Volume 29, Number 5 · April 1, 1982
No Fool
By Francine du Plessix Gray
Clare Boothe Luce
by Wilfrid Sheed
Dutton, 183 pp., $12.95
In 1952, six years after her conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, Clare Boothe Luce edited a remarkable anthology called Saints for Now, published by Sheed and Ward. The company of authors she persuaded to contribute to this volume reminds one of the Luces' famous dinner parties, at which 'Winnie' Churchill and 'Bernie' Baruch were names as familiar as those of their household pets. Evelyn Waugh was called to perform on Empress Saint Helena, Rebecca West on St. Augustine, Vincent Sheehan on St. Francis of Assisi, D.B. Wyndham Lewis on Pope Pius VI, Whittaker Chambers on St. Benedict. But a still more striking aspect of the book is Mrs. Luce's pious introduction. The saint for whom she expresses the greatest affection in these pages is that most self-effacing of all Catholic role models, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. 'Hidden from the world in a Carmelite monastery,... Theresa seeks to become little and helpless and hidden, like the infant Divinity.'
Review, 3937 words
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