Look How the Fish Live

by J.F. Powers

A collection of short stories about provincial life in the American Midwest and published for the first time in Britain. Powers, an American author with a reputation for being alert to the humour stored up in every human drama, and who lists among his admirers such literary figures as Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O'Connor and Anthony Burgess, has been described by Jonathan Raban as "one of the funniest, most socially exact, most heart rending and most thoroughly enjoyable writers alive". J.F. Powers lives in Minnesota, and is the award-winning author of "Prince of Darkness", "The Presence of Grace" and "Morte d'Urban". His new novel, "Wheat that springeth green" is published simultaneously by Chatto.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

34 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

James Farl Powers was an American novelist and short-story writer who often drew his inspiration from developments in the Catholic Church, and was known for his studies of Catholic priests in the Midwest. Although not a priest himself, he is known for having captured a "clerical idiom" in postwar North America.

Powers was a conscientious objector during World War II, and went to prison for it. Later he worked as a hospital orderly. His first writing experiment began as a spiritual exercise during a religious retreat. His work has long been admired for its gentle satire and its astonishing ability to recreate with a few words the insular but gradually changing world of post-WWII American Catholicism. Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy praised his work, and Frank O'Connor spoke of him as "among the greatest living storytellers".

Reviews

[Steven R. McEvoy]

This third collection of J.F. Powers' short stories was published twenty-eight years after his first collection and nineteen years after his second. All of the stories in this collection were previously published in magazines and newspapers, between 1957 and 1975. Unlike his earlier two collections, all of these stories have been previously published elsewhere. Another unique feature of this collection is that six of the ten stories are written in pairs, meaning that the stories are about the same characters or people.

The stories that are paired are the first and last stories: Look How the Fish Live and Tinkers, both of which appear to be autobiographical(I can find allusions to this assumption but no definite evidence; as such it is just opinion.) Next, the second and seventh stories, Bill and Priestly Fellowship respectively, are about Joe. Both also appear as chapters in the book Wheat that Springeth Green. And finally Keystone and Farewell are both about a bishop in a rural diocese of Ostergothenburg in Minnesota.

Therefore this collection has six religious short stories, 2 secular short stories, and the two autobiographical stories that seem to be a little of each. They are not as overtly religious as most of his fiction that falls into that category, but it does make reference to God and faith so it falls in between. Thus we will now examine each story separately.

Look How the Fish Live
After reading this story combined with the last story in this collection, that is about the same family a few years later, the reader cannot but feel somewhat that it is autobiographical. Powers in his lifetime lived back and forth between the United States and Ireland. It appears that when money was good and he had an arts patron he moved the family to Ireland. When money became tight and he needed more income, he returned to the States and took up various teaching positions at different post secondary institutions.

In this story our protagonist, an unnamed parent, is preparing to bury an abandoned bird his children brought home. He is complaining to God about all the animals he has had to bury, and reflecting that the large wood lot has been sold to a university for a parking lot. While discussing the death and his weariness of nature, the neighbour misquotes Matthew 6:26 and we have the title 'Look How the fish Live.' This is a sad little story with overtures of environmentalism.

Bill
In this story Father Joe gets his first assistant pastor. It functions well as a stand-alone short story but also fits well into the whole story of the novel Wheat That Springeth Green. Joe the Pastor is uncertain how to prepare for a curate; he does not want to have the experience he did with his first parish, but he does not know how to do it. So he feels awkward and the story shows that awkwardness.

Folks
This story does not seem to fit with the rest of Powers' canon. It alludes to 2 couples that were swingers and soon grew to four couples that vacationed together and had wonderful experiences. It seems to be written as part of a collection about one of the people in the story but it is unclear which one.

Keystone
This story is very typical of Powers' short stories. It is about a rural Diocese in Minnesota, and focuses around the politics of the Chancery, and amongst clergy in general. The Bishop, John Dullinger, is currently at odds with his Chancellor Monsignor Holstein. Dullinger picks Father Gau as his new driver and assistant. Over the progression of the story Father Gau replaces Holstein as rector of the cathedral and steers the Bishop into many activities he previously avoided - public speaking, involvement with the youth and laity, and more. Gau also leads the bishop into building a new cathedral, but Dullinger becomes dissatisfied with the building and with Gau in the process.

One of Them
This story is about a priest who is a convert, and his experiences at his first parish. It captures parish life from the view inside the rectory. Back in 1992, I lived in a small rectory in south eastern Ontario. This story could have been one of my personal experiences at that time. It is about a slightly weird thrifty rector, an eager young curate, or seminarian, and a housekeeper who tries to run the parish from the kitchen of the rectory.

Moonshot
This short story, written as a play in three acts, is full of humour and sarcasm. It tells about a lunar landing just seven years before it actually took place. Yet the whole thing is just an attempt by two young men to get permission to have the hands of the women they love. The story is far less serious than any of Powers' others and as such is a unique contribution from his pen.

Priestly Fellowship
This story continues some time after Bill, from earlier in this collection and in the novel Wheat that Springeth Green. In the novel there are 5 chapters separating the two short stories. In it Joe has an idealized vision of how priests should associate together and the types of conversations they should have. Unfortunately, because young Bill is of a different generation and Father Otto is with a religious order and not a parish priest, (even though he is in residence at the rectory and helping out with parish work), this story is a little sad and bittersweet, especially since it reminds us that often we do not live up to our expectations of ourselves. And Joe, as a member of the clergy, has even higher expectations for himself and those around him.

Farewell
Continuing sometime after Keystone, Bishop Dullinger is about to retire and the conflict between him and his replacement Bishop Gau has only intensified. The story captures the politics that can exist in a diocese no matter how small, rural or traditional. It could have been written about most dioceses I have ever lived in and about clergy I know personally.

