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Article: A View from the Ridge.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- April 11, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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West, the celebrated Australian man of letters, subtitles his work "The Testimony of a Twentieth-Century Christian." He does not write a straight autobiography but lets us see the progress of his life from his days as an Irish Christian Brother through his military service in the Pacific during World War II to his later eminence as a playwright, novelist, and journalist. West is a cradle Catholic with just enough combative feistiness to have also made him a critical one. When Rome refused to annul his first marriage (even though his canonical intermediary said that he was a free man as far as the "internal forum" was concerned), West responded by raising his children as ...