A Canticle Resung

The first book of the summer for me was A Canticle for Leibowitz. It was the second time around, and definitely intensified upon the rereading. While before I was distracted by the strangeness of the setting and trying to figure out why a creature of primal innocence was frolicking in the wreckage of a nuclear disaster at the end, this time I was blown away by the power of its Catholic core. It is one of the most Catholic novels I have ever read, and were I to create a list of best Catholic novels ever written, it would go in my top three. It is an extraordinary work that masterfully propounds the Church's position on human life and man's relation to God. It also is the reason I first became intersted in the Wandering Jew, who is far and away the most memorable character of the story. The first time I read it, I did not catch how clearly he is supposed to be Lazarus (I don't know how I didn't notice--it's pretty blatant) and it prompted me to look up the Wandering Jew story on Wikipedia. It sounds like an interesting Medieval tale, and I'm very interested to further explore its relation to the Joseph of Arithemea Arthurian legends. I also found a Wandering Jew plant in Shorty's and have since found references to him in all sorts of literature.