A Good Catholic Boy

​Savannah is known for its writers. We have two Pulitzer Prize winners Conrad Aiken for poetry and James Alan Macpherson for short stories. We also have the Queen of Southern writers Flannery O’Connor and the founder of the writing clubs Zona Rosa also known as acclaimed writer Rosemary Daniell. We have New York Times religious bestseller writer Bruce Feiler and of course Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil written by John Berendt. Then there was Chris Fuhrman born in Savannah New Year’s Day in 1960. Chris Fuhrman graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and earned his master's degree from Columbia University. His one book The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys was his debut and only novel. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys was published posthumously in 1994. It opened to great praise and would be made into a movie by Jodie Foster. He was thirty when he wrote the novel and that was the year he died of cancer.

The story is a coming of age story of three boys who attended Catholic School here in Savannah in the early 1970s. Francis Doyle, Tim Sullivan, and their three closest friends are altar boys at Blessed Heart Catholic Church and eighth-grade classmates at the parish school. They are creative students who love a good prank and find adults a bit humorous. They write a comic book called Sodom vs. Gomorrah '74. The comic book depicts Blessed Heart's nuns and priests breaking the Seventh Commandment. But much to their dismay the comic falls into the hands of the principal. The gang conspire to create a diversion grand enough to make everyone forget their comic and thus avoid the parents’ and principal’s wrath. And from there the story takes all sorts of hilarious twist and turns while they continue their school day routine and the initiatory rites of male adolescence.

The cover of the book looks like a comic book a lifelong passion of Fuhrman. But the content inside is poignant prose. It was made into a movie with Jodie Foster and Emile Hirsch as stars. The characters’ thoughts are sometimes portrayed by animation by noted animator Todd Macfarlane to emphasize the juvenile and creative thinking of the characters. It was an independent movie that Rotten Tomatoes critics rated at 77%. The New York Times called it a "bracingly truthful" coming-of-age film from the directorial debut of Peter Care. In 2002, the film and director Care won the award for Best New Filmmaker from the Boston Society of Film Critics. In 2003, the film won for Best First Feature. The film was not able to be made in Savannah at the Catholic locales because of its controversial nature. It would also not premiere in Savannah for what one presumes were similar reasons.
​
The book is still in print over twenty years after its first printing. It is considered by many as a coming of age cult classic. It is a good read and leaves you wondering what other stories lay within such a fertile mind. Fuhrman died On May 01, 1991. His funeral service was held at the Oatland Island Education Center. He stands today as one of Savannah’s lesser literary lights.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

---