The Fine Delight: Postconciliar Catholic Literature

Where are all the Catholic writers? is a popular question these days. In his beautifully realized new book The Fine Delight Nicholas Ripatrazone offers an answer: they are among us writing. With skill and care he explores the artistry of three superb writers--Ron Hansen Paul Mariani and Andre Dubus--as well as several other contemporary Catholic authors. In the process he reveals . . . how reading can be sacramental enabling us to discover Gods presence in our modern world. --James Martin SJ author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything The Fine Delight is a text of scholarship and personal consideration of American literature that is marked by and built from postconciliar Catholic thought. Nicholas Ripatrazone has written a highly readable study of the work of writers whose beliefs vary widely but who share a living engagement with the Word. This book itself is just such an engagement. It will inspire more informed and curious reading. --Alice Elliott Dark author of In the Gloaming: Stories Nicholas Ripatrazone offers an insightful interrogation into the theological and aesthetic strategies of contemporary Catholic writers--novelists poets and essayists writing in the last fifty years. Aware that the Catholic imagination is not static he suggests helpful ways to understand how post-Vatican II writers situate their faith in light of their artistic vision. A timely book Ripatrazone helps extend the critical and pastoral implications of a Catholic literary aesthetic. --Mark Bosco SJ author of Graham Greenes Catholic Imagination Nick Ripatrazone is the author of three books: Oblations (prose poems 2011) This Is Not About Birds (poems 2012) and This Darksome Burn (novella 2013). His writing has received honors from Esquire The Kenyon Review and ESPN: The Magazine. He teaches literature at Rutgers University.