On July 14, 1966, John Bellairs sent an application to Robert Blackburn, the then Dean of Faculty of Shimer College. The administration took immediate interest and invited Bellairs to Mount Carroll for a tour of campus on July 27. The next day Bellairs received a letter from Shimer President Joseph Mullin offering him an appointment as a full-time member of the college faculty for the academic year 1966-67. Bellairs accepted the position - $6500 per year to teach in the Humanities and serve as Faculty Counselor in one of the men's dormitories - and began receiving information regarding the college over the next few weeks. In one such letter, dated August 25, President Mullin outlined the changes in the faculty and city to the incoming faculty and staff.
Elsewhere...it had been a year since the Fitschens had surprised John with their decision to submit the short story about St. Fidgeta to the Critic. During this time the tiny saint's appearance in print produced a great uproar from adulating praise to canceled subscriptions. In the midst of the laughter and threats came interest from Macmillan Publishing Company. An editor, Elizabeth Bartelme, had gotten in touch with Bellairs and asked if he would be interested in composing an additional ten or so stories that, along with the original piece on Fidgeta, would be published in one volume. Marilyn would be along for the ride as well, asked to supply additional illustrations for each chapter. An oral agreement was made shortly thereafter with official contracts arriving in September of 1965 for the production of The Grand Central Schism and Other Parodies for Catholics.
For the next few months, everyone was under pressure: John would write, Marilyn would draw and Dale would edit, including making suggestions for an unpublished thirteenth chapter. The text, long presumed lost, would have included a conversation between Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and a number of other greats chatting away in Heaven's Golden Calf Inn that was scrapped by Bellairs when Bartelme suggested some changes.
"Some deletions of poor material, like the insults between characters, were clunky, and at the very least, the book needed a good finale," notes Dale Fitschen. "It didn't please him I agreed about these revisions. He didn't receive criticism of his writing gladly and abhorred a rewrite." As a result, Bellairs crabbed about the decision for years.
The first copies of the end result, St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies, arrived in June, 1966. To celebrate, the administration of the College of St. Teresa's welcomed Bellairs back to campus - along with the Fitschens - for a party celebrating the release of the book. Others reviews were outstanding and fantastic, Marilyn recalls: from the New York Times to the Christian Science Monitor, and many other Catholic papers. Kroch & Brentanos in downtown Chicago had a prominent display of the book on a table across from the other religious satire hit of season, Games Protestants Play.
The book went on to sell 30,000 copies through three printings, though never appearing in paperback. Whether Bellairs knew it or not, the book was a hit around the world: Marilyn notes a story that a copy was found in an abandoned missionary cottage on an island off the coast of Borneo twenty years after it was published. She also met a nun who was a dean at a Catholic college in Montreal who, with other nun-faculty, would sit around at night reading the book aloud and laughing until tears came.
"I personally believe, right or wrong, that Fidgeta opened a small floodgate that led to many other little inside religious satirical works, Protestant, Epicopal, as well as Catholic," adds Dale. "Titles such as Do Patent Leather Shoes Reflect Up, Late Night Catechism, which still runs in Chicago and elsewhere, and Nunsense, among others."
Self-proclaiming himself as the "famous author," Bellairs arrived in Mount Carroll, where the book had created a great deal of buzz on the Shimer College campus. During his first months on campus Bellairs was subject to book signings and speeches, even reading portions of the book that October at a weekly gathering on campus, thereby increasing his popularity with students who were not in his classes.
