Music Tuesday: Charlie Watts and Stones’s Song Composition

I don’t usually follow up one music Tuesday with another along the same lines, but Charlie Watt’s death, which I commemorated last Tuesday here, inspired a conversation on a politically and culturally conservative social media board I participate at called Ricochet.  One has to pay to participate at Ricochet, but I find it worth it.  It keeps out all the obnoxious riff raff that you get on free comment boards and it pulls together a group of really intelligent people with whom I constantly challenged intellectually. 

A member, KirkianWanderer, wrote a wonderful tribute to Charlie Watts a few days ago, well worth reading.  Non-members can read articles that get selected for Main Feed, and that did, so you can read it if you like.  But KirkianWanderer had a very interesting paragraph concerning the relationship between Charlie Watt’s drumming and Keith Richards’ rhythm guitar in Rolling Stones song composition.  He says:

 

The 1960s saw the Stones at their chart-topping peak, and experimenting with a range of styles, from the blues that first brought them success to Beatles-esque psychedelia. It was also in this era that the unique rhythm section pattern of the band was cemented. In the vast majority of rock bands, everyone, from the guitarist and bassist to the singer and (possibly) keyboard player, follows the drummer. That wasn’t their formula. Instead, the drums followed the rhythm guitar player, i.e. Keith Richards. It’s something most drummers would have bristled over at best (if Jack Bruce had suggested that Ginger Baker follow him there would have been one less bassist in the world in short order), but Watts went along with it because he saw what it contributed to the band’s sound. Namely, a sense of tension, as the drummer was always chasing the beat, and an unmistakable musical signature.

I wanted to follow up on this insightful paragraph which I think gets at the heart of Rolling Stones song composition.

That’s an interesting observation that the drums follow the rhythm guitar.  I think for the most part that is true but I would not say universally.  I have notice the opening intro to Stones songs falls into four main patterns depending on where the drums enter the song.  There may be other patterns, but I would say these four are the overwhelming majority: (1) Songs where the riff (melody, but I’ll call it riff for rock songs) is established fully and then the drums enter. (2) Songs where the beat is ahead of the riff.  (3) Songs where the beat is held back significantly from the introduction of the riff.  And (4) songs where the beat comes in the middle of the riff. 

I think each of the above permutation will give the song a particular aesthetic, and I think it’s very much part of the Stones’ composition process.  Let me take each one of these permutations and give what I think is the aesthetic effect that comes as a result.  I’m only going to embed one or two videos per permutation.  I’ll list other songs of that type.  You can look them up on YouTube.

A. Let me start with the easy one, songs where the beat is held back significantly from the introduction.  These are usually ballads.  The classic is Angie, where drums don’t come in until the second verse.  These songs allow the drums to really fade into the background and allow the tone and cadence and pitch of the various instruments to create a sound effect to accentuate the ballad mood.  Here’s Wild Horses where drums don’t enter until the first chorus at about 1:20 into the song.

Other songs in this category would be Ruby Tuesday, Memory Motel, You Can’t Always Get What you Want (though it’s not Charlie on drums), She’s Like A Rainbow.  Also you could include in this category songs with no drums at all: As Tears Go By and Lady Jane.

B. Songs where the beat comes before the melody seem to have the opposite effect of the beat chasing the rhythm.  There are a fair number of songs in this category: Under My Thumb, Get off My Cloud, Hang Fire, One Hit to the Body, Emotional Rescue, Time Waits for No One, Dance (Pt1), Undercover of the Night.

Now in this category I think there are one of two possible aesthetics the Stones are after.  One aesthetic is the sense of the music and the singer chasing the beat.  A perfect song for this aesthetic is Time Waits for No One where the music is trying to catch the ticking time of the beat, time always moving forward. 

That aesthetic accentuates songs like Hang Fire where the narrator character is lazy and so falls behand the beat or Hand of Fate where the character is on the run and you get the feel of the narrator running.

The other aesthetic from songs with the beat ahead of the riff is that it highlights the drummer.  I know Charlie eschews solos and attention, but sometimes the band does ask him to show off his virtuosity.  Get Off My Cloud is an early song where drums come in first to showcase the drummer.  Undercover, Dance, even Emotional Rescue, which I think is such an underrated song.  But I think the best example of showcasing Charlie’s virtuosity is If You Can’t Rock Me.

