Monk Dawson

by Piers Paul Read

Edward Dawson is sent by his widowed mother to be educated at Kirkham, a Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks. Conscientious and idealistic, Dawson is persuaded that he has a monastic vocation and joins the community upon leaving school. He soon feels that educating the sons of the rich is an inadequate response to suffering and injustice and so leaves Kirkham to serve as a secular priest in London. Under the eye of an indulgent archbishop, Dawson’s radical sermons and provocative articles in the Catholic press gain him many admirers, but they also persuade him that the solutions to human suffering are to be found in social work, politics and perhaps psychology but not religion.Dawson leaves the priesthood to work as a journalist. He is taken up by a rich divorcée, Jenny Stanten, and becomes her lover. He enters her circle of decadent, fashionable friends and follows a precipitous Rake’s Progress towards debauchery and disillusion.(

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

British novelist and non-fiction writer. Educated at the Benedictines' Ampleforth College, and subsequently entered St John's College, University of Cambridge where he received his BA and MA (history). Artist-in-Residence at the Ford Foundation in Berlin (1963-4), Harkness Fellow, Commonwealth Fund, New York (1967-8), member of the Council of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (1971-5), member of the Literature Panel at the Arts Council, (1975-7), and Adjunct Professor of Writing, Columbia University, New York (1980). From 1992-7 he was Chairman of the Catholic Writers' Guild. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).

His most well-known work is the non-fiction Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974), an account of the aftermath of a plane crash in the Andes, later adapted as a film.

Reviews

[The Armchair Nihilist · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Monk Dawson” follows the troubled pilgrimage of a pious and serious-minded young man as he moves out of the cloistered bubble of monastic life and makes his way in the real world. He becomes progressively more disillusioned, losing faith first in God, then in humanity, and finally in himself, before finding some kind of redemption.

For me it was a book about the search for purpose and meaning in life and how idealism never survives contact with reality, although it’s likely to elicit different responses depending upon the reader’s own beliefs. It all sounds a bit heavy and it certainly deals with serious issues, but it’s also a tremendously absorbing read and I got through the whole text in just a couple of sittings.

The book received considerable critical acclaim when it was first published 50 years ago but has slipped into obscurity somewhat since. This is a pity because it hasn’t dated and the conflicts it explores – between good and evil, faith and doubt, religion and secularism – remain as valid today as they ever were.

You don’t have to be religious to read this but it helps to have some interest in theology and philosophy. If you do you should certainly find some food for thought here.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very well written and held my interest from beginning to end, but after I had finished it I felt somewhat let down as I expected something more from the story. I am told that the leading character in the ideal novel is meant to resolve a problem and develop in some way or other. Piers Paul Read attended Ampleforth, an elite Catholic public school run by monks, so he has a good insight of the way of life led there and Catholicism.

Monk Dawson is beset with problems which he does not appear to resolve for himself either as a monk or as a lay person. In the end one is left feeling rather depressed as the "real" world and the world of the cloisters of the novel both seem equally futile and pointless.

[Faith Flaherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reason I wanted to read Monk Dawson, by Piers Paul Read, may be a ridiculous reason. So be it. The story line is the faith of Edward Dawson. My father’s name is Edward Dawson. Talk about being called by name!
Did that make me love the book? No, I was impartial. I found the book interesting, intriguing, and genuine. It’s a fictional biography of Edward Dawson, starting as a school boy, up to a middle aged man. He enters religious life immediately following high school. In fact, it’s like he never left school. Life continues as before, except that he’s in front of the class teaching.
Gradually, he reads many liberal, progressive, pop cultural, social justice books. Soon, he too is sprouting the current social justice line. He asks his favorite advisor, Father Maximilian how their religious order can justify teaching the rich. The answer is,
Cujus region, ejus religio.
Secure the prince, and you have his subjects.
This principle means teach the leaders and they will influence the others. Father Dawson didn’t agree. Neither did the Pope, who reemphasized Christ’s remark: “I have compassion on the multitude…” So Dawson leaves that religious order to become a secular priest in London.
I think he’s a good priest. He works hard. He prays conscientiously. He really tries his best. One example is the daughter of a parishioner, whom he tries to mentor, Theresa. Theresa is typical of the cynical, skeptical, rebellious, oppositional personality of a teenager. One example of her rants:
I just don’t seem to need Faith…I don’t seem to need it…There are so many
straight-forward, intelligent people who don’t believe a word of it, honestly,
who think that believing a bit of bread is the body of Jesus Christ is like
thinking that babies are brought by storks…
While working as a priest, in London, a journalist friend from his school days offers him the job of writing religious social commentaries. Dawson does well. He seems to have a talent for writing, and he, himself, enjoys it. His writes critical commentaries on the church. He garners praise and admirers. Soon it becomes apparent to Dawson that he can do God’s work through his social justice articles, criticism of politics and the church, more than the priesthood. He leaves the priesthood.
The author’s description of the ex-priest trying to acclimate himself to buying and wearing secular menswear, is funny. Well, the priest feels foolish, and Piers Paul Read describes that foolishness expertly. However, it is in the middle of this foolishness that the next part of Dawson’s life begins. He runs into Jenny Stanton.
At first, he can’t place her. She’s cheerful and chatty and says that her difficulties are now over and why doesn’t he give her a call—she’s in the phone book. She has great legs; a fact he never noticed as a priest. Since he literally has no social life, e.g., friends, he does look her up and they begin a relationship.
Here is where he enters Jenny’s life of the idle, fashionable, and shallow. She’s a rich divorcee that introduces him to lifestyles, he use to preach against. He easily slips into decadence.
When Jenny dumps him, he drinks for solace. He is saved by Theresa. Yes, that teenaged girl he tried to help, helps him. They become a couple but he still can’t find meaning to his life, anymore. Where and when did he lose it? He is absorbed in self-pity. His depression affects Theresa. She can’t see any meaning to anything, either. Her end is tragic.
It takes Theresa’s suicide, to drive Dawson to contemplative searching. When you go in the desert, you don’t come out the same. Dawson’s friends wonder what happened to him, and are surprised to find that he has entered a religious order of strict observance. He really is Monk Dawson.
I recommend the book. I liked Piers Paul Read’s characterizations. They are true. So is the conscience wrestling that Dawson goes through. It is such a modern cultural depiction, that I had look at the front of the book to see the publication date—1960’s!
What I wished Dawson would have expounded on, was the arguments for God. The reader reads all the accusations against, but only quick quips supporting God.
I guess redemption says it all.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of those novels where a wayward hero goes to confession at the end and everything is peachy. Pfffft.