We still have no Catholic fiction?

Our time is precious and tragically brief, so I will get straight to the point. The point is that I want ever so gently to suggest, in response to a recent Catholic Herald (UK) piece, that “the time for the 21st-Century Catholic novel” has not only arrived, it dropped its luggage on our metaphorical doorstep a good round number of years ago and has ever since been crashing on our collective couch. It’s time we all noticed. Maybe it would be cool if we brought it a cup of coffee or something.

Last time the Herald got worried about the state of Catholic fiction—a bit less than three years ago, now—I was invited to participate in a response piece that pointed to the actual, vibrant, flourishing state of Catholic contributions to the culture of arts and letters. Since then the picture on the ground has only grown lusher. The truth is that we are living in an explosion of high-quality Catholic fiction being produced in every quarter, by writers from around the world and around the corner.

“All of us can support contemporary fiction simply by reading it,” says Mr. Caldwell, the author of the recent Herald piece. What a good idea. I couldn’t agree more. So first, let’s read Christopher Beha’s Index of Self-Destructive Acts and Kirstin Valdez Quade’s The Five Wounds, Randy Boyagoda’s Original Prin and Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour, Phil Klay’s Missionaries and A.G. Mojtabai’s Thirst, Jonathan Geltner’s Absolute Music and Suzanne Wolfe’s The Confessions of X, Natalie Morrill’s The Ghost Keeper, and Ron Hansen’s Exiles—all, mind you, published in the last fifteen years, many in the last five years, many decorated with prestigious literary honors. (I’ll wait.)

I don’t think that anyone who completes this list will have much left to say about any supposed lack of lively engagement between Catholicity and contemporary literature, or any supposed “impossibility” in getting a Catholic novel published. The only question left then will be: Where else can I find more fiction along these lines?

For this question, fortunately, I have answers.

First, the recent past remains underexplored. In his piece, Caldwell spends significant time introducing the legacy of O’Connor and Greene, as though to an audience unfamiliar with their merits and flaws. Our audiences, I acknowledge, may differ. Still, their interests are likely to be similar. So let’s talk about Tobias Wolff’s In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and Fanny Howe’s Economics, Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them, Don DeLillo’s Underworld, and Richard Bausch’s Peace: all celebrated in the world of arts and letters, yet all sadly underengaged among Catholic readers. These are far from the only titles we could list. Names of the past which everyone expects to hear in these conversations—Francois Mauriac, Sigrid Undset, Georges Bernanos—wrote a wealth of titles that are underappreciated among English-speaking readers, because they have only recently come into English translation or because previously available translations were of poor quality. Cluny Media is doing yeoman’s work in bringing these lost titles back into print.

Speaking of lost work, it’s also worth looking into the Catholic women writers whose unjustly ignored contributions are now being revived by CUA Press. And speaking of women writers, Toni Morrison’s entire legacy as a Catholic writer and the influence of Catholicism on her work remains—as Nick Ripatrazone has noticed—radically underappreciated. Morrison, it’s acknowledged, just like Graham Greene, had a sometimes fraught on-again-off-again relationship as an adult with the faith of her childhood: none the less do her literary achievements more than merit our attention and appreciation.

Still more, there is a nearly untapped wealth of global Catholic writing awaiting the eager reader, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus to Sono Ayako’s Miracles, from Martin Mosebach’s What Was Before to Shusaku Endo’s Stained Glass Elegies, from Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille to Margaret Ogola’s The River and the Source, and beyond.

And these lists are growing all the time. New writers are continually becoming interested in, and contributing to, the robust intellectual and aesthetic tradition that Catholic writers have represented and continue to represent. Popular Catholic fiction in the genres is also alive and well; though I have done less reading along these lines, I have it on good authority that the field is lively and worth exploring. Though some of its proponents announce themselves as Catholic, other voices might not be self-evidently so until you notice the preoccupations of their stories (and/or stumble across their social media): Alessandra Harris’s mainstream-style psychological thrillers, for example, explore the serious terrain of the human heart while also providing pure pleasures of immersive narrative. While their Catholicity represents more a subtle underlayer rather than an overt motif, I have come to prefer this thematic underlayer to any amount of superficial window-dressing. (Here is one more point on which, it seems, Mr. Caldwell and I can agree.)

Before we conclude, let’s give a moment to the extraordinary picture developing at small independent presses with Catholic bona fides. My own heart is partial to the contemplative realist sensibility of Wiseblood Books, a small press increasingly recognized even by secular outlets as a powerhouse of the independent publishing world. Wiseblood is the publisher I’ve entrusted with my own fiction, but new fictional releases are also emerging continually from Angelico, Beaufort, Belle Point, Chrism, Ignatius, and Slant, among others. Joshua Hren’s Infinite Regress, Steven Faulkner’s The Image, the Belle Point Prose chapbook series, Kaye Park Hinckley’s Shooting at Heaven’s Gate, Michael O’Brien’s Strangers and Sojourners, Valerie Sayers’ The Age of Infidelity—these are far from the only works we could list, but they are, to say the least, worthwhile places to start.

It has for decades now been popular to complain that editors are reluctant to touch fiction with Catholic themes, by Catholic authors, or tending to Catholic conclusions. This no longer appears to be an available excuse for us, though we could speculate on many possible reasons for resorting to it. It may truly have been the case at one time, but clearly the picture has changed and continues to shift. In truth, the contemporary scene is flooded with novelists and fiction writers who treat Catholic themes and topics with profound depth, and/or who bring their Catholic convictions to work that can be enjoyed by any reader of good will. That we could do more to lift up and explore, curate and critique, such fiction is evident. That this work is not best done by complaining about such fiction’s supposed nonexistence is, I hope, tautological. The richness of new Catholic writing is waiting here, right in our midst, our friend, for the asking. (And it could still really use a cup of coffee.)

We have not even discussed the wealth of existing postsecular fiction that touches on humanity’s innate religious yearning in ways that may resonate with a Catholic worldview. And then there is, too, a tremendous groundswell of overall literary ferment in non-European countries. Due to the influence of Catholicism in some of those regions, I suspect that at least some of our next great Catholic novelists will arise from the global South, whether from Central and South America—historically a wonderland of literary treasures—or from Africa or Asia, where Catholic populations remain passionate in faith under persecutions that are challenging for comfortable American and European readers even to imagine. Just five or ten more years may bring us a harvest of which we can now see only the smallest first leaves.

Until then, I do hope we can stop talking in loose terms about a vague “Catholic fiction” whose heyday is supposedly past and, instead, bring our attention to the real feast spread before us. Perhaps, one day soon, we’ll even find the courtesy to start speaking to the strange bohemian who’s been dwelling all these years, unnoticed, on our couch.