Book reviews: Literary Converts.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS YOU (PROBABLY) NEVER HEARD OF. PART 4



And Not To Yield: A review of Joseph Pearce's Literary Converts

Imagine you are dying. All your life you’ve held admiration for a religion your peers do not particularly like, and you’ve almost converted once or twice. You’ve spent time in jail for illegal acts of sexual deviance, and spent your days writing witty tales and satire. At the end of your days, you’re dying from syphilis. Your friend brings a Catholic priest, and your pain is so deep you have to imply you wish to convert because you can barely speak. He blesses you as per your wishes. The next day, you pass on, fulfilling one of your own quotes, “Catholicism is the only religion to die in.”



So wrote, and so died, Oscar Wilde.



The opening chapters of Joseph Pearce's Literary Converts begin at the dawn of the 20th century with the death of Oscar Wilde and his opponent, the Marquis of Queensbury, both converts to Rome. The subsequent chapters all cover the lives of Hillare Belloc, Maurice Baring, GK Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Muriel Spark, and Sigfried Sassoon, even touching upon the life of CS Lewis, who was an ‘Anglo-Catholic,’ (In U.S., read Episcopalian).



Each chapter follows the conversion and the religious life each man and woman led, and the odds they stood against: Ronald Knox and Hugh Benson converted from the Anglican Church, even though their fathers had both been Anglican Bishops; GK Chesterton, who had defended Catholicism for 20 years without converting, but had to “Pope” without his dear wife; Arnold Lunn, an Atheist who learned about a religion to attack it, and was eventually conquered by it; or Graham Greene, who became (in my opinion) possibly the oddest Catholic to ever live. Each life is briefly told from the beginning to the end of their days.



The narrative style of Literary Converts is a continuous flow that mysteriously breaks down near the end. Despite its last chapter problems, Pearce manages to write at least a dozen biographies with an easy grace—and plenty of humor— that glides through decades. The sources are well cataloged, and the events are interesting enough to hold one's attention firmly. For example, history books say that the Fascist Franco won the Spanish Civil War, but hardly ever acknowledge the brutal Communist murder of Spanish priests, the rape-murder of nuns and wholesale martyrdom of the faithful. While still hating Nazism, I now understand why Franco’s people called themselves Loyalists: loyal to king, country, and church—and why they gave little help to Hitler when the war came.



If I were to answer what is Literary Converts about, I would have to say it is a book about faith. It is a book about those who don’t give up hope in the face of oppressive odds and the gods of science and subjectivism. It’s about facing a world that kills dreams and then lies when it says “you’re the only one left who believes that!”