As It Were: Life at a Slight Angle to the Universe

We say that the style is the man. Style as the soul of wit and wisdom is the person. The aphorism points to this memoir's author, Joseph Roccasalvo: refined, astute and ironic. Readers will envision him moving at a slight angle to family and friends, exuding his intelligence to wide benefit. He is at once scholar and believer. Although the events of his life may enlarge on his attainments, we value him best for his faith and hope. Like his namesake, Joseph, he's accounted a blessing.

He avoids being confessional by his cool, robust, somewhat distant stance. If he's a practitioner of perfect prose, he's also practitioner of the perfect pose: linguist, novelist and orientalist; priest and playwright. He alarms us with the library he carries in his brain. He's the recorder of the secrets and longings, not only of his friends, but also of himself. The portraits in AS IT WERE issue a summons: "You, dear reader, take note. We are questioning you. Do you claim a soul among the soulless who wander our culture lost? You may yet be found." This is the triumph of Roccasalvo's memoir told with singular purpose. It's a story of divine providence; of grace doled out during infancy which brings all things mysteriously to completion.

Joseph Roccasalvo followed his graduate degrees in Philosophy, English Literature, and Theology with a Harvard Ph.D. in Comparative Religion and a specialty in Buddhism. He has lived and taught in Boston, Bangkokm and Chicago. For ten years in New York City, he was a professor of religious studies at Fordham University's Bronx and Lincoln Center Campus. He was also visiting professor of Buddhism in Lugano, Switzerland. Now engaged in full-time teaching, he devotes himself to two alliterative loves: prose and pastoral work. A hospital chaplaincy and seven novels ensued: Fire in a Windless Place, Beyond the Pale, Chartreuse, Portrait of a Woman, The Devil's Interval, The Powers that Be, and the Odor of Sanctity. These were followed by two books of short stories, Outwards Signs and The Mansions of Limbo; a play, Waging Waugh, and a memoir, As It Were.