J. F. Powers

Though his writing has since become something of a well-kept secret, known and treasured by only a few, J. F. Powers was arguably the most famous Catholic writer in the United States at mid-twentieth century. The term “Catholic writer” was one he disliked, whether applied to François Mauriac or Evelyn Waugh – for “more than that, they were writers” – or to himself (Malloy 2). While his reputation as a specialist in the clerical idiom has undoubtedly and unfortunately played a role in his relative obscurity today, there can be no denying that the greatest concentration of his talent is to be found just there, in his short stories and two novels about the lives of clergy in the American Midwest. In ot