Wheat That Springeth Green

Powers, J. F.

ISBN 10: 0394496094 / ISBN 13: 9780394496092

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1988

About this Item

1988 Hard Cover, No DJ. Bump on spine & one corner.Gray boards. Pocket removed from flyleaf. Interior good conditiion, no marks. Text clean, binding tight. Authors details struggles won & lost. Wheat That Springeth Green, J. F. Powers's beautifully realized final work, is a comic foray into the commercialized wilderness of modern American life. Its hero, Joe Hackett, is a high-school track-star who sets out to be a saint. But seminary life and priestly apprenticeship soon damp his ardor, and by the time he has been given a parish of his own he has traded in his hairshirt for the consolations of baseball and beer. Meanwhile Joe's higher-ups are pressing for an increase in profits from the collection plate.

Seller Inventory # 002126

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Wheat That Springeth Green
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication Date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394496094
• ISBN 13: 9780394496092
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

Presents Father Joe Hachett, the alcoholic, middle-aged pastor of a suburban church, who copes with his past, his transformed ideals, changing times, and a changing church

Reviews

Joe Hackett is a 44-year-old priest living in the Midwest in 1968. Once, when he was young and training for the priesthood, he was fanatical; he wore a hair shirt and gave up his vices: "smokes, sweets, snacks, snooker, and handball." Now he is middle-aged, comfortable and rather complacent, a bit of a Babbitt. He drinks too much, is overweight and over-concerned with appearances. He goes through the motions with his middle-class parish. Friction arises when a new assistant arrives. Just out of seminary, Bill hasin Joe's jaded eyescertain naive ideas. It's a gentlemanly conflict: the men like each other, and, as Joe cultivates their "priestly fellowship," through the upheavals of surreptitious parish fund-raising, a quiet evening drink or afternoon ball playing, he recognizes in his assistant his own idealistic, younger self. As a result of this introspection, and of the bureaucratic necessities that the structure of the church imposes, Joe changes from the middle-management timeserver he is surprised to realize he has become, to a less secular, more spiritual person. In his first novel in 25 years, since the National Book Award-winning Morte D'Urban , Powers writes in a casual, yet supple style. Brilliantly using details to illuminate both character and scene, and exhibiting an unerring ear for dialogue, reduced to its essentials, strikingly lifelike, often riotously funny, Powers succeeds in conveying the nuts and bolts of a clergyman's life even as he illuminates the hidden corners of his soul.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.