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Lee Oser (1958 - present) is a Roman Catholic novelist and literary critic. He teaches Religion and Literature at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Novels

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1. Out of What Chaos

Set on the West Coast during Bush II’s first term, Out of What Chaos showcases the escapades of Rex and The Brains as they break into the Portland rock scene, record their first CD, and tour from Vancouver to LA behind their chart-topping single, “F U. I Just Want To Get My Rocks Off.” The boys party on, finding their way amidst the frenzied panorama of twenty-first century America. The country embraces them in all its crazy glory, from witches to priests, from groupies to politicians, from drug dealers to porno stars to college professors. As the band’s fame grows, tragedy strikes, and Freddie finds himself torn between his rock-and-roll lifestyle and his girlfriend, Sheila Corcoran, whose claim on his heart continues to grow. In the end, the worlds of love and celebrity collide, and Freddie must make a decision about how to live. Jean-Michel Rabaté, a prolific literary theorist and critic, calls Oser a "worthy debater" and praises Out of What Chaos, saying he "enjoyed it fully."

2. The Oracles Fell Silent

When the legendary Sir Ted Pop hires young Richard Bellman as his secretary, Bellman’s work on the great man’s memoir transforms his young life into a divine comedy--or is it a devilish farce? In a New York beach house in Southampton, Bellman treads the forbidden ground of Ted’s final hour with Johnny Donovan, his partner in fame, who “fell” from a London rooftop in 1969. Sir Ted battles false prophets and mad messiahs for control over his own story, but what rock’s biggest mystery reveals to Bellman is the unthinkable hand of God.

Reviews of The Oracles:
Reviewers have focused on Oser's attempt to address contemporary culture from a Catholic point of view:
"Oser knows the America he depicts—this culture of decadent excess and arrogance—as fully as Richard Ford knows the Jersey shore. It's by no means a realist novel, however, but something like a tongue-in-cheek allegory, as one begins to suspect when Sir Ted meets his match in Hurricane Gabriel and the mystery of Johnny Donovan's death finally comes to light. Oser's novel makes its readers ask which oracles they've been attending and what might happen in their silence. Young Richard Bellman—it's worth thinking about what a “bellman” is—emerges largely unscathed, and with an essential quiet dignity. There's no triumphalism here, no relegation of souls to heaven or hell. Oser's gift is making it deeply attractive to come back to the sanity of worshiping what deserves it."
-Glenn Arbery, First Things contributor and professor at Wyoming Catholic College

"It reads more like a fast and easy piece of fiction...that also manages to convey substance of eternal significance."
-M.A. Peterson

"Certain to enrapture readers interested in rock and roll’s less seductive underbelly, Oser’s book offers a captivating and witty picture of the features and failings of contemporary culture."
-Michelle Anne Schingler

Literary Criticism

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T. S. Eliot and American Poetry (1998)
The Return of Christian Humanism (2007)
The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett (2009)

Novels

1. Out of What Chaos

2. The Oracles Fell Silent

Literary Criticism

References