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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
For being a book about Mexico by a white dude in 1940, this thing is fairly remarkable. (I suspect I would have found it more moving had I not needed to read it at a rapid pace on deadline!) But on reflection I’m not willing to overlook the racism for the sake of having a ~Catholic fiction canon~
Mexico is in the midst of revolution, or revolutions. The Red Shirts are in power and the Catholic church is now being eradicated. This is the setting in which we meet the nameless "whiskey priest", who is just trying to get out with his life, but he keeps being asked to perform his priestly duties by the underground faithful. In this process, he examines his life, his beliefs, and his own sinfulness.
As a Catholic, it was a very interesting and though-provoking novel. The role of priest has both changed dramatically and not at all in history, and much of that was reflected here. When it was published, it was not received well by the Vatican, of course, but I think there's a real lesson on humility and humanity, on what it means to have a vocation, and I think Greene represented not only a specific time and circumstance very well, but brought the question of faith and what one is willing to do for that faith to the forefront.
Food: peated scotch. Complex, smoky, harsh, not easily forgotten.
As a Catholic, it was a very interesting and though-provoking novel. The role of priest has both changed dramatically and not at all in history, and much of that was reflected here. When it was published, it was not received well by the Vatican, of course, but I think there's a real lesson on humility and humanity, on what it means to have a vocation, and I think Greene represented not only a specific time and circumstance very well, but brought the question of faith and what one is willing to do for that faith to the forefront.
Food: peated scotch. Complex, smoky, harsh, not easily forgotten.
Okay, that does it. Officially my last try with Graham Greene. I've given him many more chances than he deserves. Aside from The Quiet American, I just cannot abide his style.
it's a masterpiece that I found painful to read (in august no less). too many vultures and beetles. too much poverty and desperation. relentless examination of social merits of religious faith vs political idealism.
The Power and the Glory’s ‘Whiskey Priest’ is perhaps the perfect conduit for the types of questions (really, doubts) Greene and artists like him — Bergman, Schrader, Malick and Endō all come to mind — aim to investigate through their works.
But asking questions is not all Greene is capable of here. His talents for storytelling, prose (some of my favourite written descriptions ever come from this work), dialogue, imagery (especially of the ecclesiastical variety), etc. are on full display here.
In sum, The Power and the Glory is a beautiful, startling, often times confrontational look at what words like faith, devotion, salvation and hope might actually mean. And how welcome a task like this is in a world where these words have been reduced to, well, mere words.
This will remain, I suspect, a favourite of mine for a long time.
But asking questions is not all Greene is capable of here. His talents for storytelling, prose (some of my favourite written descriptions ever come from this work), dialogue, imagery (especially of the ecclesiastical variety), etc. are on full display here.
In sum, The Power and the Glory is a beautiful, startling, often times confrontational look at what words like faith, devotion, salvation and hope might actually mean. And how welcome a task like this is in a world where these words have been reduced to, well, mere words.
This will remain, I suspect, a favourite of mine for a long time.
Some incredibly powerful scenes. A bad priest is always going to make for a gripping morality tale, and one on the run in the steamy jungles of Mexico is going to be doubly compelling.
This is a hard book to rate, I feel like I'd already internalised the message before I opened it, so it didn't feel quite so revealing. At it's core, it covers the somewhat superficial nature of religion, the fact that once you peel back the veneer you have very intellectual rigour, it doesn't make sense. But that misses the point, and the liberal modernising agenda fails to recognise that in a healthy state, the church is about individuals and recognising their individual spiritual needs, that have been wholeheartedly ignored by civil society. In a sense, religion is both irrational and essential. That's the brutal dualism of the priest and the lieutenant.
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
This book has been on my "to read" list for years -- basically ever since I first read Brennan Manning's description of the "whiskey priest." For whatever reason, I had the hardest time tracking the book down until I helped myself to my friend Jeffrey's bookshelves. It took me a while to get into the pace of the novel but about two chapters in I became engrossed in the story. Maybe more than the story as the voice.
Here's the Amazon blurb:
In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.
Here's one of several favorite excerpts:
"A voice said, 'You are the priest, aren't you?'
'Yes.' It was as if they had climbed out of their opposing trenches and met in No Man's Land among the wires to fraternise. He remembered stories of the European war - how during the last years men had sometimes met on an impulse between the lines.
'Yes.' he said again, and the mule plodded on. Sometimes, instructing children in the old days, he had been asked by some black lozenge-eyed Indian child, 'What is God like?' and he would answer facilely with references to the father and the mother, or perhaps more ambitiously he would include brother and sister and try to give some idea of all loves and relationships combined in an immense and yet personal passion...But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery - that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before the bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex. He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out, and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip, and God's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats. He said, 'Do you feel better now? Not so cold, eh? Or so hot?' and pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image."
Here's the Amazon blurb:
In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.
Here's one of several favorite excerpts:
"A voice said, 'You are the priest, aren't you?'
'Yes.' It was as if they had climbed out of their opposing trenches and met in No Man's Land among the wires to fraternise. He remembered stories of the European war - how during the last years men had sometimes met on an impulse between the lines.
'Yes.' he said again, and the mule plodded on. Sometimes, instructing children in the old days, he had been asked by some black lozenge-eyed Indian child, 'What is God like?' and he would answer facilely with references to the father and the mother, or perhaps more ambitiously he would include brother and sister and try to give some idea of all loves and relationships combined in an immense and yet personal passion...But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery - that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before the bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex. He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out, and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip, and God's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats. He said, 'Do you feel better now? Not so cold, eh? Or so hot?' and pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image."