Franz Werfel, an Author Worth Celebrating!

Once upon a time there was newspaper of note that published wonderful articles and astounding editorials, book reviews, and human interest stories. Yes, the New York Times used to operate according to the journalistic principal of reporting the news objectively not twisting and perverting it. But that was a long time ago!

I thought about that while I was looking up information on Franz Werfel's novel, The Pascarella Family. I found a fascinating review in the Times written in 1932 describing it as a "fairy tale."

Franz Werfel's Romantic Novel; "The Pascarella Family" Is Old-Fashioned Pure Narrative, With a Distinctly Fairy-Tale Atmosphere THE PASCARELLA FAMILY. Translated from the German of Franz Werfel. 437 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $2.50.

Thinking about the Big Things!

When our children were little we had a picture book about a little dragon. (NB: I'm not in favor of making dragons cute and cuddly. They are meant to represent evil. The dragon in the Book of Revelation is anything but friendly. So I'll switch the image to elephants.) 

At any rate, the elephant was little in the beginning, like a lap dog. The young son kept telling his parents there was an elephant in the house, but they wouldn't believe it. So the elephant kept growing, trying to get their attention. Finally, he was so big he could walk off with the house. At that point, the parents acknowledged the existence of the elephant and he began to shrink back to his initial little doggy size. Obviously, the story was about problems being ignored that just get bigger unless they are acknowledged. 

Shhh....I'm reading a book I bought for a Christmas Present -- The Three Marks of Manhood!

Men, you are called to be priest, prophet and king of your family!

I confess it. I'm OCD. If I buy a book I can rarely release it from my hot little hands until I've read it.

That creates real problems when I've bought it for a gift, because I need enough time to read it before I wrap it and give it away. I also can't read it drinking a cup of coffee or eating lest I splatter the pages with brown coffee stains or red spaghetti sauce. And heaven forbid I take it in the bathtub. Who wants a book with water marked, dog-eared pages?

What are you reading? A Book Review on The Dark Tower

St. Michael's tower at Glastonbury Tor, setting for
the Glaston Chronicles by Donal Foley

The medieval tower of Glastonbury Tor is a place of myth and mystery. Today only the ruin of an earlier church, St. Michael's tower, stands on the hill there. Archaeological evidence also shows a possible hermitage and ruins of monks' cells. History tells us the grounds are drenched in the blood of martyrs. The last Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, Richard Whiting, was hanged, drawn and quartered there with two of his monks, John Thorne and Roger James.

Stories link the site to the legend of King Arthur and tradition says Joseph of Arimathea visited. A more modern association, debunked by many archaeologists, relates to the Temple of the Stars, an occult theory. All of this creates the perfect mysterious atmosphere for Donal Foley's adventure stories for teens and young adults.

Thinking about New Year's Resolutions and the Bookshelf Purge

It's not too early to think about my new year's resolution and I think it will have to be to purge my bookshelves of useless blather that I will never read. I'm working in the office/library at present where all my religious, English lit, and pro-life books are and I'm facing a dilemma.

I have a shelf of books that I consider heretical. I have notes in the front covers of all of them to warn anyone randomly picking up the book that it is dangerous. What's on that shelf? The Dutch catechism, books by Chardin and other questionable authors, several books by priests who left the Church. One, A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church by James Kavanaugh has a personal connection since the dissenter from Humanae Vitae (who left the priesthood to marry and later divorced) gave a "retreat" at my alma mater, Trinity College in D.C. when I was a Junior or Senior there -- just one of the scandals at that nominally Catholic institution. He was funny, cynical, sometimes outrageous and told a classmate of mine who went to him saying, "I get nothing out of Mass," to stop going. Some retreat, eh?

10 Books that Screwed Up the World

I've just begun reading an interesting book called 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: and 5 Others That Didn't Help by Benjamin Wiker. I've only just begun, but I know I'm going to like it from the Introduction which is titled "Ideas Have Consequences." Indeed they do! People of faith know that ideas have consequences. Sinful thoughts often lead to sinful behavior, but, even when they don't, they can be sinful in themselves. Adultery isn't the only sin against the 6th commandment. Looking in lust at others (a sin of the mind) is also gravely wrong. One may not steal, but coveting, an act conceived in the mind and chosen with the will, is also sinful. (N.B. Coveting is the sin underlying class envy, certainly a common sin in our age.)

Wiker says ideas released in print, "can be, and have been, as dangerous and harmful as deadly diseases...[and] If we take a good, hard, sober look at the awful effects of such deadly ideas we can come to only one conclusion: there are books that really have screwed up the world." To emphasize his point he quotes Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist:

A Wonderful Romp Through Life or Why I love Chesterton

If the only thing you've read of Chesterton is Orthodoxy, you may appreciate his wit, but not his childlike innocence. He was a lover of fairy tales and mystery stories, puppet theatres and games, but mostly he loved and enjoyed life with the exuberance of Father Christmas. I suspect Chesterton's little novel, Manalive, is his tongue-in-cheek laugh at himself.  The novel revels in the profoundly ridiculous and I could just see its hero, like the Pied Piper, attracting a crowd of little children dancing in his wake.

The protagonist, Innocent Smith, is a large man with a small head. And that, it seems to me, is the essence of Chesterton. He had a heart that required a large body to contain it, and a wise head that was not puffed up with its own brilliance. We meet Smith in a windstorm, leaping over the garden wall at Beacon House, a boarding house filled with solemn, cynical, and somewhat self-absorbed people. And like the wind that blew him into their lives, he blows them away creating a "crazy sense that it was everybody's birthday."