While still in his early teens, future National Lampoon and Spy editor Tony Hendra was caught in a compromising position with his tutor's long-suffering wife. A Teutonic type ill-equipped to handle the most basic of emotions, let alone infidelity, the tutor took Hendra to a Benedictine monastery to seek spiritual guidance. There, Hendra encountered Father Joe, a preposterous-looking monk whose patience, warmth, and generosity of spirit formed the basis for a lifelong friendship, though "friendship" seems too weak a word to adequately convey the bond that developed between saint and sinner, monk and would-be monk turned enthusiastic blasphemer.
Father Joe is a memoir of Hendra's relationship with the man he credits with spiritually rescuing him. That broad outline veers uncomfortably close to mawkish territory, but Hendra deserves credit for largely steering clear of sentimentality. The book's most compelling segments document, with gentle humor, Hendra's early flirtation with monastic life: his wholehearted immersion in the sanctified, ancient existence led by Father Joe and his fellow monks.
As Hendra gets older and loses faith in seemingly everything but Father Joe, the book becomes increasingly elliptical and vague, with the years rushing by in a heady blur. Like a photograph blown up to many times its original size, Father Joe becomes fuzzier as Hendra focuses on the bigger picture. Those looking for an inside look at his work as a humorist will likely come away disappointed, as the book is more concerned with his spiritual life than his career.
Throughout his tumultuous adulthood, Hendra relied on Father Joe as a moral compass, and the monk's God is a deity of patience, love, and forgiveness, not a wrathful dispenser of punishment. Deeply spiritual but seemingly allergic to dogma and judgment, Father Joe serves as Hendra's connection to divinity and to his younger self, the earnest young teenager who could imagine no existence greater than to serve a Lord he'd later lose faith in. With his moving and unexpected new memoir, Hendra shares his spiritual mentor with the world, making it possible for Joe's memory to serve as a beacon of hope for any lost soul.