Wrens And Starling by J.F. Powers, 1960
The magic trick:
Pitting two men’s rivalry over a game of golf
The Father Urban stories are best presented not as stories at all but instead as the 1962 Morte d’Urban novel. But if ever there was a single episode from a novel that worked well isolated as a short story, this is it.
“Wrens And A Starling” takes Father Urban’s battle with the Bishop and makes a game of it. Literally. This is the story of nine holes of golf.
The premise is silly – the characters even seem to recognize that this is silly.
But the tension is thick.
You can recognize that a competition is fundamentally silly and still hang high-drama stakes on the outcome.
And that’s quite a trick on Powers’s part.
The selection:
All this time, the Bishop and Dr. Percy were locked in combat. They halved hole after hole with their sixes, sevens, and eights. Father Urban had never seen anything like it. Dr. Percy appeared to realize that the Bishop dearly wished to do until him as he dearly wished Father Feld would do unto Father Urban, and boldly the little minister countered the Bishop’s praise for his young champion with some of his own for Father Urban. As the matches waxed hotter and the Bishop grew more and more partisan in his looks, words, and gestures, Father Urban found that he was glad to have the plucky Presbyterian as an ally, and did not deny him encouragement and professional advice.
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