Right. So, it's now eight years. I've many, many notebooks, but what I see when I examine the notebooks now are phases of development toward the work I'm doing at present. I see it in embryonic stages early on, and I begin to see what I thought were simply notes, because they didn't resemble my earlier work, were, actually in early form, the work that I have now begun to do … the new work, in other words. I didn't recognize it at first. I thought it was failed old work.
Caroline Gordon's Catholicism, as presented in her two latest novels, The Strange Children (1951), and The Malefactors (1956), is of a rather special kind, one that advocates the practice of the highest theological virtue, charity or Christian love. Eschewing pride, which negates the kind of understanding and sympathy deficient in the characters of her earlier novels, her Catholics seek selfless devotion to man and God, even if at times their means seem strangely at odds with these noble aims. Moreover, they are curious about the historical traditions, theology, and lore of their religion, and they pursue the contemplative life of service, very often and significantly in close contact with the land.
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