Catholics on Literature edited by J.C. Whitehouse, Four Courts Press 186pp, £30
`Never tell a lie. And don't tell the truth unless it's necessary." This useful maxim, handed out by an old fellow-countrywoman to the Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset, might seem to be just a paraphrase of the advice quoted by Seamus Heaney: "Whatever you say, say nothing!" But as developed by Undset, in an essay first published in America magazine in 1942 and reproduced in this volume, it offers a moral precept for fiction-writers.
"In fact," says Sigrid Undset, "the writer may perhaps be described as a person who has got to tell truths more often than the bulk of the people who may get along very well when they stick to the facts of everyday life . . . and tackle the truths behind the facts only on the rare occasions when they have to." And she adds that the writer must "never tell a lie. Not even . . . the lies to black out hideous or painful or discouraging truths".
Commitment to truth (as distinct from facts), though expressed with very varying emphases, is an insistent leitmotiv in this collection, ranging from Newman and Chesterton, through Maritain, Mauriac and Bernanos, to Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh - and Flannery O'Connor, extracts from whose letters are included here under the title "On the Moral Basis of Writing". These sparkle (or bristle) with the apercus of a firm believer: ". . . the moral basis of poetry is the accurate naming of the things of God"; "Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating: it goes with knowledge." And, on "bad taste", admitting that some will find it everywhere, "from spitting in the street to Christ's association with Mary Magdalene", she declares that "the two worst sins of bad taste are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment. You have to have enough of either to prove your point, but no more . . ."
Not all the writers discussed here might agree: certainly not all of them - Proust, D.H. Lawrence, Gide - share Flannery O'Connor's faith. But most do, or did, as presumably do those who write about them, in the "highly individual range of reflections" here assembled - as well as the authors of the "Papal and Episcopal" pronouncements which form the appendix. Writers from "Catholic Ireland" hardly figure: the exception is Brian Moore, whose Catholics is perceptively considered by the editor along with Greene"s Monsignor Quixote. And I was surprised by the inclusion of "Modern Novelists: A Catholic Viewpoint" from an Irish Messenger booklet (1966) by one Patricia Corr: this to the exclusion of Conor Cruise O'Brien's seminal study Maria Cross, mentioned only in relation to one of its critics.
What is a "Catholic Novel", or does the beast really exist? These questions, and a range of aesthetic, moral and theological problems deriving therefrom, belong to that "golden age" whose apogee was realised in the masterworks of Graham Greene, Waugh and Mauriac. Certainly, writing in English, and to a lesser degree in French, was predominant in this part of the world. Sigrid Undset was of course honoured, if somewhat remotely, but a Heinrich Boll ("I am not a Catholic writer, I am a Catholic who writes") or a Shusako Endo (already available in translation in 1969), were scarcely considered, and Latin American writers were slow to achieve popularity.
Now, at the century's end, we rarely hear writers spoken of as Catholic or even Christian - even though in England such names as David Lodge, Anthony Burgess, Alice Thomas Ellis, Muriel Spark could hardly avoid being so categorised (nor, until recently, would A.N. Wilson); and both North America (Mary Gordon, J.E. Powers and others) and Australia continue to add to the record. This country is, as ever, a special case: we still live in the shade of Joyce. But, especially since the 1960s, a number of works have appeared (in Irish as well as English) which reflect our religious culture - if only to react against it.
Dr Whitehouse's compilation provides a useful introduction to his subject - especially for beginners unfortunate enough to have missed the "golden age", although they may be bemused by some of the moral concerns of the time. A very few of the critical pieces are somewhat heavy-handed and might have been pruned; one or two others sit a little oddly among their fellows. But on the whole, a valuable reminder of some of the finest tragic and comic writing of the century.
Sean MacReamoinn is the author of Laylines 1980-1996: Partial Views of Church and Society