David Athey

Have you ever wondered what the world looks like to someone whose mind does not connect with the world the way most of us do? "Danny Gospel" is told from the viewpoint of a young man who loves God and his neighbors, but who shows his love in ways that are almost incomprehensible to the people around him. He searches for someone to make him feel loved, yet can't accept love when it's offered.

David Athey's book is disturbing in the way it shows how very much like Danny Gospel we can all be. Read it once just to understand how mental illness affects the mind.… (más)

I finished this title hours ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it – and not in a good way.

This puppy was simply odd. In hindsight, I have absolutely no hesitation in stating the reason I even kept reading it was that there were some powerful images and some extremely artistic writing ability on display in certain parts of this title. It was how those parts were strung together which caused the problem.

Danny Gospel is the middle child of a former Gospel singing group comprised of his family. After experiencing a debilitating series of horrific events, there are indications that Danny may not be with all of his faculties – of course, we also learn that people have been wondering that most of his life. The story line is a meandering narrative of his life experiences with significant events falling out in drips and drabs – with some of them mentioned so casually it forces a re-read to make sure you caught those words correctly (*wait, what just happened?* ). Most of the references are eventually tied together and/or resolved (I did say “most”) but there are just so many of them that it’s a bit trying. Here, off the top of my head, is a litany of what this book is “about”: 9/11, the anthrax mail scare, cancer, mental illness, drug abuse, self mutilation, Palm Beach, friendship, religion, communicating with insects, lust and more.

For me, here is one of the more thought provoking aspects of the book: It is marketed as “Christian Fiction”, and there is no question that religion, prayer, the voice of God, etc. is simply dripping from this book. No problem there. But is there an underlying reason why the character who is living his life making every effort to follow the voice and will of God is the one who everyone thinks is crazy? I will admit, if someone told me they received driving directions from a mosquito, I would think they were pretty whacked, so why is that in this book…twice?

In the end, I ranked it fairly low because en balance, I’m not convinced the literary moments which occurred in this writing (and there were many and some were very powerful) were sufficient to compensate for the time I invested in finishing it.… (más)

Hunting and Gathering Heaven is a thin little book. It is light. Light in weight, obviously, and light in tone. But more significantly, it is light in the sense of being luminous.

The book is sectioned off into three parts—Part I: North; Part II: Kingdom of Florida; Part III: Bliss. Part I begins with “Fishing Minnesota”.

Ten thousand for the tourists,
but Uncle Ned knows
there are twelve thousand
lakes in his state.

Retired from the ore pits,
his good eye glitters
with visions
of a new vocation:

“Gonna catch one fish
from every lake,” he proclaims,
while Aunt Gloria yawns happily,
detached from her hearing aid.

Near death or childhood,
Uncle Ned has been found
singing in his workshop,
polishing lures.

Uncle Ned and Aunt Gloria make several appearances throughout the first half of Part I. Uncle Ned is a great lover of nature, fishing, and life. One could easily consider him both a guardian and a conqueror of the North—as his name, Ned Vincent, claims him to be—and of a particular way of living life without presumption and affectation. In “Genesis, Part Two” he is described as having the laughing, howling face “of a heavenly coyote.”

These poems have something to them which suggests that the world of archetype is working just beneath the surface. But our archetypes here are not grandiloquent. There is fishing, thermal underwear, and a homey old thermos full of coffee—Athey manages all of this without indulging in sentimentality, and because of this, we are not startled to come upon a poem entitled, “Anna Akhmatova”.

This is how I slept,
swaddled in moonlight, walking
on the roof of my father’s house.
Up there, a girl learned—between heaven
and earth there is a tightrope,
not a ladder.

This is how I dreamed,
with tears and grinding teeth,
while the one I loved lingered
on the spector of another
no more lovely than I
but luckier.

This is how I lost
my innocence, like the birch
making love to the sky,
making love to the earth,
with branches and roots.

This is how I married
the man I did not love; I blinked
and there appeared a bright poet
who knew romance
with words, but not with flesh
and blood.

This is how I bled
innocent bystanders, those words,
into the prison cells of paper.
This is how my heart became
a chaplain.

