Bob Del Tredici Book Review
St. Joe’s in the 50’s
The last Alumni Reunion happened in 2019, just before the rector sent us all home for a three-year epidemic vacation. The class of ’59 had their 60th reunion that year, and Bob Del Tredici has created a new book to celebrate it: St. Joe’s in the 50’s.
I strongly suggest you get it and read it. Actually, “read” isn’t what you do with Bob Del Tredici’s book. You ogle it, contemplate it, immerse yourself in it, and let it transport you to another era. Because Bob isn’t just a writer (though a very good one). He’s also a photographer, archivist, cartoonist, montage artist, and classicist. His book is a graphic novel that bounces you between philosophical thoughts, zany cartoons, and archival photos, old seminary schedules, essays corrected in Pop Rock’s handwriting, quotes from the Blow, and heart-throbbing illustrations from the Young Seminarian . Each page is a stand-alone collage, all somehow connected by Bob’s Joycean logic. Best to think of it as a collaboration between Sister Corita and R. Crumb.
Ten members of the class of ’59 attended the reunion in person, and twenty- four others showed up on the astral plane, having already left the planet. That’s more than half the total of almost 60 fourteen-year-olds who showed up in September 1953. Those of us fortunate enough to have known the members of this incredible class will savor their memories. Those who came earlier or later will get an immersive experience of seminary life during the most exuberant days of the Church Triumphant. This was the time when vocations were so numerous that a new wing had to be added. It was the time when the seminary rule and course of studies were still embraced as the unquestionable Will of God, before the liturgical culture wars and the rancorous debates of the Vatican Council put everything up for grabs. This was a time when a group of idealistic young men could focus all their attention on classical learning, competitive athletics, bonfires, immature pranks, and Gilbert and Sullivan musicals. It was the golden age of traditional seminary formation.
Bob showed up as a sixth latiner in 1953, dutifully pious, but also armed with a devilish wit, as well as a camera and a cartoonist’s pencil. While the rest of us folded blindly into the food processor of seminary training, Bob kept an artist’s aesthetic distance and was thus able to see deeper into both the comedic and tragic aspects of seminary life. This is reflected in the design and style of his book which never lets you get too comfortable with one train of thought before directing you suddenly off at a tangent to another. For example, page 74 is a typed page outlining the duties of an acolyte at High Mass, whereas page 75 leaps ahead to recent photos of Tom Sheehan’s Jesus Seminar lectures about Yeshua, with Bob’s commenting, “Tom’s delivery received applause while also sending quiet shock waves through the gathering.” Page 76 confronts us with an ominous drawing entitled “The Descent of the Modernists” by Ari Agemian the guy who illustrated The Imitation of Christ and The Young Seminarian.
It’s very rare to find a page of Bob’s book with a uniform typeface or font size. Often every other paragraph changes styles, again reminding us not to get too comfortable in our expectations. The same is true of his tone, which can subtly and unexpectedly catch us up short, as in this recollection from Thursday, February 2, 1958: “I served 5:30 a.m. Mass in the Nuns’ Convent with Fr. Atkinson. Real devotional atmosphere of solid, firm piety. They are like rows of little mice. A rat here and there.” Bob’s writing and artwork are filled with these little subtleties that you can easily miss. Reading his book is like watching a Jacques Tati movie: it’s best to see it several times on a big screen so you can catch all the humorous little details.
The book covers faculty foibles, fight nights, pranks with shot-puts and Christmas trees, refectory reader bloopers, interior life ferverinos, retreat talks and resolutions, class walks, the Loma Prieta earthquake (which he calls the First Extinction), and Salvatore Cordileone’s expulsion of the Sulpicians (The Second Extinction). It’s a joyous potpourri of 50s seminary life and beyond, all told from Bob’s brilliantly zany perspective.
I’ve been familiar with the Del Tredici family since I was very young. They were well known in our parish, and his mother Helen often was our substitute teacher at St. Anselm’s when our nun was mercifully absent. Instead of burdening us with the usual busy work, she would fire our imaginations by reading aloud books like Pinnochio.
Bob’s younger brother Richard was my classmate and good friend, a more serious student than I, and a better athlete. His older brother David was a musical prodigy, the protégé of our music teacher, Sister Mary Engratia, who constantly referenced him during my fledgling piano lessons – “If you practice regularly, you might become David Del Tredici’s successor as church organist.” (The image of becoming a church organist so terrified me that I quit piano after one year.)
“Bobby” was always the mysterious and artistic middle sibling, just older enough that I never really got to know him at St. Anselm’s, or at St. Joe’s either. It’s only now reading his book that I feel I am finally meeting Bob for the first time. I wish it had happened sooner, when we had more years to develop a friendship; but I’m very grateful to have been introduced to his delightful mind and playful spirit through this book. You’ll be grateful too. Trust me.
St Joe’s in the 50’s
Send check for $49.00 to:
R. Del Tredici
544 Beaurepaire Drive
Beaconsfield, Quebec
Canada H9W 3E2
(When mailing check, use an international stamp or three regular U.S. stamps)