Pharisees
This piece is an example of Powers' satire at its best. Short, concise and extremely funny.

Tinkers
Returning to an autobiographical theme, this story continues after Look How the Fish Live. The family tight on money has been running a hotel. Then in the middle of the night they move out because the former landlord has returned home. Joseph Bottum in the magazine First Things, states about Powers: "Powers led an astonishingly uneventful life." And this story captures that feel, even if in reality it is not fact.

Steven Knight in his list of books to read states about J.F. Powers: "He is sometimes described as a writer's writer, meaning that he was an artist too good to gratify the most casual reader, but he was also a reader's writer, if we assume a reader who thinks of fiction as intelligent art rather than low entertainment." Furthermore Joseph Bottum

This collection of short stories has more focus and intention than the previous two collections. The overlapping stories in this volume, and the greater consistency in dealing primarily with religious matters and framing it in the context of autobiographical material gives it a cohesive feel. And that feel is the essence of Powers' writings and why those who encounter him, more often than not, become fans and continue to pursue his works again and again.

(First written for RS398 - The Religious Fiction of J.F. Powers.)

[Nelson]

Like all story collections, this is somewhat uneven. The least interesting things here tend toward the experimental (not Powers' strong suit), like "Moonshot" or "Pharisees." When he aims for snark or elbows out satire, he comes off a bit shrill. The best stories here are, of course, the stories of clergymen, although the best piece is the title story (not about a clergyman). Title story is a richly observed tale of a father with daughters, much consumed with the flora and fauna of the large yard of the large house they are soon to leave (so it can be turned into a parking lot for a local college). It doesn't sound like much, but some profound and moving and funny reflections on life and death are shoehorned unobtrusively into this modest-seeming tale. It punches way above its apparent weight. Of the clergy tales, those concerning the 'Bishop' ("Keystone" and "Farewell") are the best. The first takes place in the midpoint of his career, when he replaces an assistant with a more obsequious and effective priest than had served him before; the latter takes place after the bishop's retirement, when he has been replaced by the assistant. Both stories illustrate the Bishop's good sense as well as his apparently being slightly out of touch. This mild disconnect from modernity (a flaw his successor doesn't have) is not so great however. He is evolved enough to have a wry sense of the present without being so rooted in tradition that he is reactionary (more like the assistant he replaces in the first story). In short, he is humanely spiritual. Both stories set him off against foils that give an ironic and sometimes comic cast to this delineation of his character. The same sense of detached, mild comedy appears in other stories about priests here, including "Bill" (a story about a new curate with a codger of a priest to serve—learning the fault lines in his new life) and "Priestly Fellowship" (almost the same story as "Bill" except from the priest's point of view, with a bit of a tool for a new curate). In these tales Powers offers his sense of the good and the bad of the post-Vatican II church with careful understatement and a sense of humor about excesses and follies. The final tale ("Tinkers") is an ironized look in at a family not unlike the family in the opening tale, moving house to house in Ireland, coping with the domestic difficulties of an unsettled existence. Not as strong as the priest stories, it is still better than the more overt attempts at satire. In short, as in the best collections, there are a couple of near classics (and possibly one classic) and a few clunkers and a couple in between.

[Pop Bop]

The Archdiocese of Lake Wobegon

I approached this collection with some reluctance, despite the fact that Powers was a National Book Award winner in 1963. The prospect of "funny priest stories" conjures images of Barry Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby tiptoeing through the Irish tulips and laying on the Begosh and Begorrah with a trowel. Well, forgive me fathers for I have sinned. These mild, sneaky, edgy, and crisply executed shaggy priest tales are brutally and yet wryly entertaining.

Actually, only about half of the stories collected here are about clergymen, but, along with the opening story, they are the best of the lot. True to their Minnesota setting, the tales are stoic, a bit melancholy, restrained, (if not downright cryptic), and often eloquently punctuated by glances, sighs, and the averted gaze. That said, they are intensely human, generous, perceptive, and forgiving. There's nothing overtly "religious" in the stories, (at least not at their hearts), and you could probably convert all the characters to car salesmen and get the same points across. But the hermetic and isolated world of the Church, (and the made to order awkward relationship between a priest and his curate), helps keep everything in focus.

As to the remaining stories, while the first, ("Look How the Fish Live"), isn't about priests it may be the best of the lot. A man walks around his yard and observes some kids trying to save a baby bird; his thoughts and musings are funny, resigned, detached, and border on the profound. After that, though, there are a few total misses, (a weird experimental play that is mercifully brief), and a few stories that just seemed to miss whatever mark it was that they were aimed at.

Still, this collection is most definitely worth reading. Every now and then one yearns for writerly craft and a touch of generous humanity, with a few bonus smiles, and that is what you'll find here.

[Joseph Greevy]

Great Short Stories.
Humorous celebration of the mundane. The small decisions and circumstances that dominate our everyday lives, and ultimately determine who we are.

[Jrobertus]

Powers is the author of the Morte D'Urban, a National Book Award winner. This is a series of short stories, but most focus on clergymen. Powers is not a seminarian, but spent time at a pastoral retreat. The author lived in Minnesota and most of the stories are set there. The stories don't deal much with religion per se, but with the interactions between clerics, bishops and Monsignors, priests and curates. They are generally very funny, although there is a touch of lonely sadness to them as well. The look at day to day concerns of priests, their competition for power, was as interesting as it was numerous.

[Terry Southard]

Very uneven collection of short stories. I loved Powers' Morte D'Urban and Wheat That Springeth Green. And I liked the stories that dealt with Midwestern priests in this small collection of stories. But 4 or 5 of the other stories seemed like throwaways to me. Worth picking up for the 5 good stories, but I was surprised at the differences in quality.