June 30, 2022
Joshua Ren talks about his debut Infinite retreat.
“In the years after graduating from St. Marquis College, Blake Yourick fled Milwaukee with his family and bounced around a series of dead-end jobs, from working in the Bakken oil fields of the Dakotas to working as the night caretaker of a rural monastery cemetery. Pushed to pay off student loans and estranged from his misanthropic, alcoholic father, Blake is haunted by memories of his mother’s death and his relationship with his college mentor, Theo Hape, an exorcised priest known for his adventurous theological ideas and eerie behavior., “When Hape learns of the plight of his former student and proposes a perverse exchange of services, Blake is tempted to test his professor’s radical theories in the real world. What follows is a metaphysical duel reminiscent of the novels of Dostoyevsky or Bernanos, pitting a modern-day Antichrist against a reckless but tenacious young man and his well-meaning but dysfunctional relatives.” (Publisher’s description)
The book is particularly timely in its philosophical themes, touching on the subject of metaphysical deconstruction, which is used as a cover for sexual training in the educational world.
Thomas and Joshua discuss the novel’s deconsecrated Jesuit villain, the protagonist’s flight from a philosophy that makes good dependent on evil and erases the boundary between the two, the book’s theme of financial and metaphysical debt, its comedic tone, and Wren’s unusual, associative prose style.
link
Joshua Ren Infinite Regression https://www.angelicopress.org/infinite-regress-joshua-hren
Wise Blood Books https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas
https://www.stthom.edu/Academics/School-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Division-of-Liberal-Studies/Graduate/Master-of-Fine-Arts-in-Creative-Writing/Index.aqf? Aquifer_Source_URL=%2FMFA&PNF_Check=1
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