C. The category where the riff comes ahead of the beat is the most common, and supports the claim that the beat feels like it’s chasing the rhythm.  Many of their great songs fall into this category.  Satisfaction, Brown Sugar, Paint It Black, Let’s Spend the Night Together, Jumping Jack Flash, Gimme Shelter, Last Time, Rough Justice, Midnight Rambler, Beast of Burden, and so on and so on.  The list is endless.  But I think Not Fade Away illustrates it well.

In some ways having the riff be laid down ahead of the beat makes perfect sense musically.  It establishes the melody on which the rest of the song will develop and reach a conclusion.  It’s classical in a way.  This is such a huge category that perhaps a second song should embedded for an example, one off a more recent album, Rough Justice.

That’s a great example of rhythm ahead of drums.  That’s identifiably Stones.

Before I get to the final category, I want demonstrate a song that combines the riff ahead of the beat and then in the same song the beat ahead of the riff.  It may be the only song in their opus that actually does that and it’s one of their finest compositions, Can’t You hear Me Knocking.  First listen.  It starts off with the melody clearly defined before the drums.

\Yeah, you can feel the drums chasing the riff until the 2:45 mark and then the song shifts.  This song has been criticized as being two songs forced together, but in my humble opinion that is flat out wrong.  Some say the first two and a half minutes is supposed to be one song, a hard rocker, and the balance of the song some sort of pasted-on jazz rock instrumental that has nothing to do with the first half.  No I disagree.  The melody from the second half is a variation from the first.  It’s not a separate melody.  The second melody seems like an inversion of the first.  And the percussion is also inverted.  Where in the first half the drums trail the riff, in the second the riff trails the percussion.  When you listen to this song it almost feels like you are looking into a mirror.  Great composition.

So I think you can see how the aesthetic can be altered when the beat comes after the riff is established and when the beat comes before the riff.  There is always a sense of chasing, and whichever comes first alters the listener’s perception of who is chasing who.  But what about songs where the beat comes in the middle of the riff? 

D. Now there are just a hand full of Stones songs that bring in the beat in the middle of the riff.  In a way it’s kind of odd.  Doing a quick survey I only found four songs, but I didn’t listen to everything.  But some of these are great songs: Tumbling Dice, It’s Only Rock and Roll, Miss You, and the fourth is the one that just came out last year, Living in a Ghost Town.  I’m not sure what to make of these.  Living in a Ghost Town feels more like it’s in the riff chasing the beat category.  But listen to Tumbling Dice with this in mind.

The beat came in before the initial completion of the melody.  Overall the song feels more harmonious, more integrated.  Neither seem to be chasing the other.  I think the same holds for It’s Only Rock and Roll.  I don’t know if I would say that for Miss You.  There it feels like the riff is chasing the beat.  Not sure. 

Anyway, I hope you found this interesting.  Perhaps it’s just my imagination but it does strike me that the Stones compose around this relationship between riff and beat, and who is chasing who.

Sunday Meditation: The One Who Does Justice

From today’s Sunday lectionary, 22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.

 

R. (1a)    The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
Whoever walks blamelessly and does justice;
    who thinks the truth in his heart
    and slanders not with his tongue.
R. The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
Who harms not his fellow man,
    nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor;
by whom the reprobate is despised,
    while he honors those who fear the LORD.
R. The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
Who lends not his money at usury
    and accepts no bribe against the innocent.
Whoever does these things
    shall never be disturbed.
R. The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.

Faith Filled Friday: Saint Josè María Robles Hurtado

As I was going through this month’s Magnificat magazine and which overlapped with my reading of The Power and the Glory, I came across this passage which instantly recalled the novel.  Magnificat has a regular feature where it provides a short biography of a saint, and each issue coordinates the saints’ by a topic.  In this issue the topic was “Saints Who Were Leaders.”  I was shocked to find this saint I had never heard of, but was very much relevant to the Cristero War and of course The Power and the Glory.

 

Saint Who?  Saints Who Were Leaders

 

Saint Josè María Robles Hurtado

Martyr († 1927)        Feast: June 26

 

A native in Mascota in Jailisco, Mexico, Josè was ordained a priest at twenty-four and two years later founded the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with a focus on Eucharistic devotion.  After several years in mission work, he was assigned to a parish.  Although a new Mexican constitution outlawed public devotions, Josè went forward nevertheless with a bold plan to erect a giant cross devoted to Christ the King in the geographic center of Mexico.  To announce the laying of the cornerstone, he had signs placed throughout the countryside declaring Christ the “King of Mexico.”

