John Clarke L'Heureux was an American author. L'Heureux was the author of such works of fiction as The Miracle, Having Everything, The Shrine at Altamira, Comedians, An Honorable Profession, and A Woman Run Mad. A former Jesuit priest and contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly, he taught at Georgetown, Tufts, Harvard, and was a professor of English at Stanford University since 1973.
Early years
John Clarke L'Heureux was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, on 26 October 1934; his parents were Wilfred and Mildred L'Heureux. After two years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, he entered the Society of Jesus at the age of nineteen and began his path to ordination as a priest in 1956. During these years, he published several books of poetry and a journal, Picnic in Babylon: A Jesuit Priest's Journal, 1963- 1967, which chronicled his final years of seminary study. The latter part of L'Heureux's life as a Jesuit coincided with the upheaval the Roman Catholic Church experienced in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, which was convened to "open the church's windows" more widely to the complicated aspirations of the modern world. The turbulence that accompanied engagement with the world proved to be both exhilarating and disruptive for an entire generation of priests and nuns. L'Heureux's career as a priest, which included time as a graduate student in English at Harvard and a stint as a staff editor at The Atlantic Monthly, was fairly conventional for an unconventional time.
Writing career
L'Heureux left the priesthood and was laicized in 1971; that year he also married Joan Polston, the dedicatee of most of his subsequent books. He wrote in Picnic in Babylon, "I became a Jesuit, paradoxically, on the grounds of coldest reason: I felt God wanted me to, I could, and therefore I should. So I did." He explained some of the reasons behind his leaving the priesthood to The National Catholic Reporter in an article published on 11 May 1990 to coincide with the release of his short-story collection Comedians. L'Heureux published three collections of poetry before he began to write fiction. His poem "from St. Ignatius Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits: His Autobiography " bridged verse and narrative prose. L'Heureux said later in an unpublished interview that he "never looked back. It became more satisfying to explore consciousnesses different from one's own." His short fiction began appearing in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Esquire, and several literary journals, and has been included in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and The Best American Short Stories.
Death and final works
L'Heureux died April 22, 2019, in Palo Alto, California, of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 84. His final essay, "John L'Heureux on Death and Dignity," was published in The New Yorker the following April 29, with the announcement that a new collection of his stories, The Heart is a Full-Wild Beast, and his last novel, The Beggar's Pawn, would be published in 2020.
