LCUIN on the Latest Books

RAGMAN'S STORY BUT NO REPORT
RAGMAN'S CITY. by Boris Simon (The Harvill Press, 18s.).
%v HAT kind of book would we have if from a fairly sober, and authentic account, and history of a man and a movement we were to extract only the purple patches.
Clearly one would not be able to dismiss it as just so many purple patches; for purple patches are colourful, interesting, moving; they may well be sincere; and they are often necessary and of the very authenticity and truth of the whole booknot in others words merely patches.
11 seems to me that Boris Simons second book on the Abbd Pierre and his famous work for the homeless of Paris is just this kind of book.
There is no doubt that Boris Simon is an accomplished writer, an artist with words: nor is there any doubt that he is utterly sincere and disinterested, far from merely cashing in on the work in which he has been so intimately and for so long connected. Yet while this is a grand hook to read, it fails to have the impact of his first "Abbd Pierre and the Ragpickers." and one puts it down disappointed.
It fails to do just what the dustcover blurb boasts it does do: and that whether one reads the dustcover blurb or no. "This book continues the story of how the great work started at Emmaus has grown and developed. It is a progress report which records the fight ... " says the advertisement. But that just isn't true.
The book gives a magnificent series of moving and stirring penpictures of the work in progress, of the difficulties that have come to it with fame. and publicity, with the arc lights of the film companies and the cables of radio and television features.
Here are character studies in plenty of workers, old, young, bottrgeois. proletarian, white. black and khaki. Stories in profusion of heroism, funk, of generosity which compels tears, and stinginess which stirs hot indignation are here, too, SO that cliché or no cliche the 198 pages are "devoured" hungrily.
C Must be read' BUT this is no story; this is no progress report. At a time when one would sincerely wish to have a factual account, dated and documented, a history of Emmaus and the movement initiated by Abbe Pierre; a sober record of how the work went on, how it was organised, or improvised, from day Iii day, week to week, month to month; one has instead only-if that is the final word-some thirty surring and moving and faithful pen-pictures; some thirty purple patches on the broad bare lines of the story, history. record of the tnspiring work which has caught the imagination of the world.
There are some eight fine illustrations and a striking dust-cover to this book which for all our thinking it does not fulfil the required or boasted bill, must be read by all those touched and moved by the character of the Abbe Pierre, and conscious of the stark evil which yet lives in our midst. For what the Abbe is tackling is not a Parisian problem, or a French problem, for that matter, but one which is round everybody's corner.
'First class'
THE LIVING WATER by PierreThomas Dchau, OP. (Blackfriars Publications, 10s. 6d.).
"WHEN these conditions fail by
" reason of sickness or infirmity, our poor body cannot respond to the activity of the soul; then the soul leaves: It would be just the same with our contemplative life, if the conditions it demands were not realised. It is the story of all decay. I have witnessed this sad spectacle . . . I have seen monasteries wherein souls had completely lost their sense of their contem
plative life. They no longer knew why they were there," From there on Fr. Dehau goes on to detail the "conditions" logically, clearly, and with the penetration and the ease which we have come to expect as natural in modern French Dominicans though of course there is no more reason in nature why French Dominicans should have these qualities than English Benedictines. Still that is another question.
So the contemplative community must be "one", must be united in "charity". "If two or three are gathered together in My name there 1 will be in the midst of them." If accord is broken says Fr. Dehau, "He leaves immediately. And this is inevitable."
So simplicity and directness is a striking quality of this striking book. This, unlike some books we have highly commended in this column, is a book for religious primarily; and much that is most helpful and telling in it is lost on the individual striving for pencedon.
Fr. Dehau is refreshingly uncompromising in regard to "the enemy." "We must have no illusions; it would be the most dangerous of mistakes to imagine ourselves at peace when we are at war . . . The devil hates the religious life and he is particularly furious at the contemplative life." "I have seen certain communities which experienced real catastrophes precisely because of the skill with which Satan knew how to use these negligences (failures in the spirit of humility)."
All this, sounds a little "odd" in a world of broadcasting and television and in which advertisements even for an excellent daily newspaper are based wholly on an appeal to self-conceit and an unpleasant pride, but Fr. Dehaus has the truth of it, first and last. First class; 134 pages; black binding.
WEDDING SERMONS, by M. A. Couturier, O.P. (B lackfr jars Publications, Ss. 6d.).
THIS is a little booklet of some 60 pages, paper-covered, pleasingly got-up, giving a dozen sermons preached by Fr. Couturier on the occasion of the weddings of his young friends. in all but two instances the young friends are named and the date of the wedding given.
"This splendid little book on marriage," says the dust cover blurb, "consists of a collection of short sermons preached by Fr. Couturier at the weddings of young friends to whom he speaks with touching directness and tenderness."
It is a " splendid little book," the sermons are conveniently short, and the style direct and tender, but it is not "a book on marriage." It is a wise old priest chatting to his friends on one of the most important occasions of their lives and wondering what he ought to say. The sermons are personal, and though there are recurrent themes and subjects, the talks are not on the institution of marriage or even the sacrament of marriage, they vary with the persons to whom they are addressed, as, indeed, they should.
" I was thinking about this sermon while I was still at a distance from you and I said to myself: 'On this day at the wedding of Marcel Proust's great-niece and Francois Mauriac's eldest son, some essential truths ought to he spoken.' That was while I was far away because 1 was far away."
For the recurrent themes they are splendidly, convincingly. movingly, put forward: they all challenge; none is conventional.
So this, for example, on the occasion when two young people think they are about to make one
another " happy ": "Certainly there is very little that we either know how to do or arc capable of 'doing for the happiness of others. In reality every human being... holds his happiness in his own hands."