Last week I ended my review of Danny Gospel with the following comment:
«I would also note: a novel about a "holy fool," a Dan Quixote, necessarily presents a problematic understanding of faith, which doesn't do justice to the "grandeur of reason." The task of a reviewer, however, is to evaluate how well a book accomplishes its aim, and not to argue that a different story should have been written. I'm saving the argument for next week.»When I posted my review, I wanted to answer the question: should I buy this book? Will I enjoy this book? Will this book deepen my appreciation for the drama of life? My answer, then as now is yes. What follows here is critical response to the story. There are spoilers below, but mostly this post presumes a reader who is familiar with the book.
A subjective point of view
The story strains to hew closely to Danny's point of view, although there are points where a third person narrator could have increased the depth and credibility of the story by validating (or contradicting) things told by Danny that the reader must accept on blind faith. How Danny's sister Holly died (around p157) is one of those things. Danny retells the story he heard from his father, but with a crispness of detail that he never saw. And when the narrator is unreliable — a man made crazy by grief — it's too much for the reader to accept on blind faith. The single point of view also makes irony difficult if not impossible. I think of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in which Chaucer is also a character and the narrator of the story. But Chaucer the narrator is sincere enough to convey the objective details that Chaucer the author wants us to know even if the narrator is naive and lacking in judgment. In this case, however, Danny's subjectivity blurs with the objective story. And without an objective foothold, the reader wonders at points if the whole story is a dream, if anything is real.
Danny's friend Grease playing Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, and the women Plain Jane and Melissa in Iowa, moderate the subjectivity of the story significantly. These characters demonstrate to us that despite Danny's intense preoccupation with the past and with his own subjectivity, he still lives in a real, objective world. In the section set in Florida, however, everything becomes quite fantastic and surreal. No longer employed, Danny spends all of his time writing his life story. Although this section serves an important narrative function, I almost think that Danny has already flown from reality.
An Unreasonable Faith
Danny wants intensely to live in a sacramental world, a world in which everything is filled with meaning. Because of this desire, he naively identifies the movements of the world with his own intentions. He follows smoke on the wind, a flock of birds, a crow, and mosquitoes taking them for roadmarks toward his quest. While it's true that every leaf on every tree in the world has a meaning, that meaning is greater than what can be conceived. Danny tells us: "I don't want to be superstitious or deceived in any way" (53), but I'm not so sure. For Danny, faith is less about trusting someone you know and have a history with and more about a personal decision to trust no matter what.
Faith is defined in the story by Pastor Gordon, who once taught Danny and two brothers in an extracurricular "Class for Christian Farmers" (162). When the two brothers begin to fight, Pastor Gordon takes everyone outside for a lesson in faith. His lesson is to close his eyes and allow the two boys to lead him around: a trust walk. While the boys verge on harming the pastor, Danny must stand and watch. Such faith presupposes absence, the absence of the one believed in. It is a faith that embraces suffering and deceit as tests for a will that is determined to remain faithful amid contradiction.
Sacramentality?
Sacramental has become a vague word of praise in literary criticism. In general it seems to describe works that look to the natural world as epiphanies of the divine (e.g. Galway Kinnell). The Christian sense of the word, sacrament, is much more intensely specific. Sacrament means the clear, definitive sign of God's becoming man in Christ. Sacramental refers to the way all things in the world have become magnetized to their Creator through this incarnation. In Flannery O'Connor's story "The Temple of the Holy Ghost," the sun is a bloody host even if the nun or the girl don't recognize it. And when the girl is being hugged by the nun, the girl's face is mashed into the crucifix: the cross is imposed on her, even if she doesn't understand what it means. In other words, sacramentality is something objective. It's the texture of a world comes forth from the Creator's hand at every moment of its existence. And yes, it's better for us to recognize this Creator in His works, but all does not stand or fall depending upon our interpretations and narratives about what happens. A sacramental view means seeing things as signs, not replacing things with interpretations.
The Cross: folly or wisdom?
Among other things, this book attempts to answer the religious violence of September 11, 2001 with the what St. Paul calls the folly of the cross. The terrorists inflicted suffering, but Danny embraces suffering. Although this embrace of the cross is valuable, I would have also appreciated some recognition of the deeper reasonableness of the incarnate Logos, or what C.S. Lewis's Aslan calls "the deeper magic." The result is a personal response to 9/11 — but a fragile one because based in the individual will of the believer.
Another response to terrorism and anarchy is below:
«The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.»Pope Benedict XVI
September 12, 2006, Regensburg
This challenge to broaden reason with experience is the challenge of our times, and not just for universities and theologians, but also for novelists, poets, salespeople, parents — in short, every person whether baptised or not. Reason has become flesh and dwells with us: how then can we answer one foolishness with another?
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