THE Global Justice Movement Website

THE Global Justice Movement Website
This is the "Global Justice Movement" (dot org) we refer to in the title of this blog.

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

And Now for Something Completely Different

. . . but not entirely.  Back in the early twentieth century, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson made a name for himself writing historical novels and then satire to try and counter the "New Things" of socialism, modernism, and the New Age . . . which (much to his chagrin) was taken as “prophecy” (Lord of the World, 1907) or his blueprint for an ideal society (The Dawn of All, 1911).  He also wrote others in what he termed the “sensational” category, which his readers seemed intent on misinterpreting.


 


Benson then switched towriting “mainstream” fiction . . . which turned out to be just as satirical as his sensational novels, only less spectacularly so.  His first effort, A Winnowing (1910), while seemingly drenched in death and dying, has moments of surreal humor that call to mind P.G. Wodehouse, and appears to have inspired Evelyn Waugh’s black comedy, The Loved One (1948).  The others are even better — or worse, if that is how you want to put it. . . .




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