 

After this the authorities began to put increasing pressure on Josè to curtail his work.  He was forced into hiding, but he continued to minister to his parishioners in secret.  On the feast of the Sacred Heart, June 25, 1927, he was arrested when he was about to say a private Mass in a family home.  The next day, he was taken to a large oak tree outside a nearby village and hanged.  Josè placed the noose on his own neck so that none of his executioners would bear the guilt of that act.

 

Shortly beforehand, Josè had penned a poem anticipating his death: “I want to love you until martyrdom…/With my soul I bless you, my Sacred Heart./Tell me: is the instant of my eternal union near?/Stretch out your arms, O Jesus/Because I am your “little one.”

 

Loving Father, through the intercession of Saint Josè María Robles Hurtado, take me at the moment of my death into your eternal embrace.

        (p. 80, Magnificat, Aug. 2021, Vol. 23, No. 6.)

That cross Josè built might be the same cross in the fourth chapter of Part 2, the giant cross the Indian woman places her dead child at the foot.

In Memoriam: Charlie Watts

As some of you may know, I was a huge fan of the Rolling Stones.  They were part of my adultescence and beyond.  Sad day today.  Their great drummer, Charlie Watts, passed away and with it part of my youth.  The Stones are not known for being reserved, but not Charlie.  He did not dress rock-n-roll outrageous.  He wore suits, very much like a British gentleman.  He was married to the same woman his whole life.  Some might disagree, but I consider him among the greatest drummers of rock music.  His greatness I think is in his wonderful timing and subtle shifts.

First a remembrance.

I’m just going embed a few Stones songs where I think Charlie excelled.  Here’s one mentioned in that remembrance, Hang Fire. Just listen to the little shifts while still keeping the beat.

 

Honkey Tonk Women.  Charlie makes this song. 

Here’s a rocker, When the Whip Comes Down.  Listen to how he with his fills and shifts makes the song accelerate.

But frankly Charlie best work in my opinion was on slow tempo ballads.  His little subtleties really accentuate the song.  Listen to Angie.  Wait for the drums to come in on the second verse, at about the 47 second mark, and then how he keeps adding pieces to the drumming, high hat, flourishes, all without ever drawing attention to himself.  It makes the song.

 

Finally the one song I always think of when I think of Charlie is Get Off My Cloud.  I just love those rapid fire flourishes.

 

Some live Charlie with an interview explaining his playing.

 

Charlie interviewed on 60 Minutes,

Eternal rest in peace, Charlie Watts.  You have given me immense pleasure over the years.

Sunday Meditation: Which God Will You Serve?

Joshua gives the Israelites a choice.

 

Joshua addressed all the people:

“If it does not please you to serve the LORD,

decide today whom you will serve,

the gods your fathers served beyond the River

or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are now dwelling.

As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

       -Joshua 24:15

 

Points for meditation:

(1) Joshua is a cognate version of the name Jesus.  Joshua was the warrior leader who led the Israelites across the Jordan River to take back their homeland.  We generally think of Christ’s typology as prophet (Moses), Priest (Aaron), and King (David), but does the typology extend to warrior (Joshua)?  And if so, how is Christ a warrior?

(2) Why is this reading paired with John 6:60-69 in today’s lectionary, where Jesus shocks the disciples with his “hard” declaration?

Matthew Monday: Baseball and Go Carts

Matthew and I went down to catch a minor league baseball game in Aberdeen, Maryland this Saturday.  As you may know, I am a Baltimore Orioles fan.  The Orioles have a minor league affiliate in Aberdeen, the Aberdeen Ironbirds, which is about two and a half hour drive from my house.  We met some of the Baltimore Orioles internet friends there and had a nice time watching a game Saturday.  I forgot to take pictures but one of my friends took this one of me and Matthew.

By the way, he's a Yankees fan, but I got him to wear an Orioles shirt and hat.  

There is a little amusement park not too far from my house which has batting cages.  I’ve taken Matthew there to improve his hitting for his Little League Baseball, and it has improved.  The park also has powered go carts, which Matthew has long wanted to try.  He just made the height requirement for him to drive the carts, so he had me take him. 

