America forever, and three events in particular altered the Catholic American identity: the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1963), and the pronouncement of Humanae Vitae (1968). Since concerns over the body were at the heart of these three moments in history, I will use that as the means to explore the Catholic sensibility in the selected texts. Furthermore, these events led to a questioning of Catholicism and of faith in general: its capabilities, its right to power, and its effectiveness. In this study, I examine four novels by three non-practicing “Catholics”—John Kennedy Toole, Cormac McCarthy, and Don DeLillo—who were born and raised Catholic prior to these events, but begin writing during or after the moments I have mentioned occur. John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces addresses the “Vatican II,” subtly expressing frustration and grief towards the loss of a steady worldview. Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God purposefully rejects a Catholic view of God’s presence in the world, yet forces the reader to not judge Lester Ballard in a manner that is reminiscent of Christ’s teachings. Between Mao II (1991) and Falling Man (2007), Don DeLillo shifts in his view of how religion functions in the postmodern world, from skepticism to a guarded optimism. By exploring the Catholic subtexts in these novels, I challenge notions of secularity in contemporary American literature, including postmodern fiction. I will also show how authors traditionally excluded from scholarship on Catholic American literature have a rightful place next to the likes of Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton and Walker Percy. This addition, in turn, will add to the understanding of the complex, yet integral contribution Catholic writers, practicing and nonpracticing alike, have made to the American literary tradition. vii INTRODUCTION It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve. — James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The problems inherent to a chronological study of literature—more specifically, the idea of “periods” and “movements”—have perhaps been the major motivating force behind the rise of the alternative organizations of literary study. The present day English department offers courses ordered not only by when the literature was produced, but also by whom it was produced. The identity politics explored within texts shifted the emphasis by which literary studies takes place and how a text may be understood. In giving primary consideration to ethnicity, gender, or religion, instructors allow students to examine texts in conversation across the ages. Despite the popularity of such areas of study as Jewish American literature, Catholic American literature has received only limited attention in book-length studies.1 The Catholic presence in American literature is worthy of further investigation not only for the range of acclaimed American authors who were raised in and/or practiced Catholicism (Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Flannery O’Connor, among others), but also for the anti-Catholicism and consequential marginalization found throughout American history, which Catholic priest and author Andrew Greeley refers to as “last remaining unexposed prejudice” (qtd in Labrie 1). Although previous studies have made important strides towards establishing a body of Catholic American literary scholarship, there still exists a certain degree of exclusivity that I feel is problematic in such a fledgling area of inquiry. In his 1997 study The Catholic Imagination in American Literature, Ross Labrie states at the outset that his book “deals with authors who represent high intellectual and artistic achievement, it considers only authors who were practicing Roman Catholics, and it focuses only on literary works that center on Catholic belief and spirituality” (1). This statement of purpose raises two problems for the scholar of Catholic American fiction: the rather subjective valuing of what is “high intellectual and artistic” and the unapologetic elimination of non-practicing (or lapsed)