It’s been a while since I wrote about something other than film, but this novel presented a unique challenge. In fact, it is hard to imagine a reader who would not feel forced to examine their deepest feelings about its subject.

(By the way, Paul Schrader made a film of the book in 1997, which I only just heard about. This review, however, is only about the book. I hope to see the film someday, and may update this review afterwards.)

Leonard wrote it quickly in 1977, but the publisher took ten years to overcome its ambivalence. How would the public respond to such a story, especially to the style used by the author to tell it? Still, Leonard said that many of his friends agree with him that it’s his best book.

It is the story of Juvenal, a young former monk in Cleveland who is found to be a stigmatic, i.e., one who spontaneously bleeds from the same five wounds suffered by Christ on the cross (four from the nails to his hands and feet, a fifth in his side from a Roman spear). When Juvenal touches a diseased or disabled person, they are cured as if by a miracle. Juvenal is not particularly devout. He is simply a believer who was given a gift to help people, which he enjoys doing. He enjoys other things too, including sex with the woman who has fallen in love with him. This woman, Lynn, is the most fully realized character in the book, and seems to represent the author’s moral perspective. She doesn’t know if she really believes in miracles, but her outrage at society’s hypocrisy and exploitation of Juvenal is deeply offensive to her.

First off, this is top-grade Leonard, at least as far as the writing is concerned. Some set pieces – including the public mass where Juvenal’s gift is first revealed, or the climax at the TV show of an egomaniacal journalist – are brilliant, etched-in-acid gems of social satire. And the multiple characters are clearly drawn, allowing Leonard to dazzle us with the kind of breakneck plotting that so pleased his fans. It is, in fact, fully realized as the kind of  “entertainment” Leonard gave us throughout his career: where the moral choices are clear, the bad guys are vanquished and the good guys, in this case Juvenal and Lynn, have a future of good fun awaiting them.

So why did I feel, at the end of such a skillfully written, and morally satisfying “entertainment”, that there is a big hole in its center? That there is a theme, one never mentioned, that sucks the fun out of the story, at least for some readers?

Since I’m one of them, I took the trouble to discover what was bothering me.

To be blunt, I could not believe that none of the characters were ever compelled to examine their own faith. Fiction allows an author to be God. As the author, Leonard can straddle whether Juvenal is a real saint or not; the character is imaginary, after all. Further, other novelists on religious themes, like Graham Greene or Brian Moore, often created characters whose faith was tested, but still left the author’s own view unstated. We’re not given reasons to think that Leonard personally believes in miracles, or God for that matter, but the book is pretty clear that there was no other explanation for the cures. But no serious novelist I’ve ever read has tried to tell a religious story where all of the characters avoid that question, and especially the one character who seems to have been chosen by God for a special purpose.

I had no such problem with the assorted scoundrels. The “bad guys” here are truly disgusting, and Leonard makes their downfall credible, and satisfying. But we condemn them precisely because, even though they do believe in God,  they have no trouble at all in quickly exploiting Juvenal for their personal agendas, which are founded on greed for power and resentment. It’s no surprise that some of the worst of them are leaders of the church.

But this presents problems with the “good” characters who have not been corrupted. While Juvenal and Lynn seem to have “serious” discussions about God’s purpose in giving him healing powers, these are brief, sometimes flippant in tone, and the lovers soon fall right back into “worldly” concerns like money, sex, prying journalists and avoiding the homicidal fanatic who wants to kill Lynn because she has “soiled” a living saint.

It’s as if Leonard wants to hurry us through the question so we can jump back onto the fun machine. The trouble is, some of us find that the subject of faith in God doesn’t easily lend itself to melodrama, no matter how skillfully done. We can remember fictional characters whose faith was an attempt to resolve, never satisfactorily, the eternal mystery of existence. Specifically, I was reminded of one of the most universally beloved stories in world literature, Un Coeur Simple by Gustave Flaubert. Felicite was never chosen by God for a special purpose, but she suffered like a saint anyway. But Flaubert succeeds in convincing us that Felicite’s faith – which was her “gift” to herself – enriched her life to an extent that none of the other characters in the story could share. The message was that the intrinsic value of faith cannot be measured against any amount of worldly riches, and to even try would be to trivialize and vulgarize it.

I think Leonard misjudged how the reader would respond to Juvenal’s gift, and this sours the book’s pleasures. Juvenal is shown to be just a “regular guy” who one day wakes up with divine powers. Suddenly, he’s someone not unlike the typical Leonard hero, or “anti-hero”, who has a special talent – just like safecracking, getaway-driving or cheating at cards. Sorry, but I just can’t digest that. Juvenal may have been a “regular guy” for much of his life, but he will be changed after receipt of his divine gift.    I’m not sure just how he’ll be changed. If I did I’d re-write the story that way. Anyway Leonard, who joined the departed in 2013, is now past revising it. And so, as it stands, Touch remains spiritually empty and earthbound.