George W. Hunt, well known among Updike scholars for his seminal early monograph, John Updike and the Three Great Secret Things: Sex, Religion, and Art, died Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, of cancer. An obituary in America: The National Catholic Weekly reports that Hunt, 74, was editor of America from 1984-98 and a literary scholar who published on John Cheever as well.
But to Updike scholars and aficionados he was one of the most astute critics among us. His 1980 book used, as a point of departure, Updike’s famous essay on “The Dogwood Tree: A Boyhood” (Assorted Prose, 1965) and examined how sex, religion, and art permeate and inform Updike’s work.
The greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, once said that to believe in a God means the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. We should be grateful they are not.
– George Hunt, SJ
The Motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart. External circumstances.
– Blaise Pascal
Viva Fr. Hunt!