The Long Loneliness (edition 1997)

This book reads like an autobiography, but is also about the author's conversion to the Catholic faith. A very significant conversion it was because it resulted in the Catholic Worker movement. Dorothy Day dedicated herself to the church but followed the Christian gospels beyond the church, into the realms of pacifism, voluntary poverty, and direct service to the poor. Her meeting with Peter Maurin provided the catalyst, and the rest is history. The creation of the Catholic Worker movement may seem an improbable scenario, but readers of this book will see the pieces coming together, falling into place, that made it possible, maybe even inevitable. Because to this day the C.W. movement has its roots in the gospels.

"We did not search for God when we were children," she writes. At university, she saw religion as "an opiate of the people and not a very attractive one." But by page 132 she writes, "I was surprised that I found myself beginning to pray daily." Then, "I began to go to Mass regularly on Sunday mornings." This book is about her gradual transformation from unchurched Bohemian to candidate for sainthood, how it happened and what she thought about it. The book is in three sections: pre-conversion, conversion, and post-conversion. Section three discusses Peter Maurin and the early history of the Catholic Worker community.

Her writing style is much like her life was, down-to-earth, unpretentious. But what food for thought! About spirituality and religion, practical philosophy, social justice, war and peace, family life and community. And history, of course, as she experienced it—and made it. Hers was an eventful life in the front lines of the struggles for peace and social justice, which makes for an interesting read.

Indexed. Illustrated with woodcuts by Fritz Eichenberg. ( )

My local library has a small cart of discarded and donated books. The items on it are a very mixed bag, and purchaseable at garage sale prices - $1.00 hardcover, $.50 paperback. It's a great little petty cash raising gimmick, and I invariably leave, after my weekly visit, with one or two books, of a genre or author I might never otherwise have encountered.

Thus I found myself perusing The Long Loneliness - the autobiography of Dorothy Day, an American journalist, social activist, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker. As an ex-altarboy, and secular humanist, I tend to hiss and emit clouds of steam, like a vampire sprinkled with holy water, when approaching literature concerning my former church. Why? Well for starters, too many childhood hours lost on catechism class, and Sunday Mass, when I could have been playing softball or fishing.

But I was hooked by Day's first person narration from page one - she begins in the interior of a confessional booth. She clearly had a journalist's chops. And she didn't, like me, start out a Catholic. Day was the child of a newspaper man, and traveled the country. She experienced the Great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She was nine. Her family, struggling financially, then moved to Chicago, where she won a scholarship for her proficiency in Greek and Latin. As a young adult, she ultimately settled in New York City. Day was a voracious reader, a bit of a mystic, and preoccupied from an early age with social justice. Writers like Dostoyevsky, Jack London, Upton Sinclair and activists like Eugene Debs and the I.W.W. formed her world view.

In New York City, in 1917, when she was 20 years old, she began her own career as a journalist and activist, writing for The Call, and later, The Masses. One of the highlights of her story is her description of these years of political ferment from her perspective at the intersection of a movement that was part Socialist, part I.W.W., part anarchist, and part liberal.

Then came her Bohemian years during which she bore a child in a common-law marriage. The community she experienced during that time led to an epiphany that life without an engaged social community was like a long loneliness. This lead to her eventual conversion to Catholicism. It was not an easy choice because her common law partner was an atheist, and they could not marry or cohabit after her conversion.

Then began Day's lifelong association with Peter Maurin, and the founding of the organization known as the Catholic Worker. Together, they developed a journal with a wide circulation, helped fund a network of hospices, and supported the activities of a number of labor organizations. Their policies, such as opposition to Generalissimo Franco, did not always square with the Catholic Church. The highlight of this portion of her story is her detailed description of the communal living of the journal's staff. Abbie Hoffman once praised Day as "the first hippie". As one who recalls those days and that shared lifestyle, I have to agree that I got the same sense of deja vu while reading of the characters who drifted through the Catholic Workers offices and living quarters.

Day died in 1980. A movie has been made of her life, starring Moira Kelly and Martin Sheen. She has been proposed for sainthood, and deemed a "Servant of God" by Pope John Paul II (the first of four stages in an investigation of sainthood.) Whether or not she attains that honor, her life was fascinating and inspiring. In the tumult of The Great Depression, she made lemonade out of lemon rinds. Her example was a reminder that poverty can be a great virtue and a source of spiritual growth and community. In the times we live in now, and may face in the future, that alone is a reason to read her autobiography. ( )

A fascinating view into the life of an amazing woman. ( )

A fascinating view into the life of an amazing woman. ( )

Great autobiography of a 20th century convert to Catholicism whose road to conversion is as fascinating as her tremendous active works among the poor, setting up Hospitality Houses and developing the Catholic Workers Movement. She is an inspiration, albeit I felt a certain sense of her loneliness as I read this during my own soup kitchen days.... ( )