Here is a little video clip.  Matthew is the third cart to come into the foreground. 

 

And here is a photo I snapped.

Faith Filled Friday: The Bonds of Love by St. Catherine of Siena

I happened to be glancing at the Office of Readings from the Liturgy of the hours this past Sunday and came across this gem of a passage from my beloved St. Catherine of Siena.  I typically pray the Morning (Lauds) and Evening Prayers (Vespers) of the Divine Office but on the Feast Day of St. Dominic (August 8^th) I decided to glance at the Office of Readings to see if there was something by the founder of the Order of Preachers.  There wasn’t but I was blessed with this passage from St. Catherine’s Dialogue.  Here Catherine is speaking to God the Father about her desire for all souls to be saved.

 

From a dialogue On Divine Providence by Saint Catherine of Siena, virgin

The bonds of love

 

My sweet Lord, look with mercy upon your people and especially upon the mystical body of your Church. Greater glory is given to your name for pardoning a multitude of your creatures than if I alone were pardoned for my great sins against your majesty. It would be no consolation for me to enjoy your life if your holy people stood in death. For I see that sin darkens the life of your bride the Church—my sin and the sins of others.

 

It is a special grace I ask for, this pardon for the creatures you have made in your image and likeness. When you created man, you were moved by love to make him in your own image. Surely only love could so dignify your creatures. But I know very well that man lost the dignity you gave him; he deserved to lose it, since he had committed sin. Moved by love and wishing to reconcile the human race to yourself, you gave us your only-begotten Son. He became our mediator and our justice by taking on all our injustice and sin out of obedience to your will, eternal Father, just as you willed that he take on our human nature. What an immeasurably profound love! Your Son went down from the heights of his divinity to the depths of our humanity. Can anyone’s heart remain closed and hardened after this?

 

We image your divinity, but you image our humanity in that union of the two which you have worked in a man. You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity. Only your love could so dignify the flesh of Adam. And so by reason of this immeasurable love I beg, with all the strength of my soul, that you freely extend your mercy to all your lowly creatures.

She implores God that though our bond of love—we to Him, He to us—to have mercy on all of us.  He made us in His image because of love. He reconciled us through a man because of love.  Human flesh itself contains the cloud of divinity which is love, and which we are blessed with immeasurable dignity.  And so after reminding God of this bond of love, she begs “with all the strength of [her] soul” to extend mercy to all.  What a great desire and line of reasoning. 

Catholics: A Novel by Brian Moore, Post #4

This is the fourth and final in a series of posts on the Brian Moore novel, Catholics: A Novel.  The first post can be found here.   

The second post here.   

The third post here. 

 

 

My Comment:

This is in Part 2 but I'll post it here since it's relevant to this discussion. When the Abbot and Kinsella are discussing the dangers of the TV documentary, this exchange ensued:

 

”A program in the wrong hands, about this subject, could be made to look like the first stirrings of a Catholic counterrevolution.”

 

“Ah, now begging your pardon, Father Kinsella, I find that very far-fetched.”

 

“Far-fetched? To the enemies of the church, won’t it seem that you have acted in direct contradiction to the counsels of Vatican IV?”

Notice Kinsella fears the “Catholic counterrevolution” and characterizes those that would seize on the issue as “enemies of the church.” So the enemies of the church are the counterrevolutionaries, which are people inside the church! And the monks, such as Fr. Manus and Matthew and the Irish on the mainland, could easily be the formation of the counterrevolution. Then how despicable is the Abbot’s mollifying of the monks at the end where he undermines any coalescence of a counterrevolution? Of course, I’m using the word “despicable” because it’s from my point of view, but frankly I have no idea where Brian Moore falls on this because he’s made such amess of the inherent logic of the novel.

By the way, it shows the counterrevolution is the natural opposition to a dystopian situation. It's just that Moore never follows through on it.

