In an interview for Image magazine in 1997, I asked Hassler about the origin of his Catholic worldview. He responded, \u201cI\u2019m indebted to those first few grades in parochial school for teaching me that everything in life is connected.\u201d\u009d A bit later he added, \u201cI guess maybe I see life as a whole.\u201d\u009d It is part of Hassler\u2019s gift, throughout his career, to see life as a whole, juxtaposing events and characters, thus yielding new meanings and interrelationships, making the entire work appear to fly. In a word, Hassler\u2019s style is not \u201cmagic realism\u201d\u009d but realism magically transformed.<\/p>\n
Again and again Hassler transforms the banality of evil into Flannery O\u2019Connor-type characters and events. A crazed woman kills a burnt-out teacher; a brilliant teacher stricken by multiple sclerosis turns psychotic in his despondency; an unloved juvenile delinquent is crushed beneath a walk-in cooler like the Wicked Witch beneath Dorothy\u2019s Kansas cottage. But like St. Augustine, who speaks of God\u2019s love treating \u201ceach of us as an only child,\u201d\u009d Hassler (who includes many only children in his fiction) treats every character in that way. Jon Hassler discovers God\u2019s presence in everyday life, as his novels throw a grace-filled light upon caring teachers, open-hearted wives and lovers, priests and spinsters\u201d\u201dand a latchkey child who responds to an old man\u2019s need for friendship and for love.<\/p>\n