Morte D'Urban

By J.F. Powers
Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick

Winner of The 1963 National Book Award for Fiction.

The hero of J.F. Powers's comic masterpiece is Father Urban, a man of the cloth who is also a man of the world. Charming, with an expansive vision of the spiritual life and a high tolerance for moral ambiguity, Urban enjoys a national reputation as a speaker on the religious circuit and has big plans for the future. But then the provincial head of his dowdy religious order banishes him to a retreat house in the Minnesota hinterlands. Father Urban soon bounces back, carrying God's word with undaunted enthusiasm through the golf courses, fishing lodges, and backyard barbecues of his new turf. Yet even as he triumphs his tribulations mount, and in the end his greatest success proves a setback from which he cannot recover.

First published in 1962, Morte D'Urban has been praised by writers as various as Gore Vidal, William Gass, Mary Gordon, and Philip Roth. This beautifully observed, often hilarious tale of a most unlikely Knight of Faith is among the finest achievements of an author whose singular vision assures him a permanent place in American literature.

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

Superbly comic
— Nancy Pearl, Book Lust

Each sentence tends to be an event; yet every event, like every firm but fluent sentence, is an open door into the next half-expected, half-shocking encounter. . . . Morte D'Urban is [J.F. Powers's] supreme fiction.
— F.W. Dupee

[Powers] has etched curates and monsignors dueling for the favors of a bishop; old pastors outfoxing young assistants; bored bishops made uncomfortable by the zeal of young priests. His theme is almost always the conflict between the true religious spirit and a not exactly religious commercial practice, and his heroes are men—not saints or devils.
— Pete Hamill

Also see:

The Stories of J.F. Powers By J.F. Powers Introduction by Denis Donoghue Powers wrote about many things: baseball and jazz, race riots and lynchings, the Great Depression, and the flight to the suburbs. His greatest subject, however—and one that was uniquely his—was the life of priests in Chicago and the Midwest.

Wheat That Springeth Green By J.F. Powers Introduction by Katherine A. Powers Wheat That Springeth Green, J. F. Powers's beautifully realized final work, is a comic foray into the commercialized wilderness of modern American life.

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