“I Only Regret That I Have But One Blurb to Give for My Tradition”

Neither snow nor icy temperatures in the mid-Atlantic region were enough to keep the latest missive from our friends at Wiseblood Books out of our mailbox. Tearing open the envelope with my bared teeth I was delighted to find a bound copy of Dana Gioia’s December 2013 First Things essay, “The Catholic Writer Today.” And whom did I find blurbing away on the back cover? Yours madly! Saying thus:

“Dana Gioia offers us the most significant assessment of the situation of the American Catholic writer since the publication of Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners and Walker Percy’s Signposts in a Strange Land.”

Think that’s all just marketing puffery?

Then I dare you to head on over to Wiseblood Books and grab your nicely bound copy of Gioia’s essay and judge for yourself.