122—Minor Indignities—T.C. Merrill

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 13, 2022 | In The Catholic Culture Podcast

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T.C. Merrill’s debut novel, Minor Indignities, is an evocative portrayal of the vanity of undergraduate life at an Ivy League university. Its protagonist, a freshman consumed with what others think of him intellectually, socially and sexually, only makes a fool of himself the more he strains to impress. The novel ultimately becomes a richness of embarrassments whose final catastrophe illustrates the saying of St. Bernard: “Humiliation is the way to humility.”

Merrill joins the show to talk about his novel, his essay “The Situation of the Catholic Novelist”, Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, how a fiction writer should approach depicting sexuality, the relation between art and emotion, and René Girard.

Links

Minor Indignities https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p103/minor-indignities-by-trevor-cribben-merrill.html

“The Situation of the Catholic Novelist” https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p116/The-Situation-of-the-Catholic-Novelist.html

Theme music: “Franciscan Eyes”, written and performed by Thomas Mirus. Download the Catholic Culture Podcast soundtrack.