Irene Replied:

Manny wrote: "This is in Part 2 but I'll post it here since it's relevant to this discussion. When the Abbot and Kinsella are discussing the dangers of the TV documentary, this exchange ensued:

A program in the..."
I read that exchange a bit differently. I saw the "enemies of the Church" as outside the Church structure. They are those who would only learn of the tension between the traditional rituals and the revised rituals by a secular TV show. They would seize on that and use it against the Church. Presumably, those in Church leadership would not need a TV show in the secular world to learn of this debate. In fact, they already know that is why Fr. Kinsella is there. The abbot rejects that perception. He does not accept the claim that what is happening would be seized on as counter revolutionary by the "enemies of the Church" My reading is that he does not see the actions of the monastery as counter revolutionary. Are the monks mounting a counter revolution or are they simply ministering to the people who come to the monastery seeking spirituality? Are they trying to reform the Church or are they responding to the immediate ministerial needs before them? Yes, they are keeping the Latin Mass and oricular confession alive. But I did not see any evidence that they are trying to reverse Vatican IV on a more grand scale. Certainly, the monks' safe guarding of the tradition could have a revolutionary impact over time. By keeping something alive, they may be planting the seeds of a revolution. But, I don't see any indication that the abbot or the monks are intentionally mounting a revolution to roll back the changes of Vatican IV in the universal Church.

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "I read that exchange a bit differently. I saw the "enemies of the Church" as outside the Church structure. "

That's possible, but the antecedent of "enemies of the church" seems like it's referring back to "counterrevolutionaries." Perhaps in casual conversation it might be construed as that, but any counterrevolutionary would certainly qualify as an enemy of the church, especially in this militaristic context of this new church. On balance I think you're right. There are no current counterrevolutionaries.

But who are these enemies of the church? They could easily be within the church as without. Everything the forces that Kinsella has been working against seems like he's addressing issues within the church.

 

Irene Replied:

Who are the "enemies of the Church"? They are not specifically named. But they could be any force that wants to see its demise. Of course, one could argue that the very changes that the institution is implementing to make the Church more palitable, less offensive, less prone to attack by "enemies" are the very forces that is destroying it. But, as I read that exchange, I thought that Moore was alluding to Church schism and the way secular and outside voices exploited any sign of disunity in the church to discredit the entire Church. Certainly in the early 70s, there was a great deal of public division among Catholics as the liturgical changes of Vatican II were implemented. And the secular prognostigators were forecasting a schism that would end the Catholic Church in a way that the Protestant Reformation did not do. Of course, those predictions were not true. Outsiders could not understand that descent has always existed in the Church as it does in any passionate family. But like any family, we also don't want our family fights to become the next headline either. I don't see any specific group or action being named as "counter revolutionary" in that exchange. Rather I see the fear that "enemies of the Church" will regard the perceived tension as an act of counter revolution.I don't see Kinsella calling the monks "counter revolutionaries" but cautioning that the enemies may perceive their celebration of the Latin mass as counter revolutionary. Schism has been a major cause of concern from the 1st Letter to the Corinthians to the present. The unity of the Body of Christ has always been a primary goal. Maybe this is part of the tension that Moore wants the reader to consider, sins against the unity of the Body of Christ vs sins against orthodoxy.

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "Who are the "enemies of the Church"? They are not specifically named. But they could be any force that wants to see its demise. Of course, one could argue that the very changes that the institution is implementing to make the Church more palitable, less offensive, less prone to attack by "enemies" are the very forces that is destroying it. But, as I read that exchange, I thought that Moore was alluding to Church schism and the way secular and outside voices exploited any sign of disunity in the church to discredit the entire Church."

I guess it's vague enough for "the enemies" to be either or both, within and without. Everything is so vague in this novel that one can create any line of thought he wishes.

Yes, Irene, his Lourdes experience is at the heart of his "null." Like everything else in this novel, and including your observation of Hartman, it is woefully underdeveloped. Moore spends pages and pages on the helicopter ride, the boat ride that never happened, the blackberry jam, and a whole lot of meaningless details and he doesn't develop what should be key elements to the novel.

For instance, is Hartman part of the forces of the dystopia or the resistance? And don't say neither, because then it won't fit.

 

Irene Replied to My Comment:

I don't read this as a dystopian battle between the evil institutional Church and the good traditionalist monks. So, I can't answer that question because it does not fit into the way I read this story. Too bad Moore is dead and we can't hear his intent.

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "I don't read this as a dystopian battle between the evil institutional Church and the good traditionalist monks. So, I can't answer that question because it does not fit into the way I read this st..."

