{{short description|American novelist (born in 1958)}} {{Use American English|date=April 2025}} {{Use mdy dates|date=April 2025}} {{Infobox writer <!-- For more information see :Template:Infobox Writer/doc. --> | name = Lee Oser | honorific_prefix = | honorific_suffix = | image = Lee Oser, Briana.jpg | caption = Oser in 2022 | image_size = | alt = | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1958}} | birth_place = New York City, U.S. | occupation = {{flatlist| * Novelist * educator * literary critic }} | language = English | education = {{ubl|Reed College (BA)|Yale University (PhD)}} | alma_mater = | genre = | subject = | notableworks = | awards = }} '''Lee Oser''' (born in 1958) is an American novelist, Christian humanist, and literary critic. He is a former president of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. He teaches religion and literature at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts.
== Biography == Lee Oser was born in New York City in 1958. He is of Irish Catholic and Russian Jewish descent. He attended public high school on Long Island. After playing in rock bands and working odd jobs in Portland, Oregon, he received a B.A. from Reed College in 1988 and a Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1995. The College of the Holy Cross hired him in 1998. As a scholar, he began his career in the field of literary modernism and is a scholar of the poet T. S. Eliot.
Oser has published several books of literary criticism and four novels, including ''Oregon Confetti'', named by ''Commonweal'' as one of its top books of 2017.
== Novels ==
=== ''Out of What Chaos'' ===
Set on the West Coast during Bush II's first term, ''Out of What Chaos'' (Scarith, 2007) showcases the escapades of Rex and The Brains as they break into the Portland rock scene, record their first CD, and tour from Vancouver to LA behind their chart-topping single, "F U. I Just Want to Get My Rocks Off". In the end, the boys must make a decision about how to live.
Literary critic and theorist Jean-Michel Rabaté called Oser a "worthy debater" and praises ''Out of What Chaos'', saying he "enjoyed it fully."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v9_1/main/essays.php?essay=rabate |title=Hypermedia Joyce Studies, VOLUME 9, NUMBER 1, 2008 ISSN 1801-1020 |publisher=Hjs.ff.cuni.cz |date= |accessdate=2014-02-05}}</ref>
=== ''The Oracles Fell Silent'' === Oser's second novel follows its predecessor by exploring the intersection of pop culture and religion. The young narrator, Richard Bellman, recounts his experience as personal secretary to a sixties' rock legend, Sir Ted Pop.
Early reviews have praised the novel, while focusing on Oser's attempt to address contemporary culture from a Catholic point of view.<ref>{{cite web |date= |title=Holy Cross professor brings Catholic perspective to second novel |url=http://www.telegram.com/article/20140218/NEWS/302189984/1312 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924140220/http://www.telegram.com/article/20140218/NEWS/302189984/1312 |archive-date=2015-09-24 |accessdate=2014-02-20 |publisher=telegram.com}}</ref><ref>"Briefly Noted," ''First Things'' 245 (August/September 2014): 65-66.</ref><ref>''The Chesterton Review'' 40.1 and 2 (Spring/Summer 2014): 143-145.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://dappledthings.org/2945/following-the-bellman/ |title=Following the Bellman:: A Review of The Oracles Fell Silent |publisher=Dappledthings.org |date= |accessdate=2014-02-18 |archive-date=February 11, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140211032347/http://dappledthings.org/2945/following-the-bellman/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2014/march/oracles-fell-silent.html?paging=off|title = The Oracles Fell Silent}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-oracles-fell-silent/|title = Review of the Oracles Fell Silent| date=27 February 2014 }}</ref>
=== ''Oregon Confetti'' ===
In Lee Oser's fourth novel, ''Oregon Confetti,'' Portland art dealer Devin Adams has been so successful conning the local Philistines that he can no longer tell actual art from the highly profitable junk that supports his living. But the sudden appearance on his doorstep of the great painter John Sun, bearing a strange child, changes all that, confronting Devin with the hard facts of his life, from his lusts and obsessions to his own small part in a mass psychosis that denies the existence of love.
