Writers and religion

By W. J. IGOE
MODERN LITERATURE AND
RELIGIOUS FAITH, by Martin Turnell (Darton, Longman and Todd, 12s. 6d.).
MR. TURNELL'S erudition is quite awe-inspiring. but his approach to writers and writing I find disturbing.
I see him as a sort of Grand Inquisitor of the bookshops. more interested in examining. in a complex and oblique way. authors' consciences than their books. In the capacity of moral theologian he is. I believe. less than adequate. He is, after all. an amateur in that sphere.
The whole subject of art and morals, I should add, intimidates me. I well recall a correspondent of the "Boston Pilot" who suggested that the statuary in the Vatican Museum should be provided with trousers, fig leaves being inadequate. No one took him seriously (even in Boston) hut I have wondered what would happen to a man (or woman) who went in for painting. say. madonnas in the classical way today.
Tut-tut
mR. TURNELL is a moralist on a higher and more civilised plane, hut when he writes of M. Mauriac and Mr. Greene (in the novel, let us face it. Catholic primitives) his hesid-noddings and magisterial tut-tuttings suggest a Judge Jeffreys frustrated (in a nice way, of course) by a law that has abolished Capital Punishment.
The conclusions he draws from their work are directed against the authors: the implications he finds focus on the authors. But the books have larger implications which should have been recognisable (especially the implications of Pinkie, who hates "sex", in "Brighton Rock") to Mr. Turnell's audience when the lectures which comprise this book were given in Edinburgh. The Gorbals is not so far away. But "normal" people. one is aware, don't live in slums.
Value missed
THE hook is stimulating and miskadings The use of selected. contrasting quotations from authors in various periods, in the last analysis illuminates (in a way conditioned by the critic's personality) personalities. not writing.
I should add that I am mildly surprised that anyone should speak of writing and religion today without touching on the simple piety (that is, goodness raised to holiness by the practise of goodness) which is the value Mr. Evelyn Waugh is conveying and embody ing in his books. He "creates" saints. This aspect of his work is not obvious, But then Mr. Waugh claims to be no more than a novelist.