Well, I guess I can read the Divine Comedy as some sort of Buddhist adventure story but I would be wrong. There is no way to read this novel where the future Catholic world envisions this:

- Priest’s collar and black shirt replaced by military style uniform.
- No praying of the rosary.
- No private confessions, but a group act of contrition.
- No Latin Mass but vernacular.
- Facing the congregation rather than God.
- No Pope but a “Father General”? Is that correct or is Father General head of the Albanisean Order?
- No Rome as center of the Church but Amsterdam being the place of the World Ecumen Council.
- The “interpenetration” between Christianity and Buddhism.
- No traditional church hierarchy but military ranks.
- No transubstantiation but symbolic act.
- Church service similar to a “bingo game.”
- No religious grace before meals but an ecumenical grace.
- No sign of the cross.
- Lourdes is no longer in operation. One would assume all miracle visitation sites are closed.
- No distinction between mortal and venial sins.
- No prayers.
- Christianity without God or faith.
- Clerical dress for priests is optional.
- The sacrifice of the Mass is not a miracle but merely a ritual.

and not see it as a dystopian world, especially given the military allusion that suggest a jackbooted attempt to enforcement if the Abbot chose the other way. That Christianity can only survive if it gets rid of God is clearly an Orwellian doublespeak.

The problem is not your reading, the problem is Moore. He set up incompatible lines of thought, completely under developed everything, and published it. Anyone can read all sorts of things in this. You are ignoring the parts of the book that doesn't fit your reading while grasping onto the parts that do.

 

Joseph Commented:

I have to side with Irene on this one. Dystopian novels have the society at large as the bad guy and its systems. What Moore gives us is kind of a microcosm of what we now call the Liturgy Wars and I think his aim is more to point out the condition of the Church in 1972. It so happens that many of those elements are still current, and thus this novel does present a parable about how we live the Faith when what we have known for centuries upon centuries changes. I find the final scene with the monks gathered in the chapel praying the Our Father to be indicative of how many responded to the changes of the early 70s and how many still have to respond when they cannot find a parish to their personal liking in terms of liturgy or preaching. The conflict is certainly between Faith and non-Faith and it reaches into the institutional Church, but that is a conflict which is fought every day in the hearts of millions of believers around the world and I think that's what the novel, in the end, is getting at.

 

My Reply to Joseph:

No, no, no.  On a dystopia there is absolutely no question.  Definition from Wikipedia:

 

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopia or simply anti-utopia) is a fictional community or society that is undesirable or frightening…Dystopias are often characterized by rampant fear or distress, tyrannical governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society.

And further down:

 

Dystopias typically reflect contemporary sociopolitical realities and extrapolate worst-case scenarios as warnings for necessary social change or caution. Dystopian fictions invariably reflect the concerns and fears of their creators' contemporaneous culture.

The Catholic Church is acting as a dystopian society and Moore has extrapolated the worst fears that came out of the Vatican II changes. 

This has all the earmarks of a dystopia.  It is set in the future, Vatican IV.  If it’s not a dystopia, why does he set it in the future?  Why is all of Catholicism changed so dramatically already?  No debate, no transition.  And from every character outside the governing structure, we see no one who wants it.  But more importantly, why are all the changes so distasteful?  Every single one is put in a bad light.  Every beloved tradition is extirpated.  There is no moral equivalence.  All the sympathy in the novel are against the governing church.  Look at all the folk (akin to the hobbits of Lord of the Rings) who go to the traditional Mass offered by the monks.  Where is there one good word for the Church and for Kinsella and what he represents?  Show me.  Show me one good word, one positive detail for the governing church.  For crying out loud, Kinsella wears a military uniform instead of priestly garb.  Look at the treatment Kinsella gets by the good earthy folk in Ireland.  He’s made out into an elitist.  He’s contrasted with Padraig who treats him to this.

 

The boatman abruptly let go of the bollard and took up his oars. Kinsella, irritated, reached down and caught hold of the curragh’s stern.

 

“Let go of that.” “I tell you, I am Father Kinsella. The abbot is expecting me.”

 

Padraig, the boatman, let go of one oar, seized up a steel rowlock from beneath it and, swift as a biting dog, struck the knuckles that held the curragh’s stern. With a gasp of pain, Kinsella drew his hand back. The rowlock snapped into its hole, the oar in it, and, with two swift strokes, the boatman swung the curragh out of reach.

That rap on the knuckles is exactly the respect he is paid by the good general folk.  That rap represents the attitude you’re supposed to have toward Kinsella. 

