The President’s Angel is the third and last of my angel cycle. Three books, two nonfiction and one novel, were written in a rush of creativity, all on some aspect of the spiritual journey. All three are about the visits of angels and what happens when you’ve seen an angel.
This last little novel came to me both instantly—all in a flash—and slowly, painfully, crawling from my pen, my flesh. And yet, as with the two nonfiction angel books, the writing was also accomplished in a transport of joy.
It was in the mid-eighties, I forget what year. The world was gearing up for Star Wars and anxiety ran high. According to one poll, one-half of the American men under thirty believed an all-out nuclear war would occur within a decade.
A good friend in New York called to urge me to take to the barricades with the other artists in her group. “We’re all marching this weekend against the XYZ Military Installation. You HAVE to come.”
“Oh, Ellie,” I said. “I don’t do that.”
But I felt miserable about my inability to engage, and lying on my bed one afternoon I began to think about the fragile state of the world, and my own inadequacy. I had just finished reading a biography of Padre Pio, the Italian priest who died in Apulia in 1964. He was blessed with stigmata, the bleeding hands of Christ. He performed miracles, could bilocate, and was sainted, years after first publication of this book, in 2002. It was said that whoever prays to Padre Pio will immediately receive that prayer. Lying on my bed that afternoon, I prayed to him and God.
“I wish I could do something,” I prayed wordlessly. “I wish I knew something. I wish that I had some insight into what is happening, and since I cannot demonstrate with the others, that I could be of some help to this poor pretty little suffering world.…” Prayers like that, wordless yearnings.
A sentence came into my head. “It was on the 695th night of his reign that the President saw the angel.” And another: “He awoke from a light and fitful sleep to see the form balancing on the end of his bed.” By then I had reached for the pen by my bed and I was writing furiously. The words were pouring out. I wrote in a kind of delirium for possibly fifteen minutes, came to the end of the chapter, and stopped cold. Nothing. The Muse had fled.
But I read the chapter over in wonderment, feeling its power and knowing that I wanted to know the end of the story, what happened to the President—and knowing too that I had perhaps been given an answer to my prayer.
Then began the slow construction of the tale, and the sense of gnawing at the story. Sometimes it came pouring out of me, thundering from where I had no idea, and sometimes I would wait for days, straining to hear the etheric words that did not come. I don’t mean to sound magical about it. All writers believe their words are sometimes gifts of the Muse, and at the same time the writer works and works, preparing the soil to produce this fruit.
People familiar with my work will recognize two images in this novel. That of the picnic you can find in my novel, Revelations, and the story of the black dog and prayer in Angel Letters. But apart from those two images, this work is entirely its own. Indeed this fact of constantly breaking new ground presents a problem for the publisher—and also for an audience perhaps—that I, the writer, will not be contained by any form, but write novels, nonfiction books, plays, essays, journalism, children’s stories … heedless of the marketplace that slots the writer to a certain form and place and subject and style.
But all my work is similar in having a spiritual as well as a physical dimension, in its hope and joy and love for the courage and idealism of humankind.
Writers have their own jokes. For those people happy enough to have had a classical education, I have hidden a little treasure in this book. It is a game of fox and-hare, a literary Trivial Pursuit, in which the reader may come across a phrase—five words, a line—that rings a bell of recognition. Shakespeare, Gerald Manley Hopkins, John Cheever, Dante, Arthur Miller, Milton, Rilke, Voltaire… See how many you can find. There are twenty such little gold nuggets buried in the text, unmarked. Their presence is of no importance whatsoever; the text makes perfect sense without their recognition. You can read the book straight through and never notice one, and you should feel neither victory nor defeat either way; but for me they act as private, friendly signs, like the smile of a secret lover flashed across a crowded room. So I give them to the literary hound, an extra puzzle to sniff out, or to the casual reader as a kind of valentine. At the end of this e-book you’ll find the answers, something I neglected to do with the earlier editions.
One other change has been made to this e-book, but I doubt if anyone will care. I have changed the name of the newspaper reporter, Jake, to Scotty, because not even I, the author, could keep Jim and Jake apart.
When I finished The President’s Angel, it was met (as were all the other works in this cycle) by my agent’s loud disinterest. Time passed. I had grown discouraged by then. My work was too philosophical. Or too unusual. It didn’t fall into any category or genre by which an agent or publisher could sell the stuff.
No publisher, therefore, saw this little novel, although several of my writing colleagues read, edited, and gave wise comments.
Time passed, and to my surprise I found that many of the things I thought outlandish when writing them, like peace among enemies, have come about.
Is it possible that there are more things, Horatio, than this world dreams of? Are there angels—principalities, powers, virtues, and dominions—governing our nations and political affairs? Mystics say that we should have no doubts.