YANKEE PRIEST:
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL JOURNEY, WITH CERTAIN DETOURS
FROM SALEM TO NEW ORLEANS

by Father Edward F. Murphy, SSJ (1892 - ??)

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS
by Patrick Killough

(A) Review for http://www.amazon.com


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RATING OF THIS NOVEL:  Five Stars  * * * * *

TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: The Priest Who Knew Sinclair Lewis,
September 1, 2005

Reviewer:    T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States)

YANKEE PRIEST (1952) is the many-splendored autobiography of Father Edward F. Murphy. It is must reading if you want immersion in

--New Orleans, rich in Catholic education and a thriving theater life, where Father Murphy's first church, Saint Joan of Arc, sat at the foot of a levee (and in September 2005 may be underwater in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) (Ch. VIII);

--interactions with boyhood friend, actor and playwright Eddie Dowling as well as graduate school friend (later Bishop) Fulton J. Sheen, and the chance discovery of a young singer, Kate Smith;

--history of the Josephite Society of priests, brothers and nuns, founded by the future Cardinal Vaughn of England to minister to Negroes in America;

--the ways and methods of a priest who was playwright and novelist long before today's Father Andrew Greeley.

I read the book primarily because Sinclair Lewis's definitive biographer Mark Schorer recommends it for some unique insights into the author of MAIN STREET, BABBITT and ELMER GANTRY. Father Murphy met Sinclair Lewis in 1940 because his friend Eddie Dowling had given him amateur performance rights to Irish playwright Paul Vincent Carroll's SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE and Lewis came to New Orleans to play the lead role of Canon Skerritt. Murphy (XI, 241) had to overcome earlier prejudices against an allegedly fierce foe of religion but their friendship endured until Lewis's lonely death in Rome in 1951. By then Murphy had read all of Lewis's novels and some short stories.
 
Lewis told Father Murphy that he had set sail for Europe just after MAIN STREET first appeared and plenty of copies were being read on deck. Suddenly one woman "sprang up from her chair, leapt to the ship railing and hurled MAIN STREET with all her might into the sea" (p. 242) -- a most honest review. Murphy liked Lewis at once and found the earlier God-challenging rhetoric associated mainly with his days researching and writing ELMER GANTRY very possibly "a perverse form of God-seeking." Lewis's intense concentration on rehearsing for and performing his role of Canon Skerritt reminded of similar strength in saintly Mother Katherine Drexel. Father Murphy saw in Sinclair Lewis a potential saint riding a tortured road to Damascus.

Father J. Fulton Sheen had recently converted newspaper columnist Heywood Broun to Catholicism. So one night during rehearsals Murphy said to Sinclair Lewis, "Why don't you do a 'Heywood Broun'? To which Lewis replied, "Why don't you do an 'Elmer Gantry'?" Curiously, during rehearsals for his role as an Irish Catholic priest, Sinclair Lewis could never make the Sign of the Cross correctly. Finally, during the second act of a performance solely for nuns (who adored the play and Lewis) he got it right. This recollection of this event was so strong that on the last page (315) of YANKEE PRIEST, while outside a prison where a converted Negro murderer whom the priest came to know had made a saintly death, Edward Murphy wrote "I touch my finger to the forehead, chest, and shoulders. The gesture that Sinclair Lewis once found so difficult, the Sign of the Cross."

This book should be republished and marketed. It can be read for many things, including the early history two Negro universities in New Orleans, Xavier and Drexel, and especially for the author's involvement in the early, glory years of Xavier (where Murphy was chaplain and professor): notably its theater, musicals and even football.

-OOO-