The Gospel According to Danny 2 comments

By Matthew Lickona
Guest Blogger

Matthew Lickona writes for The San Diego Reader and for his blog, Godsbody. He is the author of Swimming with Scapulars. 

Sometimes, a first line is enough. I once picked up a novelty book of first lines, and was inordinately pleased to find the outlandish opening to Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins: “Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?”

Hoo! What a delicious riff on Dante’s, “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward path had been lost.”

What’s in a novel? Sometimes, a first line is enough. But sometimes, you may be asked to play along for a paragraph or three in order to get your bearings. Consider—to choose a carefully selected example—the opening to David Athey’s Danny Gospel:

“We played our first concert by torchlight near the river. Free of charge, our old-fashioned act attracted a crowd to the hymns and spiritiuals that most people know by heart. “Amazing Grace,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Kum Ba Yah,” “I’ll Fly Away”…

“My father, an ex-marine, was a Johnny Cash look-alike. He stood tall yet slumped in a black suit and wailed baritone. I stood next to him and added my ten-year old voice to the cause. Grandmother, in a white Sunday dress, sat on a stool and strummed a sweet guitar. Jonathan wore jeans and a T-shirt and strutted with his banjo, grinning at the girls. Holly, our little tomboy princess, joyfully fiddled an old violin. And Mother, so mythological with her long black hair wisping to the ground, plucked the crowed skyward with her Celtic harp.

“That summer of 1986, 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.”

Beginning at the end: that has got to be one of the neatest literary moves for hinting at the old idea of “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” that I have ever encountered. Totally plausible within the context of the story, and still totally significant to the reader hunting for spiritual resonances.

Athey is a man who knows his way around a symbol. He keeps it up throughout the story, and mostly, he keeps it up in the same homespun, natural fashion. The story is set (mostly) in Iowa and Florida, and swine and fish and St. Bernards are all allowed to take on spiritual —and in some cases, Biblical—significance, all without breaking stride from the relating of everyday events.

(As I said—mostly. Our protagonist’s encounter with the kingfish—hello!—does veer into magical realism, as does his experience with a navigational mosquito. But I found myself cheerfully playing along—a mosquito! In the hospital where his mother lays dying, Danny Gospel reads about the pests in Clean Country Living. The article includes this line about “the miraculous life of insects:” “Our blood makes her babies.” Suffering—bloody suffering—bearing fruit.)

But getting back to the beginning. “The hymns and spirituals that most people know by heart” are here restored to their original state: instead of languishing as sweet melodies blunted by familiarity, they matter. Aside from (and above) his stated aim of living “a normal life,” Danny Gospel’s great goal is to write a proper spiritual in the line of “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?”—as soon as he’s suffered enough. And when Danny’s father is gripped by hardheartedness, his children join in signing to him: “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, Standing in need of prayer.” It reads not as a sermon, but as a plea, and it’s powerful.

That covers paragraphs one and three. Paragraph two tells you plenty about the character of the writing—and the character of the characters. First, strong verbs: “strummed,” “strutted,” “grinning,” “wisping,” “plucked.” Second, careful description: Dad is “tall yet slumped” —a strong man bent by the way of the world. Brother Jonathan is the showman, the guy who Gets the Girl. Danny, meanwhile, gets the weakest, most invisible sentence of the bunch: “I stood next to him and added my ten-year old voice to the cause.” Our hero is self-effacing, unaware of what significance he might possess. Third, the occasional stylistic flutter, shining out from a soul that loves language: “Mother, so mythological...plucked the crowd skyward with her Celtic harp.”

Danny Gospel is as alienated as Percy’s Dr. Tom More ever was, only he doesn’t talk about it. He just keeps singing about heaven, literally and otherwise, even as he crashes into the earth and all its bleary, blinding complications.

(Full disclosure: I have of late begun a correspondence with Athey. Readers of this blog may recall that I once went back and forth with Greg Wolfe on the subject of Catholic fiction, a subject dear to my heart. So it was with not a little interest that I took up this novel, written by a Catholic, published by a Christian house, and striving to tread that fine line between worlds seen and unseen. If there is a conversation to be had about contemporary Catholic fiction, Danny Gospel seems to me a fruitful addition to the mix.)