Critic Anthony Domestico lists the novel among ''Commonweal''{{'s}} Top Books of 2017, saying "Antic, absurdist, comic, and Catholic, this ribald novel grows out of the Evelyn Waugh and John Kennedy Toole tradition."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/top-books-2017|title = Top Books of 2017 | Commonweal Magazine| date=30 December 2017 }}</ref> In other reviews of ''Oregon Confetti'', Oser's Catholic vantage point remained a source of contention.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.kirkcenter.org/bookman/article/the-catholic-novel-in-an-age-of-political-correctness|title = The Catholic Novel in an Age of Political Correctness|date = 26 November 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.literarymatters.org/10-2-love-among-the-junk/|title = Love Among the Junk|date = 4 March 2018}}</ref><ref>https://cornellbookreview.com/2017/12/01/oregon-confetti-by-lee-oser/</ref> Critic Joseph Pearce listed ''Oregon Confetti'' in his list of "The Best of Contemporary Christian Fiction".<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/10/best-contemporary-christian-fiction-joseph-pearce.html | title=The Best of Contemporary Christian Fiction | date=6 October 2018 }}</ref>
Oser was interviewed by ''Crisis Magazine'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.crisismagazine.com/2018/tragi-comical-limits-visit-lee-oser|title = Comedy and the Catholic Novel: A Visit with Lee Oser|date = 31 January 2018}}</ref> ''Dappled Things'',<ref>{{cite web |url=https://dappledthings.org/12844/damned-beautiful-things-a-conversation/ |title=Damned Beautiful Things: A Conversation |website=dappledthings.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180221033438/http://dappledthings.org/12844/damned-beautiful-things-a-conversation/ |archive-date=2018-02-21}}</ref> ''Law and Liberty''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.libertylawsite.org/2017/12/08/lee-osers-oregon-confetti-and-the-redemption-of-portlandia/|title = Lee Oser's Oregon Confetti and the Redemption of Portlandia|date = 8 December 2017}}</ref>
=== ''Old Enemies'' ===
Oser's fourth novel, published by Senex Press, is a satire that follows the protagonist Moses Shea, a disgraced newspaperman. After being dumped by his love and blacklisted in New York, Shea, thanks to his old friend from Harvard Nick Carty, ends up at the newly defunct St. Malachy's Catholic College in Massachusetts. The novel satirizes the state of modern higher education.
Mark Bauerlein, Senior Editor at ''First Things'', said of the novel "Lee Oser's ''Old Enemies'' is a joy to read, clever and astute, sharp and funny, satiric but humane. We have the issues of our time in dramatic light." Noting Oser's own Christian Humanism, Ernest Suarez, David M. O'Connell Professor of English at the Catholic University of America, wrote "''Old Enemies'' is a contemporary version of The Praise of Folly, taking aim at the deceptions, self-deceptions, and irrationalities that so often underpin people's quests for power."
== Christian humanism == Oser's defense of Christian humanism is set out in his book ''The Return of Christian Humanism''. In a lengthy review-essay, Anthony Kenny argued that Oser's position had been superannuated by modernity.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://eic.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/1.toc |archive-url=https://archive.today/20140205163822/http://eic.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/1.toc |url-status=dead |archive-date=2014-02-05 |title=Table of Contents — January 2009, 59 (1) |publisher=Eic.oxfordjournals.org |date=2009-01-01 |accessdate=2014-02-18}}</ref> Alan Blackstock places Oser in the tradition of G. K. Chesterton and compares Oser's ethical criticism to that of Alasdair MacIntyre.<ref>Alan R. Blackstock, The Rhetoric of Redemption: Chesterton, Ethical Criticism, and the Common Man (Peter Lang, 2012), 114-21. {{ISBN|1433119803}}</ref> Oser subsequently developed his position in a 2021 essay, "Christian Humanism and the Radical Middle".<ref>{{Cite web|date=2021-11-05|title=Christian Humanism and the Radical Middle – Lee Oser|url=https://lawliberty.org/christian-humanism-and-the-radical-middle/|access-date=2021-11-09|website=Law & Liberty|language=en-US}}</ref>
== Personal life == He is the father of two daughters: Eleanor and Briana. He and his wife, Kate, have been married for thirty years. A committed Roman Catholic, he serves regularly as an extraordinary minister at Saint Paul's Cathedral, in downtown Worcester.<ref>{{cite web |title=Lee Oser |url=https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/english/faculty/lee-oser |access-date=2024-03-08 |website=holycross.edu}}</ref>
== Bibliography ==
=== Critical study ===
* {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=T. S. Eliot and American Poetry |publisher=University of Missouri Press |year=1998 |isbn=9780826211811 |author-mask=2}} * {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2007 |isbn=9780521116282 |author-mask=2}} * {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Tolkien, Eliot and the Romance of History |publisher=University of Missouri Press |year=2007 |isbn=9780826217752 |author-mask=2}} * {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature |publisher=Catholic University of America Press |year=2022 |isbn=9780813235103 |author-mask=2}}
=== Novels ===
* {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=Out of What Chaos: A Novel |publisher=Scarith |year=2007 |isbn=9780978771348 |author-mask=2}} * {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=The Oracles Fell Silent |publisher=Wiseblood Books |year=2014 |isbn=9780615876139 |author-mask=2}} * {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=Oregon Confetti |publisher=Wiseblood Books |year=2017 |isbn=9780991583294 |author-mask=2}} * {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=Old Enemies: A Satire |publisher=Senex Press |year=2022 |isbn=9798986315904 |author-mask=2}}
=== Contributions ===
* {{cite book |last=Oser |first=Lee |title=Shakespeare's Reformation: Christian Humanism and the Death of God |publisher=St. Augustine's Press |year=2022 |isbn=9781587318177 |editor-last=Ranasinghe |editor-first=Nalin |author-mask=2}}
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Oser, Lee}} Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:20th-century American novelists Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers Category:21st-century American novelists Category:American literary critics Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American male novelists Category:Christian humanists Category:Christian novelists Category:College of the Holy Cross faculty Category:Novelists from Massachusetts Category:Reed College alumni Category:Yale University alumni