Between Spirituality and Literature

Matthew Wickman’s Life to the Whole Being: The Spiritual Memoir of a Literature Professor is a remarkable book. On one level, it is a nuanced study of the relationship between spirituality and literature. It discusses inspiration and the limits of technique, how both spirituality and literature train our attention and allow us to see things anew, and how we need poetic language (metaphor, analogy) to talk about God and spiritual experience. Lively readings of poems and novels intersperse these discussions: poems by Denise Levertov and Gerard Manley Hopkins, novels by Louise Erdrich and Fyodor Dostoevsky. On this level, Life to the Whole Being is the work of a master scholar who can write about complex ideas in the clearest of prose. But on a deeper level, Life to the Whole Being, as its subtitle suggests, is a work of autobiography, of honest soul-searching. On this deeper level, the Brigham Young English professor explores the relationship between spirituality and literature in his life. The resulting work is by turns wise and questioning, witty and candid, self-effacing and impassioned.