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  • J. F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban
  • H. Wendell Howard (bio)

Katherine Anne Porter is rightly acclaimed as a pure literary stylist capable of presenting complex subjects artfully and economically while still penetrating with an admirable subtlety the psychological dimensions of characters. These talents are particularly evident in her novel Ship of Fools, a moral allegory evidencing, as she said, that evil is always accomplished “with the collusion of good.” Even though the persons depicted in this fiction are traveling to Germany on the eve of Hitler’s accession to power the insights she sets forth make the novel pertinent and readable for generation after succeeding generation.

Like Porter, Vladimir Nabakov has laid claim to a lasting niche in the modern American literature canon with his memorable treatment of such subjects as the moral deterioration of an initially respectable person, the struggle of a politically uncommitted individual to maintain personal integrity in a totalitarian state, the farcical dimensions of the midirected passion of a middle-aged sophisticate, or, as in Pale Fire, a complex tour de force, the writing of a poem about an exiled Balkan king that elicits the king’s own involved critical comments on that poem. In Pale Fire, as elsewhere, Nabakov proves himself a master [End Page 81] of fiction that makes us as readers feel implicated, a fundamental requirement of all fiction that would be art.

Finally, for our purposes here, a third writer of artistic brilliance, public admiration, and critical acclaim is John Updike. His Pigeon Feathers, a collection of short stories, lays bare his bold ingenuity and intense seriousness as a writer, and because he unflinchingly witnesses the troubled human condition and then describes what he sees with a wondering conscience, he sits shoulder to shoulder with Parker and Nabakov. So, when in 1963 Ship of Fools, Pale Fire, and Pigeon Feathers were among the books being considered for The National Book Award, they were formidable competitors for the prize. In the end, however, they apparently were not formidable enough for they were bested by J. F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban. This selection was surprising on many counts and requires a critical examination not only of the novel itself but also of various factors that at first may seem tangential but that in the final analysis are part and parcel of an informed literary evaluation that aims to address a book’s importance to the culture.

The general subject and setting of Morte D’Urban is Roman Catholic priests in a woebegone village in Minnesota. The specific comic-opera milieu is created by a religious order, the Clementines, that is constituted of bumblers and connivers who function mostly to highlight Fr. Urban as a wily priest with ambitions for himself and the order of St. Clement. Fr. Urban, a gifted speaker, travels the religious circuit exuding a charisma that endears him to moneyed contributors who can, at least initially, endow his budding dreams. Born Harvey Roche, he had entered the priesthood because as a young man he had chauffeured the outsized Fr. Placidus and had become enamored of the life of luxury that that unique Clementine indulged in. He was determined to duplicate that existence for himself. Such a blueprint required a modernism predicated on a tolerance for moral ambiguity as well as a broadly defined view of the spiritual life that became his mantra. Because Fr. Urban soon recognized that the Order of St. Clement “labored under the curse of mediocrity,” he envisioned himself [End Page 82] to be the logical choice as the next provincial of the Order’s Chicago province. He further envisioned that he would “raise the tone [of the Order] by packing the Novitiate with exceptional men”; he would change the prevailing assessment that the Clementines were unique in being “noted for nothing at all.” What Fr. Urban had failed to consider in all this was the depth of the individual jealousy and the breadth of the hierarchical envy that absorbed the Clementine community. Thus, when the time came to elect a provincial he was accorded the “green banana.” He not only was passed over but also was exiled to the Order’s retreat...

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