There is no moral equivalence presented anywhere.  No such detail or characterization occurs to characterize the monks or the general Irish folk who go to the old Mass and want the traditions.  None that I find.  Whatever conclusion you want to draw about the Abbot or the ending, it has to be within the context of a dystopia.  On that there is no ambiguity.  On that it is clear.

I’ll say it again here because I don’t want it forgotten: Show me one good detail, one positive word for the governing church anywhere in the novel?  Show me.

 

Joseph Replied:

I don't think there is one. But, by the same token, I don't think there is one for the monks on Muck either. They're not presented as the heroic stalwarts of say, Fr. Percy from Lord of the World, more like a curiosity or a museum piece, and the people they serve are shown more as backwards yokels than principled resistors. The Abbot says it himself in Part 2, "We tried the new way, people didn't like it, so we went back." That's not really something done because they saw the shortcomings of the Vatican IV liturgy, although they did do that, but more like, "We need to find a way to reach these people who have left," and that's the solution they came up with. I find this to be more of a satire than a dystopia, really. Moore has kind of caricatured the two camps in the liturgy wars and presented us with the outlines of the continuing back and forth rather than with a solution. I think he's trying to point out the short comings of the demystification while at the same time noting that just because someone is traditional, it doesn't mean that they have deep faith behind that either.

 

My Reply to Joseph:

Joseph Said: I don't think there is one. But, by the same token, I don't think there is one for the monks on Muck either. They're not presented as the heroic stalwarts of say, Fr. Percy from Lord of the World, more like a curiosity or a museum piece

I would have to disagree.  I think Frs. Matthew and Manus are presented as heroic.  Brian Moore’s characterization is definitely two dimensional, but I don’t think he has the skill to pull off what Hugh Benson did with Lord of the World.  First, everything in Moore’s novel is woefully underdeveloped.  Just look at how much space Fr. Percy is given in Lord of the World.  And Benson was a better novelist.

Joseph Said:  and the people they serve are shown more as backwards yokels than principled resistors.

I can see how you might see that, but I think you’re missing how the Irish see their identity, especially in literature.  The Irish see the peasantry as deeply part of their identity.  Think of the John Wayne in his movie The Quiet Man.  Think of the appearance of Our Lady of Knock and the peasants she appeared to.  William Butler Yeats glorified the peasantry in his poetry.  Read over this article from Irish Studies, “Identity and the Literary Revival.”  I’ll quote two key paragraphs.

 

Both Yeats’s Cathleen Ni Houlihan and Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and The Stars open with domestic scenes which hint at both plays’ agenda.  Co-founder of the Gaelic League and president National Literary Society Douglas Hyde initiated the ‘stranger in the country kitchen’ motif with his play The Twisting of the Rope in 1901.[1]  This motif uses the “cottage on stage” as a “temple of Irish domesticity, the sacred origin, the mystery of mysteries – within it the Irish are themselves.”[2]  In contrast to the tradition of melodrama, Literary Revival plays sought to present the ‘real’ Irish as opposed to demeaning stereotypes.  They succeeded, however, only in constructing an undifferentiated peasantry.  Despite the diversity in portrayals, all these authors contributed to the process of “turning the peasants into a single figure of literary art…the ‘aestheticizing’ of the Irish country people.”[3]  One generalization has been replaced by another.

 

Yeats and Lady Gregory use the peasantry to define the true spirit of the nation.  When called by Cathleen, a thinly veiled representation of the nation, Ireland’s young men put aside selfish temporal interests to fight and die for her.  The volk are united by a spiritual connection which drives them to self-sacrifice.  This mythologizing of the peasantry reflected Yeats’s own struggle to develop a uniquely Irish literary style: “What distinguished Irish from English writers was a complex national identity, and in searching for that identity Irish writers turned, as if naturally, to the people they imagined to be most distinctively and authentically Irish: the peasants.”[4]  This Anglo-Irish Ascendancy depiction of the peasantry as a primitive, spiritual people blankets over social, economic, and religious differences.  It also expresses many of his individual beliefs.  The peasants counter urban bourgeois commercialism.  Yet Yeats was not alone in using the peasantry as a vehicle for his own ideology: “To speak about the peasant was always to speak about something beyond actual rural life.”[5]

 

