A novel with a lousy title that's off to a great start, against all odds - Morte d'Urban

J.F. Powers's Morte d'Urban (1962?) is another one of those once well-known novel now plunged into obscurity, probably because Powers' had a limited output as a fiction writer and was never connected w/ any particular movement or school; plus he lived far from the center of literary (taught for many years at a small college in rural Minnesota) plus - what a terrible title for a novel! That said, the great NYRB press once again comes to the rescue and publishes several volumes of work by Powers - and his work has recently been mentioned along w/ that of another writer in the naturalist tradition from about the same era (and same level of obscurity and safe confinement to the hinterlands of literature and same resurrection by NYRB), John Williams (esp Stoner). And this novel, from the first 75 pp or so, does have some echoes of Stoner - the story of a priest, of all things, who works out of Chicago where he clearly enjoys the high life, top restaurants and clubs and even palling around w/ a known mobster. His job, kind of glamorous for a priest, is to travel a circuit and give inspiring talks about his order (the Clementines!, ha); his superiors, smelling a rat, reassign him to a remote site in Minnesota where he joins a barely competent and fully under-staffed crew in the thankless task of rebuilding an old estate to serve as a retreat locale for devout laity. I know - you'd think this would be the most uninteresting set-up for a novel in all of time. And yes I can't imagine this novel's being published today. But it's actually, so far, a profound and thoughtful examination of the psycho of a man - Father Urban - at a Dante-esque crossroads in his life, and in fact the novel is full of sharp wit (amazingly, one of the hilarious passages is the "minutes" of a meeting of the 4 priests about how to "market" their forthcoming "retreat") and some great descriptions - including another hilarious section as the priest on location shows Father Urban around this dilapidated mansion - clearly, someone's major tax write-off - trying to make the best of things as Father Urban grits his teeth. We'll see how this novel goes, but it's off to a great start - against all odds. (Have there been other good novels about priests? Maybe A Month of Sundays? Alice McDermott has written well about the novitiates.)