A priest forever: a short introduction to John L'Heureux

John L’Heureux was a priest for seventeen years. And then, according to him at least, he was not. Unburdened of his priestly faculties, he had a successful writing career. He published his short fiction in prestigious magazines, published over twenty books of prose and poetry, starting with Tight White Collar, his first after leaving the priesthood, and taught creative writing at Stanford University. When he died in 2019, it seems he was beloved. His final short story collection, The Heart is a Full Wild Beast, published that same year, sports glowing reviews from acclaimed writers. Yiyun Li says his work “restores a true faith in life; Kathryn Harrison that it “tears straight through the veil that separates the mundane from the ineffable;” Jesmyn Ward simply “this book will change you.” The dust jacket declines to identify any of these writers by their work, or even the designation “author,” suggesting that it is marketed towards a public that knows who they are already. I only recognized two. This is a literary who’s who, with L’Heureux having won the admiration of them all.

I wondered how L’Heureux was able to put out so much work at the end of his life, and to have it promptly come out to such fanfare. His final novel was actually released in 2020, posthumously. I felt certain that his publisher must have cobbled it together from extant drafts and that it would be a partly realized mess, but in fact it was entirely as the author envisioned it. He simply arranged an end to his creative affairs, with The Heart is a Full Wild Beast a sort of capstone, then promptly attended to the business of dying. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s, suffering severe tremors and struggling to walk, but with his mind still sharp and lucid, he chose to end his life under the auspices of California’s “Death with Dignity” law. He planned a date with his wife, purchased a cocktail of poisons from a pharmacist licensed by the state to sell them, and on the appointed day, he killed himself. He was eighty-four years old.

A person’s faith will always hold my attention more than their fiction, faith being the only drama that matters at the end of our lives. L’Heureux asked the editors of The New Yorker to publish one last essay after he died, titled “John L’Heureux on Death and Dignity.” In it, he refers to the catholic faith, but does not address the church’s teaching against suicide. I suppose a long discourse justifying his decision was beside the point for him. It seems to be that he had long made up his mind on the faith’s moral claims. His purpose was to head off the feelings of shame and confusion that will reach his family and friends when how he died is inevitably reported. He characterizes his suicide as “an agreed upon act of love.” He acknowledges that many will ask if he is “opting for the easy way out.” He replies that he is – the accusation that he should have toughed it out worries him the most – but asks the reader to “consider what it would entail for someone you love. Or for you.” He is possessed of the confidence that his body is his to do with what his conscience directs, and is assured, partly by the fact that what he is doing is legal in the state of California, that there is no shame in it. That is how he ranks his moral authorities: himself, the state, then the church.

“What about God?” he asks, turning at the end to that least-important authority. There are scraps of the catholic faith that he finds true enough to conscript them in his argument. God, he points out, is a God of charity and love, not a divine sadist. He does not delight in meaningless suffering. The California law was likewise crafted after “many lawsuits that were aimed at ending life with dignity, instead of prolonging needless suffering.” And isn’t ending suffering what the church tries to do with its prayers for the sick, much like what the medical profession does with other palliative measures? All of this winds the essay up to L’Heureux’s final statement on God: “If I find in myself the need for compassion, to allay suffering and to comfort the living, I feel sure that God has at least as much compassion as I do.” Yes. And if I find in myself a growing irritation at this style of argumentation, then I feel sure that God is pissed. L’Heureux did not leave the faith entirely, but it seems he indulged in the kind tiresome reasoning that so many believers are familiar with: his judgements came first, then God and different articles of faith are enlisted to rationalize them.

What about the writing, then? I have noticed that different critics have wildly divergent interpretations of L’Heureux’s short stories, particularly those touching transcendent themes. He often features characters with a tenuous relationship to the catholic faith, such as the comedian who begins to pray the Hail Mary again after becoming pregnant, or the adulterous former seminarian who starts thinking he should be at Stations of the Cross with his wife, not visiting his mistress. But these trappings of faith are overshadowed by larger mysteries that are not reducible to prayer, devotion, or even language. L’Heureux is not vague, but he also resists providing a clear pathway to interpreting the mysteries that sit at the center of his stories. They are enmeshed in so thick a web of relationships, causes, and associations that they become opaque. Every story of his that I have finished so far in The Heart is a Full Wild Beast has left me somewhat frustrated. At the same time, for every ambiguous ending, I find that the final image of a story keeps turning over and over in my mind. I am curious about what I will find if I try to crack open these stories. L’Heureux emerged from the American clerical culture of the ‘50s and ‘60s, then left the priesthood after the Second Vatican Council, and was warmly received by a secular culture that found in his stories a meaningful exploration of the transcendent dimension of life. Each one of these inflection points in his life is a contested site in the church today. Few catholic publications marked his passing, but I wonder if he doesn’t deserve more of our attention.