On a great Catholic writer by a great Jewish writer

Joseph Epstein

When James Farl Powers died in 1999, the New York Times headline on his rather brief obituary read: “J.F. Powers, 81, Dies; Wrote About Priests.” Wikipedia describes Powers as “a Roman Catholic American novelist and short-story writer who often drew his inspiration from developments in the Catholic Church, and was known for his studies of midwestern Catholic priests.”

Sounds narrow, provincial, claustral, unpromising. Not, it turns out, so. In the American priesthood J.F. Powers found a subject that he mined to produce some of the most striking fiction of his day, fiction that holds up well in ours.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323681904578641723309707986.html