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Wiseblood Books fosters works of fiction, poetry, and philosophy that find redemption in uncanny places and people; wrestle us from the tyranny of noise and rescue us from the republic of boredom; articulate faith and doubt in their incarnate complexity; and render well this world's countless sublimities and sufferings without forfeiting hope—all of this with an unflinching gaze, wide-eyed. [read more HERE ]
New Release
The Disciple
Paul Bourget
Adrien Sixte is a reclusive intellectual known for his theories on psychological materialism. Sixte's orderly, self-enclosed world is violently interrupted when a desperate mother petitions his help and a judge summons him to a criminal trial. The young defendant, Robert Greslou--a student and self-styled disciple of Sixte--has sent his master a confidential memoir written in jail. Greslou's psychological self-analysis traces the nexus of causes that propelled him to his current predicament. The memoir culminates with his experience as a tutor for an aristocratic family: when he experiments with the affection he inspires in a young girl, the disciple's actions eventually leading to her death.
This Wiseblood Classic edition of Bourget's, The Disciple, is a carefully edited and footnoted version of the only extant English translation. Rife with the revolutionary spirit of its age, the novel pulses with the large, lingering question: once man has freed himself from the ties of nature, religion, and unseen realities, where will his liberty lead him? "For many years," Paul Bourget once confessed, "I, like most young men in modern cities, was content to drift along in agnosticism, but I was brought to my senses at last by the growing realization that there is in this life such a thing as responsibility for the influence we have upon others."
Death Comes for the Cathedrals
Marcel Proust
This Wiseblood Books edition of Death Comes for the Cathedrals includes an introduction by its translator, Dr. John Pepino, and an afterword by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who wonders whether life may yet return to the cathedrals. Throughout, beautiful color images of Chartres and its architectural features grace the pages.
"Suppose for a moment that Catholicism had been dead for centuries, that the traditions of its worship had been lost. Only the unspeaking and forlorn cathedrals remain; they have become unintelligible yet remain admirable." So begins Marcel Proust's Death Comes for the Cathedrals (La mort des cathédrales), originally published in Le Figaro (1904). Proust addresses the political and religious debate concerning the "the Briand bill," a parliamentary proposal which imperiled the fate of French Cathedrals--"the first and most perfect masterpieces" of Gothic architecture. The great author of In Search of Lost Time gives prophetic voice to his own fear that "France would be transformed into a shore where giant chiseled conches seemed to have run aground, emptied of the life that inhabited them and no longer bringing an attentive ear to the distant murmur of the past, simply museum objects, themselves frozen . . . [read more HERE ]
As Earth Without Water
Katy Carl
When Dylan Fielding, celebrated contemporary visual artist, becomes Br. Thomas Augustine, novice at Our Lady of the Pines monastery, he finds delight not only in the shock his choice causes everyone around him but—to his own surprise—in the rhythms of the life itself. Shortly before he solidifies a lifelong commitment to the community, a traumatic encounter with an abusive priest plunges Thomas Augustine into terror and doubt. Reeling and uncertain, he reaches out to his friend, rival, and former lover, Angele Solomon, with hopes that she can help him to speak the difficult truth. As she attempts to advocate for her friend, Angele must ask how the scars left by their common past—as well as newer harms—can ever be healed or transcended. The wider inquiries demanded next will transfigure how both of them picture a range of human and divine things: time and memory; art and agency; trust and responsibility; and what it might mean to know real freedom.
"Katy Carl’s As Earth Without Water is a sharp and moving meditation on freedom, choice, and the creative life. 'Art is from the soul,' one of Carl’s lost painters insists; this novel certainly reads like it is."
—Christopher Beha, Editor of Harper’s, author of What Happened to Sophie Wilder and The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
Trevor Cribben Merrill
Catholic novelists enjoy greater visibility in American letters today than they did almost a decade ago, when Dana Gioia offered a sobering diagnosis of decline in “The Catholic Writer Today.” Major contemporary authors have invoked Bernanos, Waugh, and other legends as their literary ancestors, and a small but active cohort of Catholic writers has answered Gioia’s call to renew their tradition. This flourishing has coincided, however, with aggressive challenges to the basic tenets of Christianity in mainstream culture. In the words of Piers Paul Read, any writer known to hold traditional views on social and moral questions “not only limits his appeal among readers: he is even seen as an enemy of enlightenment and progress.” Outside of a small subculture, it is rare to meet with the bold conviction—at once religious and artistic—that gave such works as Sword of Honour and Wise Blood their distinctive blend of moral seriousness and dark comedy. . . . [read more HERE ]
"Too often when the modern reader considers the situation of the Catholic novelist, it ends with the same tired lament: 'Where, in today’s Catholic landscape, are the O’Connors and the Percys, the Waughs and the Mauriacs?' In this incisive essay, Trevor Cribben Merrill offers an appraisal that is keen and penetrating, a vision that is hopeful and bold. There is a nexus where Catholicism, culture, and craft meet, and Merrill’s essay calls us to that center again and again. W.H. Auden purportedly said, 'You owe it to us all to get on with what you are good at.' Catholic novelists, your time is now."
—TOD WORNER, Managing Editor of Bishop Robert Barron’s Evangelization & Culture, the Journal of the Word on Fire Institute