The Novelist’s craft is evident in the pacing and tone of this biography of the hugely influential Richard John Neuhaus, founder of First Things, the conservative Catholic monthly which boasts of being “America’s most influential journal of religion”. Randy Boyagoda is one of our finest young Catholic novelists and right from the opening pages he pits two stereotypes against one another: first, Neuhaus as a leader of “left-wing radicals”, and then, later, a contrasting Neuhaus addressing a conference of “conservative Christian voters for the Republican party”. You see, Neuhaus, born in 1936, one of eight children of a Canadian Lutheran minister, began his career a Lutheran pastor in the poor, predominantly black and Hispanic, Williamsburg se