People of the Book
A Blog about Book Publishing from a Catholic Perspective

A wonderful piece in Salon describes what editors do and why they’re important.

Good editors work with and not against a writer. They calibrate how aggressively they edit according to how good the writer is, how good the piece is, the type of piece it is, the kind of relationship they have with the writer, how tight the deadline is, and what mood they’re in. But an editor’s primary responsibility is not to the writer but to the reader. He or she must be ruthlessly dedicated to making the piece stronger. Since this is ultimately a subjective judgment, and quite a tricky one, a good editor needs to be as self-confident as a writer.

Sister Lise Fanshawe isn’t your typical nun. She wears a habit, lives in a convent, and spends several hours a day in prayer, but her work is very specialized. Her order, the Sisters of Bethany, is dedicated to serving prisoners, prostitutes, and other outcast women. What’s more, Lise herself was one of these outcasts. She had been first a prostitute, then a brothel manager, and finally a murderer. Lise served a long sentence for the crime in a French prison, which is where she encountered the Bethany nuns.

Lise is the central character in Rumer Godden’s Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, a somber and inspiring tale, set in mid-century Paris. Lise, who is English, arrives in Paris as part of the British Army liberating the city at the end of World War II. She is caught up in the wild celebration of the time and becomes attached to a charming criminal named Patrice. She begins working in Patrice’s brothel; soon she is running the place. Lise’s hatred for her life (and herself) deepens. One day, desperate to keep Patrice from abusing a young woman, she kills him.

Lise is converted in prison through the selfless example of the Bethany nuns. Her conversion is depicted in entirely convincing fashion. There’s a symmetry to it. She chooses to follow one man, Jesus, instead of another, Patrice. She exchanges the harsh rules of the brothel and prison for the liberating spiritual rules of her community. She replaces the twisted love of sex-for-money with the boundless love of God. There’s blessed irony in Lise’s freedom. She had been enslaved by the false freedom of sexual autonomy. She is liberated by the apparent restraints of a religious life

There’s irony too in Lise’s ministry as a nun. She tries hard to save one girl and fails. She rejects another girl but, despite herself, becomes a saving spiritual model for her. Lise’s ministry is fruitful, but in the end it takes a tragic turn. Rumer Godden has no illusions about what it means to serve God. Her story shows how the mercy of God extends to the darkest human places. God’s love brings light and healing, but often it comes through suffering, willingly embraced.

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is a darker story than In This House of Brede, Godden’s other classic tale of nuns. Nonetheless it is a story of hope. The title of the book is a reference to the mysteries of the rosary: five are sorrowful mysteries; ten are joyful and glorious. Sorrow is very much present in this story, but in the end joy prevails.

John Allen thinks that the recent Vatican statements about the liturgy and the nature of the church should be interpreted as part of a program to reassert Catholic identity. He elaborates in this column, which includes an excerpt from the new book he is writing. Sample:

To employ an inter-faith metaphor that captures the spirit of what I’m describing, Catholicism today is engaged in the same project that gripped Judaism after the destruction of the Temple and the dispersal of the Jewish people into a worldwide diaspora — that is, “building a fence around the Law.” The idea is that by making the external markers of one’s religious identity clear and absolute, those who observe them will also preserve the deep spiritual values those markers are meant to embody, even when there’s little support for doing so in the surrounding cultural universe.

Are the Tigers headed for the World Series again? I hope so. Even if they fall short, this catch last Sunday by centerfielder Curtis Granderson will long be remembered.

Son of Dust, recently published in the Loyola Classics series, won’t be shelved among the romance novels in your bookstore. It nonetheless resembles contemporary bodice-rippers in several ways. It’s an against-all-odds love story with an ornate historical setting, treacherous villains, courageous knights, and a fast-moving plot propelled by a powerful current of sexual desire. There’s redemption at the end, but the couple at the center of the story pays a great price to achieve it.

Novelist Hilda Prescott is more than a great storyteller. She is a literary artist with a rare talent for dramatizing spiritual themes. Son of Dust, her third novel, is a profound reflection on the eternal battle between spirit and flesh that colors human relationships and drives much of human history. The story is set in eleventh-century Normandy and is narrated with precise attention to the historical details of the time. But its moral seriousness and mature artistry give it the timeless quality of a classic.

