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/lit/ - Literature

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15765091 No.15765091 [Reply] [Original]

Who is your favorite mid-century English-speaking Catholic writer? Because when you think about it, there were a ton of them. Both Anglo and American.

I guess for me it's a tie between Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O'Connor. I have vivid, fond memories of reading Brideshead Revisited. Meanwhile, everyone knows how great O'Connor's short stories are.

>> No.15765101
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15765101

>Catholic

>> No.15765843
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15765843

Where's the love for my nigga Graham Greene?

>> No.15765914

Tolkien unironically

>> No.15766561

John Fante was a nice gentleman.

>> No.15766728
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15766728

Powers doesn’t get enough love.

>> No.15767022

>>15765843
Greene's more consistent but even Muriel Spark was more technically proficient. Waugh's uneven, but his highs are higher than Greene's.

>> No.15767370

by your narrow parameters Waugh is by far the best, it isn't even close. Waugh is one of the very best English-language novelists of the 20th century overall never mind compared to "mid-century Anglo-Catholics"

>> No.15767403

>>15765091
Interesting how, when Brits get serious about being a Christian, they convert to Catholicism. That's because it's impossible to be serious while being an Anglican.

Evelyn Waugh, with Graham Greene as runner-up.

>> No.15767575

>>15767370
All I've read from Waugh is Brideshead Revisited, what else by him is good?

>> No.15767652

Chesterton is also grand

>> No.15767701

>>15767575
Everything's good in different ways. Most of his other books are funnier than Brideshead, but still have awful things happening to people who spend all their time travelling or going to Oxford or buying art or doing cocaine because they don't need a job. I'd start at the beginning and work my way through. Decline and Fall is hilarious, and gives a run up to some of the characters in Vile Bodies, but you could read them independently and still find them funny. If you like the newspaper aspects of VB you could go for Scoop after that. He has lots of madcap political ones too, which I'd say the Greene fans would prefer to his more famous ones: things like Black Mischief and Put out More Flags.

>> No.15768113
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15768113

>>15767652
>mid-century

I like Gilbert too but he doesn't count for this thread.

>> No.15768136
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15768136

Bernanos

> Inb4 English speaking

Diary of a country priest is the most sublime piece of Catholic fiction I have read since Dante.

>> No.15768145

>>15767403
lots of serious Anglican writers, they were just less obnoxious about it

>> No.15768184

>>15768145
I hope you're not including high Anglicans like Auden who are basically Catholic and obnoxious about it.

>> No.15769921

>>15765091
David Jones, followed closely by Walker Percy. Jones is fantastic about the nature of poetry and art. Percy's works show a curiously existentialist Catholicism, but speak to that school of thought effectively and humorously.

>> No.15769997
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15769997

>no mention of the guy that made Anglo-Catholicism cool.

>> No.15770009

Robert Hugh Benson even though he isn't mid century.
Nigga had nightmares of doom, terror, and the antichrist but instead of glooming over it he wrote a book exactly describing how to prevent his nightmares from coming true.

>> No.15770080

>>15765091
Evelyn Waugh for sure. I've read most his corpus except for the Sword of Honour trilogy, a Little Learning and I'm only part way through his short stories.

Brideshead was the first /lit/ book I read by choice as a high schooler and it had a profound effect on me as a lapsed Catholic. I also phased out trash fantasy and started reading more adult stuff.

>> No.15770125

>>15767575
>>15767701
This anon's rundown is very good. I'd add a Handful of Dust. It kinda tracks Waugh's personal life when just a few years prior his first wife had an affair with a mutual friend of the couple. The book, which starts off generally satirical goes absolutely off the rails, it's a great read.

Vile bodies is my favourite of his early work though, I strongly recommend it.

>> No.15770880

>>15765091
>Evelyn Waugh
lmao, imagine reading female writers