In addition, Moore has the monks perform the Mass outdoors using a large rock as an altar.  That’s right out of Irish folklore where when the British tried to shut down Catholicism and the priests moved the Mass outdoors using boulders as altars for secret Masses.  In fact if I remember correctly there was a priest who was shot dead performing such an outdoor Mass and as I think legend goes was shot dead the very moment he held the host up to God.  And the passion for the Mass as dramatized in the novel echoes the Irish identity as the people who saved civilization in the Dark Ages through Catholicism.  In fact the name Padraig, is the Gaelic version of Patrick.  It’s where they get the diminutive “Paddy” from.  Paddy is not actually from Patrick.  Moore uses the most Irish version of the most Irish identity name.  Something else I just thought of, Kinsella is coming to Ireland to tell them how to worship much like the British came to Ireland to do the same. And he brings a similar threat of force.  Moore is wrapping the peasants in Irish motherhood, apple pie, and the national anthem.  No I don’t think you’re supposed to see them as yokels but as the good Irish devout who are going to save civilization again. 

Joseph Said: I find this to be more of a satire than a dystopia, really. Moore has kind of caricatured the two camps in the liturgy wars and presented us with the outlines of the continuing back and forth rather than with a solution. I think he's trying to point out the short comings of the demystification while at the same time noting that just because someone is traditional, it doesn't mean that they have deep faith behind that either.

Yes, but I think that speaks to his skill.  All the characters are two dimensional, the situation is underdeveloped, and the logic of the novel is ambiguous at best and incoherent at worst.

Let me take a crack at what I think Moore meant by this novel, and mind you that this is partially speculation because of the flaws I just mentioned.

That there is a dystopia that has imposed this heresy upon the Catholic world is unquestionable.  That there is a resistance in the Irish people I think is pretty certain as well.  Everything follows from those assumptions.  The questions that follow are (1) why does the Abbot capitulate, and (2) what does Moore wish to imply by the prayer ending?

Why does the Abbot capitulate?  (1) He has a personal interest in not rocking the boat.  He wants to be buried with the other Abbots and that will consummate his career in the history of the Abbey.  (2) He doesn’t really believe, so it doesn’t really matter to him, and so given the choice between fighting the Church or fighting his monks, he sees the monks as the ones he can mollify.  Plus he has authority over them.  He’s pusillanimous, and that’s his least resistance.  (3) He sees fighting the Church as a losing effort, and so doesn’t see its practicality.

What does Moore wish to imply by the prayer ending?  Here is where it gets speculative.  Here are three possibilities.

(1) If Moore is attempting to bring the theme of atheism to the fore, then he is ending with an appeasement to the “Christianity without God.”  The prayer becomes a kneeling before the “null” that the Abbot sees, and the monks become appeased and are mollified, and it’s all meaningless anyway because there is no God and it doesn’t really matter and the novel is so titled “Catholics” from an outsider perspective because this is all Catholic hooey anyway.  That would be the cynical possibility.

(2) Prayer will be the reinforcement that will either strengthen the monks to persevere in the face of what could be a long term persecution or a petition to God to change the state of the Church, much like after the destruction of the first temple and through faith and prayer the second temple was eventually built, and so will Catholicism.  It could be seen as the start of re-civilizing the world again, and in this case re-civilizing the Church herself.  That would be the idealistic possibility.

(3) It could be a way to purely mollify the monks and get over the hump.  That would be the utilitarian possibility.

There are other possibilities too, none of which are satisfactory.  You can read whatever you so wish into the ending, and that’s a pretty crappy way to end a novel.  This indeterminate ending stems directly from the novel’s moral ambiguity. 

 

My Goodreads Review:  

This novel is junk. It's sensationalism. It has more holes than a sieve. It was put together because its original premise (a Catholic dystopia of a secularized and militarized church) titillates. Brian Moore puts forth two incompatible lines of thought: an immoral dystopia and a central figure who has no belief when he is presented as the center of the resistance, and then the author leaves the ending in a sort of undetermined state, probably because the author himself is an atheist. Once the author has established the dystopia, the story line cannot tolerate moral ambiguity, and yet we are left with moral ambiguity. In addition, the novel is woefully underdeveloped, the characters are not much more than cartoon figures, the author violates a basic story-telling craft, such as holding back the critical detail of the central character’s personality until two thirds of the novel, and the novel then ends in a whimper. Bottom line: Don’t bother.