Holy Fool, by Kenneth
Butler … Brendan Malcolm O’Toole has a dilemma. He’s questioning both his faith
and purpose. It’s not so much the existence of a God that concerns him, but O’Toole
wonders whether he’s worthy of serving. He
likes women. In fact, he’s come to crave them. In the small town where he’s
trying to hold onto his flock and the church it serves, there’s a young woman hot
to trot with O’Toole. While O’Toole struggles with his personal problems, Sissy
St. Hilaire has even bigger issues. She’s been a serial adulterer throughout
her marriage to her wealthy, materialistic and atheist husband, George. Her
kids are going through normal youthful dysfunction complicated by wealth. When Sissy
receives a call about George’s recent car accident, her world is turned upside
down. Sissy is flummoxed to learn George has taken a change of heart (and
soul). He’s become a spiritual man and wants to serve the lord in ways Sissy (and
at least one of her kids) can’t fathom (like giving up all his riches to become
a priest). She asks George to check into the local loony bin and it’s there she
comes across Father O’Toole. There’s chemistry in the air, but George leaves
the hospital and nobody knows where he’s gone. The fun starts early on and
becomes uproariously funnier with each titled chapter (which are also funny).
There’s a message in the book as well.
It isn’t a novel making fun of religion, not by a longshot. The author, Ken
Butler, was born a Catholic, lost his faith, and then regained it. He’s also
been a playwright and teacher. I met him up in the MFA program at Southern New
Hampshire University and can still remember his graduation speech (he had the
place in stitches).
Holy Fool is a wonderful read you
won’t put down. Clever, cynical, sarcastic, witty and profound. Ken Butler has nailed
it. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Kenneth Butler was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire when it was
still a blue-collar seaport town. He graduated from Portsmouth High School just
as the city was discovered by the artistic, then the financially comfortable, and
began on a course that has concluded with a fine and complete gentrification of
the city. The most telling symbol for this transformation was the greasy-spoon
Teddy's Lunch on Market Square morphing into Cafe Brioche.
Butler was a film studies major
at Emerson College in Boston. In 1983, through connections there and sheer
favoritism, he secured a job as a Story Editor for Roger Corman's New World
Pictures in Los Angeles, where he had a brief and undistinguished career writing
script reports on the screenplays in the studio's slush pile. Over the course
of the next twelve years, he would return to Hollywood several times to work in
various low-level capacities for MGM/UA, the Walt Disney Studios and Columbia
Pictures. He also collaborated on five screenplays, all of which met with
varying degrees of failure -- or at least no success.
Somewhere in there he got married
and divorced (no children), and traveled a half-dozen times to Europe, visiting
England, Wales, France, Germany and Sweden.
He returned to New England in
1995 and enjoyed favorable productions of three full-length stage plays --
Chinese Checkers, Cannibals (about the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in
New Guinea in 1961) and A Pound of Flesh. When he failed to secure productions
by any major American theatre companies, he threw in the playwrighting towel.
In 1999 he received a BA in
Creative Writing from Plymouth State University and taught History and Drama at
the Woodward School for Girls in Quincy, Massachusetts from 2000-2007. He also
taught eight summers at Phillips Exeter Academy, and one year at the Holderness
School. It was during this period that he wrote his first two novels, The
Ghosts of Swallowtail, about malevolent spirits in a girls school near Boston,
and A Pound of Flesh, a comic caper novel that was also a fleshed-out, expanded
narrative which taking its premise (disparate and desperate eccentrics fighting
over Grigori Rasputin's preserved penis) from his earlier play of the same
title.
In 2012 he received an MFA in
Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University, with authors Robert Begiebing,
Katherine Towler, merle Drown and Richard Adams Carey as his mentors. His third
novel, Holy Fool, served as his master's thesis.
He now lives in New England,
where he teaches literature and film courses at a private prep school. He is at
work on his fourth novel.
Movie Reviews:
The Judge … we both enjoyed this more than we expected. Robert
Downy Jr. does his usual cynical, sarcastic character (I don’t think I’ve ever
seen him not play a role this way), but it was the rest of the cast I enjoyed,
Robert Duval, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D’Onofrio and Jeremy Strong. Duval is
always Duval (and it always works for me) … a hotshot lawyer comes home after a
prolonged estrangement from his family (his father, the Judge, Duval, for reason you’ll have to watch the movie to learn) to bury his
mother and winds up defending his father in a murder case. Nothing profound,
but it was pleasant viewing for a frigid afternoon last weekend.
A Five Star Life … I enjoyed this one solo … mostly because I’ve
seen the actress (Margherita Buy) in other eye-talian flicks … she’s a “mystery
hotel guest” (someone who rates the service of luxury hotels), but it’s become
her life, a lonely one she discovers … there’s a series of crisis around her
and her family as she comes to terms with life on the road. Stefano Acorsi is
also wonderful in his role as ex-husband in a frightening (for him) new role. A
good view any time.
Chef … probably the best of the feel good trio, written and
directed by John Favreau … it’s an all-star cast that doesn’t disappoint. Sofía
Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale,
Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Downey, Jr. (doing his usual cynical, sarcastic
shtick). Lots of fun, start to finish. And the music really truly rocked. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
NEW TK FEATURE STARTING NEXT WEEK …
Okay, so every once in a while,
Temporary Knucksline will feature an individual for being anything from
interesting to successful to interesting and successful … artistic, a
humanitarian, and sometimes for just being a decent human being. Next week we’ll
feature a kid I once coached at OLB at Brooklyn College, Vincent Miller. He’s
no kid now. Wait’ll you read this kid’s story. Truly amazing.
In a few weeks, we’ll be
featuring another success story that also deals with an incredible work ethic
and the kind of determination that turns a small family business into a million
dollar enterprise. You want clues? Stay tuned, amici … stay tuned.
—Knucks
Taking care of business …
