Living Logos
The Fiction of Michael D. O’Brien
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
Can art be a "bridge to religious experience," as John Paul II argued in his Letter to the Artists (1999)? In the twenty-first century, there is no more prolific, positive response to this question than the art of Michael D. O'Brien. O'Brien's sixteen novels have been translated into fourteen languages, and his paintings grace many Catholic churches in North America. In Living Logos, the first full overview of O'Brien's extraordinary career, Greg Maillet explores nine O'Brien novels and examines the theological aesthetic that this unique author achieves. Maillet discusses not only the iconic cover paintings of O'Brien's novels, but also his most famous character, Father Elijah, and goes into greater detail on two of O'Brien's most recent novels: By the Rivers of Babylon and Letter to the Future. Like all of O'Brien's art, these recent novels have realistic settings but stretch readers' imaginations into an eternal, sacred world in which the Living God has the final word.
Endorsements (3)
“Gregory Maillet, a well-established scholar of Shakespeare and Tolkien, is a literary critic of unusual depth of spiritual insight. This book, his second major study of the major novels of Michael O’Brien, is brim-full with well-attuned critical insight and learned Catholic wisdom. In many ways an ideal reader of O’Brien’s fiction, Maillet offers here an intelligently conceived, warmly sympathetic introduction to O’Brien who, notwithstanding his already enthusiastic readership, deserves a much wider appreciation. Maillet’s Living Logos goes a long way to making that possible.”
“Greg Maillet’s Living Logos appraises the fiction of Michael O’Brien, particularly the Children of the Last Days series. Through careful reconstructions and analyses, Maillet lovingly fulfills that critical link on literature’s chain—the critic, who interprets the poet, while eyeing his Muse—so that through his generous explanations of O’Brien’s words we are brought ever closer to the Word.”
“Greg Maillet accurately describes Michael O’Brien’s faithfulness and orthodoxy as a Catholic writer living and creating from the margins. His analysis of O’Brien’s critical clarity from the sidelines implicitly places O’Brien’s work alongside great Catholic satirists of the past, such as Alexander Pope and Dante Alighieri. By approaching O’Brien’s novels through the lens of theological aesthetics, Maillet does justice to their literary and spiritual heft.”
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