The Vine: April 6, 2012
Do some good on Good Friday; head over to the Dewey Donation drive, and help kids in Thailand and/or Washington DC find their long-lost books! I gave a whole doorstop’s worth of Sandra Boynton this morning and it felt great. Tell ’em The Vine sent you.
*****
Sars,
I’ve got one for the readers and their Borg-like book memory.
Back in the dark ages of, say, 1983 or so, when I was a wee lass at a Catholic elementary school, there was a three-volume set of The Lives of the Saints in my school library that was too gore-tastic to stay on the shelves. These things were frankly awesome: bound in red, big enough to squash spiders with if you were that sort of person, and chock full of martyrdom and hilarity. I think it was alphabetized, with the first book being A-K or so; the stories were generally short, lightly illustrated with faux-woodcut-lookin’ pen-and-ink cartoons, and kind of politely awful.
It’s the style more than anything that makes me want to dig them up again: there was a certain dry understatement in the tales of dismemberment and whatnot that cracked me up even at nine or so. Don’t get me wrong, they were written for children, judging by the Simple Language and General Air of Condescension, but not young children, given the gore. I only remember tags and phrases — one early female martyr was “hung up on a hook by her hair, which as you can imagine hurt her very much.” I recall weird, conversational digressions like a side rant about “with great Pomp and Circumstance, which means importance. Which is why it is so silly when people talk about under the circumstances…” — it was half C.S. Lewis, half Lemony Snicket, and all twee and insane. Only one of these was to be found on the library shelf at any given time; they were super-popular among the gleefully morbid young Catholics who would probably all graduate to fantasy and sci-fi shortly.
I can’t begin to remember the author: has anyone in the Nation ever run across these things? I’d love to reread them with an adult eye.
Ghoulish, I Know
Tags: Ask The Readers Dewey Donation System friends popcult
Ghoulish, is it these?
http://shop.catholicbookpublishing.com/products/359
It seems to be only a two-book set so maybe it’s not the same. But it is published by the Catholic Book Publishing Corp and it’s listed in their children’s section.
Ghoulish, are you looking for Butler’s Lives of the Saints? http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-books/butlers-lives-of-the-saints/sku/2630/t/3
My HTML skills are sucking today, but cut and paste the link as the picture looks like your description.
Nothing to contribute, except that “half C.S. Lewis, half Lemony Snicket, and all twee and insane” might be my favorite description of any piece of literature ever.
I’m pretty sure Nanc in Ashland is right about Butler’s Lives of the Saints. You can read excerpts here:
http://www.amazon.com/Butlers-Lives-Saints-Volume-Set/dp/0870611372/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1333731550&sr=8-2#reader_0870611372
My Catholic school compatriots and I used to read those obsessively too, and, now that I think about it, most of the people who who morbidly pored over those pages are indeed sci-fi and fantasy geeks these days, including me.
Hi, Ghoulish here! A description of Butler (“Butler’s style, it must be confessed, as judged by modern standards, is deplorably stilted and verbose”) sounds like a hit, but the previews I read on Google Books seem rather more adult and scholarly–and dry–than the books I remember.
The Hoever/Donaghy looked very promising–thanks to you I just found a vintage 1955 red bound edition on eBay that looks like exactly the cover I remember. Makes perfect sense that our underfunded elementary school library had 30-year-old editions rather than, say, the 1974 update. Problem, though: its innards snapshots don’t seem to have the language I recall, and the illustrations are far too good. It looks more scholarly than conversational, and very much like a devotional, which gives me pause. I remember nothing in the way of devotion and everything in the way of cheerful gore. Calling the book I recall a devotional would be like calling Grimm’s fairy tales “morality plays.”
Is it remotely likely that any so different works would have such similar red bindings? Honestly, the books I remember should have been called “Deaths of the Saints, as Written By Screwtape,” they were so semi-unintentionally hilarious.
Thanks, you guys!!
Oh god, now I want to find those books again, too. I remember being very frustrated with them because we were once told to write reports on our name saints based on the little stories in those books (and in another, larger and more boring set), but there’s no St. Lily. My parents were hippies, not Catholics!
Heh. I’m Catholic and familiar with bloody saint deaths, so I kind of want to read this myself now. I’m no help, unfortunately, but Sars, I love that you posted this on Good Friday!
Ghoulish–if you read the reviews on that Amazon page LaSalleUGirl linked for Butler’s books, it appears there were some major revisions that completely changed the character of the books…were you perhaps looking at the wrong version on Google Books? Just a thought! These sound amazing, by the way.
We had a set on the shelf at home when I was a kid. They were great! My favorite story was the one about St. Nicholas, who brought 3 little boys back to life after an unscrupulous innkeeper had killed them, cut them up, and pickled them. (Yes, pickled! He was serving them as food!)
Unfortunately, the books are long gone, and I have no memory of the author.
I read them probably around 1975 or so. I have no idea when they were originally released – but keep in mind that school libraries tend to have books around for a long time. (My Catholic school had a series of books about “The Happy Hollisters” about a happy family that had to be written in the 50s.)
Sounds like people have already found it, but I wanted to say that it reminds me a bit of Horrible Histories as well.
“Deaths of the Saints, as Written By Screwtape,”
Oh god, I really want to read this now. That just sounds so awesome
And now that I think about, is it possible there’s a children’s version of Fox’s Martyrs? Cause his stuff is so outlandish anyway (to this reader…hopefully no offense to anyone), and your description almost sounds like it could be a “cleaned up” version (if cleaned up means gruesome) for Catholic children.
