Star Sightings...sort of

I took the bus to Chicago 3 weeks ago. The trip was long and horrible, but I brought a good book. A great book, actually. This book: Danny Gospel, by David Athey.

I can't put my finger on what exactly makes it so great, which, I'm sure, is what makes it so great. It feels like a stream of consciousness. I actually reveled in the frustrating subtlety. It was beautiful and frenetic and I was never 100% sure what was going on but it was such a fantastic thing. Good books make you happy while you're reading them. Great books make you feel uncomfortable while reading and exultant afterwards. As Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society said, "What is a song? It is a perfectly expressed emotion. It is words that dance. It is a place one returns to again and again, like a rhyme, like a home. It is a cry to heaven. Danny Gospel is a song. David Athey sings it."

Fast-forward three weeks to today. My boss Dave is standing at my office door saying, "You read Danny Gospel, right?" [I nod.] "The author, David Athey, is going to be in today." [My mouth drops.] Dave continues: "Want me to bring him by so you can meet him?" [I nod my head furiously.]

And then, 10 minutes later, David Athey is sitting in the chair across from my desk, asking me about Professor Stepanek from Wheaton's English department. I was simply stunned. He was so friendly and down-to-earth. We talked for a while about Wheaton and my internship at Bethany, and then I mustered the courage to ask about DG. Amazingly, he was willing to talk about it.

"It took me 18 years to write it," Athey said. "I didn't have an outline for this book, I had a character that talks in first person." Athey's novel certainly is an anomaly among other BHP novels. Most are plot-driven (as opposed to character-driven, like Athey's). And most are written in the third person past tense (Athey's is first person). Today in my office, he told me that his writing process was a lot like acting: he allowed this consuming character of Danny Gospel to do the talking, and Athey wrote it down. "Sometimes I would write two pages of dialogue and then realize it wasn't what he would say at all," Athey told me. "So I would get rid of it and try again."

And then, just like that, our conversation ended. "It was such a privilege to meet you, Mr. Athey," I enthused. I truly cannot ever remember being starstruck before. I've stood behind Meg Ryan in a line for the ladies' bathroom. I've screen-tested with Dennis Quaid. I've met Josh Duhamel at an autograph signing. And not until today did I ever get butterflies in my stomach while meeting someone of relative fame.

I think that says more about where my priorities are: that I would hold a novelist/poet/professor in higher esteem than a Hollywood celebrity assures me that I have my English-major head screwed on straight. Thank the Lord that I kept my wits about me enough to actually listen to what Athey was saying, instead of just marveling that he was actually talking to me.

My one regret? Not having my copy of Danny Gospel on hand to have him sign it.

Thank you, David Athey, for being so down-to-earth, for sitting in my little office and telling me about writing your first novel. Thank you for reminding me that writing is my passion.

And now, just because I love the book so much, read the opening lines then go out and buy it.

"We played our first concert by torchlight near the river. Free of charge, our old-fashioned act attracted a crowd to the hymns and spirituals that most people know by heart....We performed free concerts all over Iowa - at fairs, festivals, and churches. And we became so famous that people began forgetting our family name. Everyone started calling us the Gospel Family."