Son of Dust is the story of adulterous love and its consequences. The action takes place in the noble courts of Normandy in the years leading up to the Norman invasion of England in 1066. In fact, an important character in the book is Guillelm of Normandy, the future William the Conqueror. Fulcun Geroy, a minor noble, is smitten by Alde, the wife of a knight at Guillelm’s court. “Smitten” is an understatement—Fulcun becomes obsessed with Alde. She responds with encouragement, and when Fulcun gets the chance, he carries her off.

The act has terrible consequences. It brings death and devastation to the entire Geroy clan. Indeed, it upsets the delicate web of feudal, familial, and marital loyalties that moderates the harsh world of eleventh-century France.

The mayhem in Fulcun’s society is matched by the turmoil in his soul. Fulcun’s other passion is for God, and he is tormented by the thought that his love for Alde is both holy and sinful. Prescott elevates the story to a near-mythical level. Fulcun and Alde evoke Adam and Eve. Their adultery functions as a kind of original sin, bringing out the worst in other people and triggering ruin.

Fulcun and Alde eventually extricate themselves from this tangled web. Fulcun wanted true love, in contrast to the crude and brutal sexual relationships that were the norm around him. But he was misled by the clichés of courtly romance—that true love is forbidden, desperate, spontaneous. By God’s grace, he learns that true love is generous, sacrificial, and directed to the good of the other.

Fulcun learns one of these lessons about love from a wise abbot named Osbern. Fulcun tells him, “It was a monk that told me a man should care for nothing else but God only.” Osbern replies, “Well, he was wrong. The more creatures we love the better. They’re all his.”

Read Mike Aquilina’s introduction here. Order the book here.

Chris Anderson of “Long Tail” fame, and two other authors, have launched BookTour.com, a free online service that connects authors with bookstores, civic organizations, and other audiences looking for authors to speak.

Authors create their own page on the site detailing their travel plans. Groups looking for speakers can find authors by searching the author database. Promo material says that “BookTour.com makes finding when a favorite author is coming to your town as easy as checking the weather.”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the long-awaited conclusion to the Potter saga, will be published a week from Saturday. One of the questions the final book will answer is whether J.K. Rowling’s fantasy will be remembered as an epic with serious Christian content.

Christian themes abound in the the Potter books, and there’s little doubt that Rowling herself is an active, believing Christian. Writing in Books & Culture, literary critic Alan Jacobs lists the mysteries that the final Potter book must answer. The most important is whether Harry will survive. Writes Jacobs:

I do not think he will. I believe that, in one way or another, he will choose death: his life will not be taken from him against his will, as though Voldemort is right in believing that death is the worst thing that could happen to someone; instead, he will give it up, trusting that what Dumbledore told him about “the next great adventure” is true.

A new television drama that will debut this fall will center around a Jesuit priest who likes his vocation and is in love with the church. The show, called “Vows,” will appear on the American Movie Channel, which has begun to produce original television dramas.

Karen Hall, the show’s creator, says that AMC’s interest in “Vows” reflects popular fascination with the priesthood. “Priests for the most part used to be left alone,” she said. “But now people really wonder what it is like to walk down the street wearing a collar, why men choose to be priests in this day and age, and what the priesthood is about. And in the recent annals of priest screen characters, a man who is faithful to his vows and in love with the church is something that almost never comes out of religious-cynical Hollywood.”

UPDATE: Commenter TimC says that the report above may be too optimistic. He points to this somewhat gloomy post on Karen Hall’s blog.

Nora Ephron runs the gamut from “You’ve got mail” to “call me.”

Stephen Prothero isn’t buying the conveniently contemporary tone of the latest best-selling interpretation of the so-called “Gospel of Judas” (Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King.) Pagels and King are “preaching to the ’spiritual but not religious’ choir,” Prothero writes in the New York Times. “The paean to diversity, the suspicion of organized religion, the denunciation of violence in the name of peace — sounds too suspiciously close to contemporary multicultural pieties to be taken as ancient gospel.”

Why do Pagels and King ignore the disturbing portrait of Jesus in the “gospel”? Prothero asks. Jesus is a sarcastic scoffer:

In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus laughs no fewer than four times. He laughs not with his disciples but at them — for worshiping incorrectly and for misunderstanding his teachings. “Teacher, why are you laughing at us?” Judas asks. Good question. Pagels and King devote scant attention to it, responding simply that this laughter is intended to spur Jesus’ disciples on to “higher spiritual vision.” To me, however, it just sounds mean-spirited, turning Jesus into the sort of person you wouldn’t like, much less worship.

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

– G. K. Chesterton