Ah, saints’ names! Lily, I remember having to do a similar project (complete with DRAMA and ANGST! the likes of which can only be found in middle school) when preparing for my Confirmation in 6th grade. So part of that involved picking a saint’s name and then later doing a report on said saint. Well, my middle name was Grace so I asked my teacher if “Grace” could just be my Confirmation name because hello, “grace”? Thomas Aquinas wrote a whole freaking book about the concept! (that was him, right? I’ve been out of school for a while now).
She was like, “sure, whatever. But you still need to do your assignment on an actual saint so…pick one and write about him or her.”
So me being a nerd, from a family of nerds, I’d had this kick-ass biography of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Native American saint (she was only made a saint within the last… 20 years or so, if that). My mom had this book as a child– that’s how old it was. Mrs. Fitzp was like, “sure, go ahead, now shut the hell up!” and I did my report on St. Kateri.
Well, one of my friends had picked Kateri as her Confirmation name and therefore, was also doing a report on Kateri Tekakwitha. And since this was in sixth grade, where half the class (including me and my friend) were girls, it all of a sudden became a SHIT. STORM. Like, I’ve been involved in a variety of Mean Girls like shit from ages 10 to …last year, but this will always stand out as the most WTF-iest of them all. The way the other girls (aka “my friends”) carried on, you would have thought I’d gotten to third base with the popular girl’s boyfriend in the middle of class, while stepping on a Green Day CD and bragging about the new computer my dad bought me which came with America Online! (It was 1995ish).
The moral of the story is: Ghoulish, I hope you find that book because it sounds awesome (I was that weird kid too, who pored over morbid shit like that), and Lily, I totally sympathize with the WTF-ery of saints’ names versus non-saints’ names. Also, the main character in my NaNoWriMo for 2011 was named “Lily” so go you! (and her).
Crap, I didn’t mean to hijack the thread. Sars, you can totally delete this if you want.
@kategm: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
What would it be like, do you think, coming back to life after being pickled? Would you always smell like vinegar and nobody wanted to sit next to you on warm days?
I don’t remember this exact book, but I do remember that in my book of saints, St Claire saved her city “from the soldiers who hated Christ”. Does anyone remember St Lucy? Her story was super-gory.
So St. Cecilia is the one who’s the patron saint of music, right? Call me crazy but isn’t she also sometimes depicted as holding her boobs on a platter too? Or did I just make that up?
Oh, WOW!!! Hijack down memory lane! My family had a slim, red-covered, hardcover book on the lives of the saints with not fun pictures at the top of each saint’s page. I wouldn’t look at St. Michael’s page because it showed St. Michael fighting the devil and he was scary! That was 30 years ago! How the scars of Catholicism stay with us!
Nah, it’s St. Agatha who carries her boobs on the platter. :)
Kategm–Your memory is half right. Yes, there is a virgin martyr who is often depicted with her “boobs on a platter,” but it’s St. Agnes, not St. Cecilia. Not, of course, to be confused with St. Lucy–she’s the one with her eyes on a plate. Why do I know all of this? Appaently, a significant portion of my brain is taken up with lives of the saints, which is perhaps why I can’t remember my cell phone number most of the time.
@WendyG and Lizzie:
Ack, I forgot! I always forget about Agnes and Lucy.
Of course, St. Agnes always makes me think of Principal Skinner’s mother:
“Oh, my name is Agnes, and you know it’s Agnes! It means, ‘lamb!’ ‘Lamb of God!'”
I’m not Catholic–clearly–because this is all so foreign to me. I knew that the Catholics had saints but I had no idea that they all had fairy-tale backstories. Do people believe the stories, or are they just supposed to be fictional morality stories?
@clover
@Ang: Actually, most of the stories about the saints are real biographies. Some (the ones dating back to super ancient times) may have become a little exaggerated to the point of myth with the passing of years, and the jury is out for non-believers whether the miracles attributed to those saints actually happened. But most of the gory stuff actually happened to them.
My patron saint (Catherine of Siena) was once so disappointed in herself for becoming nauseous of the smell when she was helping a sick woman lance boils (small pox? plague? Can’t remember what sickness caused the boils), that she actually picked up the bowl in which she’d been catching the pus from the lanced boils and forced herself to drink it. 0_o;;; Funny how that’s one of the only things I remember about her after reading a full book on her biography…
Hey, I went to a St. Cat of Sienna grade school! And had no idea about the pox story but can’t say I’m surprised. You don’t get to be a Doctor of the Church without being a little bit bat-s***, probably.
This is definitely not the same book, but for some ghoulish faux-religious hilarity look into The Story of Saint Fidgeta (short stories), by the great John Bellairs. He invented St. Fidgeta as the patron saint of squirmy children.
Hi y’all,
Having peeked into a few more pages of the 1955 Hoever books I’m almost sure they ain’t it, but would you believe? My elementary school’s website lists not only the librarian’s email address, but the current catalog! (which does, in fact, include that edition. Still.) So I’ve emailed her!
I don’t think it would’ve been Fox’s Martyrs, if only because of its inclusion of early Protestant martyrs who were, er, martyred by Catholics or am I wrong?
If I find these, I will track down that godawful pox story. Because, damn. That’s gross.