The Best American Catholic Short Stories: A Sheed and Ward Collection ed. by Daniel McVeigh, Patricia Schnapp (review)

486 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE The Best American Catholic Short Stories: A Sheed and Ward Collection. Edited by Daniel McVeigh and Patricia Schnapp. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. ISBN-l3: 978-1-58051-210-7. ISBN-IO:1-58051-210-0. Pp. xxvii + 346. $17.95. It'salwaysdangerous to label something "best:' The very word makes nitpickers ofus all.The twenty stories in TheBest American Catholic Short Stories are, indeed, written by Americans who happen to be (or were) Catholic. Published during the last 75 or so years, they are wide-ranging in style and theme, and they are good stories. Whether they are the "best" American, Catholic, short stories published during this time is another question. Sufficeit to say that Daniel McVeigh and Patricia Schnapp think so. Poems by Schnapp serve as prologue and epilogue to the collection and are mini-meditations on the stories themselves. The first, "Things Seen and Unseen:' provides us with an epigraph from St. Luke:"Blessed are the eyes that see what you see;" it is followed by the beginning lines of the Nicene Creed. The epilogue, "In the Beginning:' reflects on the Word and the words that make up these stories and provides some of the thinking that lies behind their inclusion in this collection. They are fine reminders of what the editors hope to accomplish. Their hope is made explicit by an introduction that provides a minute history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century responses to American Catholicism and explains that "this anthology offers not ideology, but vision, experienced as literature provides it.,," (xvi), They cite Ross Labrie (The Catholic Imagination in American Literature, 1997)on the characteristics of Catholic fiction, and conclude that "Catholic stories can be about anything touched by literature itself, but they spring from a mind familiar with the creed, with the paradox of the Trinity, with belief in the Eucharistic presence, and, perhaps especially,with the crucial tenets of'forgiveness of sins' and 'life everlasting'" (xvi), McVeigh and Schnapp name Vatican II as the most important event in Catholic life of the last 75 years and for that reason divide their collection into pre- and post-Vatican II stories. The collection itself includes 20 stories by 13 authors-three by Caroline Gordon , two by Paul Horgan, two by Tim Gatreaux, Jon Hasseler, and J.F. Powers, and one each by Philip F. Deaver, Andre Dubus, Mary Gordon, Ron Hansen, Richard Russo, Flannery O'Connor, and Tobias Wolff. Yes, three by Caroline Gordon and one by Flannery O'Connor. They are arranged in a rough chronological order with Caroline Gordon's "Old Red" (1931), a pre-conversion story, introducing the collection and Andre Dubus' "AFather's Story" (l983) closing it, even though several stories in the collection were published after "A Father's Story:' Caroline Gordon, Horgan, Powers, and O'Connor make up the pre-Vatican II writers. Of these four authors, only O'Connor is much read today. Their eight stories make up nearly half of The Best American Catholic Short Stories. Of the nine post-Vatican II writers, only Deaver, Mary Gordon, and Hasseler are included in Ross Labrie'sbook. Deaver is mentioned in passing, and Hasseler merits several paragraphs. Mary Gordon, BOOK REVIEWS 487 on the other hand, receives a whole chapter to herself, as do all four pre-Vatican II authors. I mention Labrie'sbook only because The Best American Catholic Short Stories made me wonder what he had to say about post-Vatican II American, Catholic writers. The answer is not very much. And one wonders why. Likewise, McVeigh and Schnapp leave a huge gap in the stories they chose to include in their book. The last pre-Vatican II story, J. F. Powers' "Dawn" was published in 1956 and the first post-Vatican II story, Dubus' "AFather's Story:' was published in 1983. Again, one wonders why.Perhaps the editors could not find good stories published during those 27 years or perhaps it took that long for the distinction they make between pre- and post-Vatican II writing to become clear. They explain that "none of the later stories, however devout the writer, can exhibit the same confidence as Horgan, Caroline Gordon, and O'Connor...