On Morris West

Jody Bottum at First Things today:

After four years in the Australian Imperial Forces during World War II, he settled down to become a writer—quickly establishing himself as the “boy wonder” whose radio plays were enormously popular in Australia. A pair of novels, Gallows on the Sand and Kunda, somewhat uneasily combined artsy pretensions with potboiler structure, but they were successful enough to finance his long-desired excursion to Rome. And it was there that he met Father Mario Borelli, an Italian priest working with street urchins—the subject of his 1957 The Children of the Sun, his first international success.

In 1959, after six months as the Vatican correspondent for the Daily Mail, he produced The Devil’s Advocate, far and away his best book—the tale of a dying English priest named Blaise Meredith sent from Rome to southern Italy to investigate the case for canonization of a mysterious man passing under the name of “Giacomo Nerone,” martyred by the Communists. The book stands up surprisingly well even today. It contains no insights that weren’t done at a higher literary level by such Italian authors as Carlo Levi in his 1945 Christ Stopped at Eboli or Ignazio Silone in his magnificent 1937 Bread and Wine. But West told his story well, kept it moving at a potboiling pace, and sold it to a wide popular audience.

The peak of that popularity came three novels later, in 1963, with The Shoes of the Fisherman, a more-than-bestselling tale of a Ukrainian priest named Kiril Lakota, who is elected Pope Kiril I. West’s obituaries all noted the success of the novel and its awkward transformation into an almost unwatchable disaster of a movie, starring Anthony Quinn. But what almost no one observed was West’s real intelligence about the Cold War—and his novel’s implicit prediction of what would, in fact, come true with John Paul II: The resolution of the struggle between East and West and the end of the Communist terror could come about only with a strong pope from Eastern Europe.

When we started Loyola Classics, West was pretty much out of print. We got excited. Shoes of the Fisherman! Lazarus!

But soon enough we discovered that a small press called Toby Press had someone who was smart. They'd obviously researched the scene, discovered what we had, and gone on pursuit of the rights to some important West titles - titles which seem to have absolutely nothing in common with the rest of their list, but which would, of course, bring them some nice profits. And they had exclusive English-language rights for a number of years, they told us.

Ah, but wait! All is not lost - that novel which Jody describes as, in his opinion, the best of West's work - The Devil's Advocate - was not among Toby's acquisitions, and through a very lengthy process, we obtained the rights. Jody's right - it is a good book, made particularly memorable by the character of the dying priest sent to investigate the possible saint.

What makes it even better is that Kenneth Woodward wrote the introduction - and it's a fine one that begins with an amusing anecdote of his only meeting with Morris West and continues, in the inimitable Woodward style, to give a clear, gracefully written introduction to the novel.

Comments

[sacramentalwookie]

One note about the movie: Shoes of the Fisherman. I watched it again a few weeks ago after many years. I don't know who was in charge of costumes, but the quality of the vestments was superb. The set production was also very good.

The movie on the other hand was pretty bad.

[scotch meg]

I did enjoy this book when I first read it (a long time ago -- trying to remember whether it was high school, college, or shortly after). I went on a West jag and enjoyed most of it, although I think there was one book which betrayed a sense of disappointment that JP II was not a "spirit of VII" pope. This one is a great read. Gotta buy it.

[Ruth]

I think I picked up my copy of "The Devil's Advocate" for about a quarter at the resale shop. Couldn't put it down. The most beautiful passage in the book, "It imposed poverty on its religious, yet played the stock-markets of the world..." I won't ruin it, just go to the bottom of page 53.