JE:
You mentioned Shusaku Endo in one of your emails, who I think of as one of the great twentieth century novelists. I've read 'Silence', 'Wonderful Fool', 'The Samurai', 'The Sea and Poison' and 'Scandal'. 'Wonderful Fool' is, I think, a better realisation of a Christ-like character than Dostoevsky achieved with 'The Idiot'.
I've now got 'Crying for a Vision' and read the chapter on Endo straightaway. I was fascinated to see that you were exploring there the synergy between Endo's characters and narratives and understandings of Christ within Asian culture, as I have also done something very similar using 'The Samurai' as a way of exploring how the understandings of the atonement need to be communicated differently within different cultures. This was a session that I delivered for a couple of years for ordinands at the North Thames Ministerial Training Course and which made links between Hasekura's conversion and the shame-based model of the atonement developed by C. Norman Kraus and summarised in 'Recovering the Scandal of the Cross' by Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker. I think that Endo's novels demonstrate clearly the absolute necessity of incarnating the Gospel in the culture in which it is being communicated and are probably the best demonstration of the need for inculturation of which I am aware.
I'm also interested in the Modern Catholic Novel generally, with Endo being a major exponent. I think it is fascinating to see the extent to which Catholicism has been a major theme and motivation of novelists throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. I've posted on Modern Catholic Novels at http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/search/label/bernanos and http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/search/label/modern%20catholic%20novel. What is it about Catholicism that has influenced and inspired so many novelists?
Mary Doria Russell's 'The Sparrow', which I mentioned in one of my last emails and have now read, sits firmly in this tradition with its theme of a crisis of conscience for its Jesuit central character albeit that it differs from most Modern Catholic novels in being set primarily on another planet. It's a well written story, once it gets going, with an engaging central character who is honest about the deficiencies and the inspirations of his faith. The split narrative works well before meshing at the conclusion to bring together the events of the central crisis and the response to it. This central crisis is genuinely shocking and its resolution is probably a little too easy and dealt with too briefly but the novel, as a whole, provides an engaging and challenging exploration of God's presence and guidance in human exploration and suffering.
SS:
Yes to Endo. I originally did that piece ('When worlds collide: The novels of Shusaku Endo', Radix Magazine) in 1985 after discovering his novels `by chance' in Cambridge 1983 (and this based on a throwaway one line reference in a Time Magazine article on Japanese contemporary culture). I then saw Endo lecture in Berkeley and met his novels translator while researching the article.
Re: Vision book - the `core' of the book was pub in 1991 (Stride, UK) while the stuff in `scratching the surface' is from all over i.e`To whom it may concern' was from late 90s, and casts some background light on the `Crossing the Boundaries' album.
And yes to Mennonite author C Norman Krause. Very much enjoyed his work beginning with `authentic community'. I've also read one novel by Muriel Spark that seemed to fit; 'The Comforters'.
I'm now intrigued by Nicolas Mosley, read snippets of an interview with him, and hope one day to read his novels. Especially as he namechecks Ford Maddox Ford who always struck me as `post modern' (before I quite knew what post-modern was) insofar as he wrote his way through a quartet of `war novels' in a sort of elliptical, fragmentary, bewildered `gentleman at the club wondering what is becoming of England' approach.
Joyce Cary's good, too; novels about Africa (and the `white man's burden'). Laurens Van Der Post also. Cary wrote a novel about an artist; `The Horse's Mouth'. Lawrence Durrell's `Alexandria Quartet'. For a while I was reading Malcolm Lowry's `Under The Volcano' once a year. An acquired taste (but addictive) is C P Snow's sequence of Cambridge and London novels.
JE:
As you can no doubt tell from the links I sent, if you've had a chance to check them out, I think Mosley is a major, although underrated, novelist. 'Hopeful Monsters' is his masterpiece. The later novels, although often not well reviewed, are among his most interesting work. 'Catastrophe Practice' is his manifesto mixing allusive statements with short stories. His autobiography 'Efforts at Truth' is a must read as it is the best explanation of the way he merges his philosophy and his writing style. It also covers his involvement with Fr. Raymond Raynes and his editing of a theological magazine (the name of which I can't remember but a number of articles from which ended up in 'Experience and Religion'). The website with most information on him seems to be: http://metameta.ca/.
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The Beatles - Paperback Writer.
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