When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man.

aficionados) will be quite steadily, amusingly engaged.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Fischer of Geneva, theologically-oriented readers (not to mention Comp. But Greene mixes village-comedy with philosophical repartee in a unique, grave-yet-sparkling fashion-and, while his usual fiction audience may find this even less satisfying than Dr. An unsubtle parable? Indeed-especially when compared with the fuller version of similar themes (and the far richer central characterization) in The Power and the Glory. And finally, after the Mayor rescues the Monsignor, there'll be a final journey-to a literal confrontation with the Church's commerciality (Quixote is furious over a money-covered statue of Our Lady) and a final, fatal runin with the State. The utterly innocent priest's wayward behavior en route-allowing the Mayor to try on his collar, mistakenly going to a dirty movie (even worse, chuckling at it!)-leads to his Bishop-ordered abduction, virtual house arrest, and clerical suspension. They are harassed by the post-Franco Guardia. in spite of the Politburo.' But meanwhile, on their raggedy travels to Madrid and the countryside, this ideologically pure duo attracts repressive attention from the State and the Church.

reads the Manifesto, finding some unlikely spirituality in it matters of doctrine (e.g., birth control) are debated and they'll eventually agree that Quixote is a 'Catholic in spite of the Curia' while the Mayor is a 'Communist. Much of this small book, then, consists of the witty yet weighty theological/political dialogues between Catholic and Communist: sipping wine, they compare the relative evils of Stalin and Torquemada they contrast faith in God with faith in Marx Monsignor Q. clings to the Old Theology-'just having faith.' And, after rather accidentally becoming a Monsignor, aging Father Quixote is virtually forced out of his beloved El Toboso parish by the cruel Bishop-so he sets off on some travels in his beloved, senile Fiat (called 'Rocinante,' of course), with the Communist ex-Mayor of El Toboso as his Sancho Panza.

defiantly stayed true to the Old Chivalry, Father Q. Quixote here is Father Quixote, a Spanish village-priest and a supposed descendant of the original Don. The theological shade of Greene-in a wispy, undramatic, but charming modern-day fable, loosely paralleling the Cervantes classic.

Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene