Infinite Regress

by Joshua Hren

In the years since his graduation from St. Marquis University, Blake Yourrick has fled his family and Milwaukee, rotating from job to dead-end job—working the Bakken oilfields in Dakota and even signing on as the night caretaker of a rural abbey graveyard. Deep in student debt and estranged from his misanthropic, alcoholic father, Blake is haunted by the memory of his mother’s death—and by his relationship with his college mentor, a defrocked priest named Theo Hape, who is known for his adventurous theological ideas as well as for the uncanny , seductive power he wields over his students. When Hape, learning of his former charge’s desperate straits, proposes a perverse exchange of services, Blake finds himself tempted to test the professor’s radical theories in real life. What follows is a metaphysical duel reminiscent of the novels of Dostoevsky and Bernanos, pitting a modern-day anti-Christ against a reckless but resilient young man and his well-meaning, dysfunctional kin.

Genres: Catholic, Fiction

296 pages, Paperback

Published January 26, 2022

About the author

Joshua Hren is an novelist and critic, a father and husband. He is founder and editor of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Joshua regularly publishes essays and poems in such journals as The Los Angeles Review of Books and First Things, America and Public Discourse, New Polity and The Hedgehog Review, Plough and Commonweal, National Review and The University Bookman, and Religion and Literature and LOGOS.

Joshua is the author of ten books: the short story collections This Our Exile and In the Wine Press; a book of poems called Last Things, First Things, & Other Lost Causes; Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy; How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic; the novel Infinite Regress; and the theological-aesthetical manifesto Contemplative Realism. Joshua's More than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature and Faith in the Furnace of Doubt: Dana Gioia's Poetics of Belief, are forthcoming. His second novel, Blue Walls Falling Down, was published in October of 2024.

Reviews

[Steven R. McEvoy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have tried three times and just cannot get into this novel. I picked up up because of high praise. After three attempts I am still only 15% done. It is ending up on the seldom used 'did not finish' pile.

[Dianeparente62gmail.com · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read somewhere that this was an excellent, modern Catholic novel so, remembering Graham Greene and Michael D. O’Brien, I used a gift card to purchase it. It quickly became apparent, and more so as the book progressed, that I was in over my head.

There is a plot, but it is a tree onto which the author drapes complex cobwebs of philosophy, theology, Latin quotes, and mythology. The plot revolves around the intelligent but beyond dysfunctional Yorrick family of Milwaukee. Garrett the father is an alcoholic who abandoned his PH.D dissertation in disgust with academia and barely provides for his family. His deceased wife Catherine was deeply religious and struggled to keep the debt collecting wolves from the door. Blake, one of the sons, likewise is beset by collectors who hound him to pay off his student loans at the college from which he recently graduated.  (Unfortunately, he was not privy to Biden’s student loan forgiveness largesse.)The second brother Max is a practicing psychologist with deep marriage problems. Finally, there is the little sister Dymphna who apparently suffered some injury to her brain from an accident but who seeks to serve and unite her family.

Over this melange of mystery hovers a defrocked priest Theo Hape whose theological musings and pedophile addictions figure prominently in the plot. An eccentric “uncle” and a well meaning monk round out this unique cast of characters.

Overall, there seems to be more searching for philosophical or theological answers in the midst of messy lives than there is a consistent plot which evolves in fits and starts.

This is a book only for those willing to seek to understand the author’s meditations on “first things” which involves a high degree of education and even more patience. There emerges in the book a clearcut critique of modern society which is accurate but it was difficult for this reader to find in this thoughtful work any helpful solutions to the evils society presents.

[Pete Orsi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to this novel as having both lived in the city (Milwaukee) in which the majority of the action takes place and having attended Jesuits schools (High School through Law School) the undercurrent that runs through out the entire novel. In addition, as a practicing catholic and I am watching and longing for the Lord to raise up another great catholic writer. So I really wanted Joshua Hren and this novel to work, but I cannot say that I does.

The novels strengths is its character development. The protagonist Blake Yourick, his father Garret, and the defrocked priest Theo Hape are all memorable characters. I particularly appreciated how Theo Hape was depicted as a pitiful predator who long ago surrendered to the principals of this world, gave up the spiritual combat and now in his loneliness seeks the futile solace of corrupting idealist youth. Unfortunately, i have seen and experience real life Theo Hapes.

The weakness of the novel is its plot. Throughout the novel I tried to understand this philosophical theorem of infinite regress (That there is an infinite series of related elements with a first member but no last member, where each element leads to or generates the next in some sense.) that is promoted by the predator Theo Hape and how the characters dealt with and were transformed by it. While the novel graphically portrays how Blake and Garret are caught in the vortex living out the philosophical theorem "Infinite Regress", it doesn't show (It it does it is a very feeble attempt.) any counter argument against it. The novel does not make the faith of Blake's mother and grandmother credible. I just did not understand how the epitaph on Blake's mother's tombstone, " and fill up those things that are wanting of the suffering of Christ." relates to Blake or his father.

I apologize if I am not smart enough to understand this novel, but I really tried.

[Eric Cyr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hren's writing is dense, intelligent, and masterful. This is no lightweight read, but drives straight at difficult realities and asks us to focus, to contemplate, to see both the darkness in the world and the more-powerful hope that is offered to us.