These poems are gripping for all their apparent simplicity. There is constantly the feeling of something not quite seen, but felt and describable only as “mystery”. One could easily argue that it is “mystery” which Athey has made his subject, and the characters, earthy and fantastic, are his supporting cast. But, it is obvious, he loves these characters, too. They are not “merely” secondary any more than you or I are secondary to the meaning of this wild life. These characters, whether fictional or not, are living creatures, eccentric and wise and foolish. One of my favorite poems appears in Part II and is titled, “Phog”.

The strangest man in Florida
is a priest from Scotland
who claims to have lunched with the Queen
Of Heaven, and to have the habit

of mentally undressing
a certain blonde virgin
as she stands before him to receive
Holy Communion.

Father Phog is a redhead who smokes
Marlboros right down to the butts.
He believes UFOs are us: humans
from the future, returning

to harvest healthier genes
from these Good Old Days!
He laughs through his ruddy nose
and slaps the hell out of his thigh.

The other day at the beach,
I asked Father Phog
if he’d ever seen the Loch Ness Monster.
Good Lord, he said, blowing smoke,

I do confess—I’ve had a glimpse or two
of that slithering beast
within.

This poem, falling almost perfectly in the center of the book, sums up the embrace of the contradictions of life which fill Athey’s poems. Life Is. It is all around us, created by the only One Who can claim to be “I AM”. Taking the “Kingdom of Florida” for the pattern, Athey tells us that

There is nothing to do
in this coeval kingdom, but be

drowned, strangled, eaten, or
grown.

It is in Part III that the book becomes most luminous. And yet, for all the mention of souls, heaven, and “godsong”, this is no detached idealism.

He is Tired of Self-Portraits of Artists, Pouting

One simple sonnet
about the white gloves
of a true lover, unpublished
in a nun’s notebook,
turns his crank
immensely.

There is the holy fool of “Love in the Ruins”, the trees “getting naked” in “Above Duluth”, the “Apophatic” theology of a crow, and the almost erotic longing “to know the uknowable” in “Proposition”.

So much of this poetry is simply good poetry, easy to read, and yet inviting one to consider longer for a few or many moments. There is no disdain to these poems, just bliss. And with “Bliss” we will end.

A glass of anything
with a friend who knows
everything you want him to know.

A musty copy
of Don Quixote
savored in an empty cafe.

A true lover
with many secrets
and few regrets.

A steady rain
that does not pour.

A glimpse or two of ever-
lasting glory.… (más)

Danny Gospel is heroic and foolish and struggling to do God's will while being normal and happy. The story he tells is full of all the elements that his grandmother calls up in her history of the Gospel family, especially in having their full share of suffering.

Athey has created a character, Danny Gospel, who lives in a world that most call dreamlike. In fact, some say that he is crazy. His life seems to be a patchwork of one parable after another as he seeks God despite many tragedies that have befallen his family and him personally. At times it can be somewhat difficult to discern when Danny has fallen into a daydream and when he is reporting reality, however, if the reader is prepared to drift along in Danny's world there is a great deal of insight to be found. For instance, one might begin by remembering that "Gospel" means "Good News." Or perhaps one would begin by remembering that Daniel was a prophet who spoke to angels and this character is named Danny. Even if one cares to look no further than the surface there is a great deal to be gleaned about seeking God in our lives from this novel.

One could also look at this as a cautionary tale of those who spend so much time looking for clues to God's plan that they forget the best way to do his will is by living in God's plan. In other words, life is what happens while we are living it ... and most of the time no amount of head scratching can see God's plan as clearly as Danny strives to. I am not criticizing the book or character here but that element spoke quite strongly to me as I have seen several friends put themselves through a considerable amount of mental anguish while trying to "discern." Most of the time it is in the little quirks of life and "happenstance" that God's will for us unfolds and this is something that we can also take from this book.

I must admit that I was so surprised by the ending that I read it three times to make sure I had all the details. I then pondered this book for several days. It is an unusual book that can make me do such a thing. What I concluded was that the author is conveying a story of salvation and redemption, of God's refusal to give up on us, and of the power of love.

I must also mention that in looking around the internet at other reviews I found a certain subset of readers who were baffled and dismayed by Athey's free-flowing style. Perhaps it is the great amount of science fiction that I have read, but being plunged into the midst of a story like this is a familiar experience. I am used to having to float and pick up contextual information while getting one's bearings. It is not that the author does not give us a framework, but that the protagonist is rather free-form in his own life and mind. In any event, if you give it some time then it becomes simple to adjust to it.… (más)