The Apocalypse Is Coming To San Pedro...

I await the jury’s decision on my novel, The Accidental Jesus, in the competition for the Roma International prize for literary fiction. It's dedicated to Pope Francis.

The apocalypse is coming to San Pedro...much as St. Peter prophesied. Another conflagration in the city of LA, known for its infernos, real and literary. Will the next Messiah be far behind?

Short Description: “Despite misgivings, a man returns to his hometown of San Pedro, California, to attend a high school reunion. A former missionary now struggling with his faith, he finds himself in a different kind of struggle courtesy of an uncanny resemblance to Jesus himself as he’s besieged by townspeople and former classmates who variously wish to worship, seduce, or kill him.”

Europe Books is proud to present “THE ACCIDENTAL JESUS”, a book by John O’Kane

Today we talk about THE ACCIDENTAL JESUS, a book by John O’Kane forthcoming from Europe Books.

Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author John O’Kane to get to know him better, what was the moment that brought him to the writing of his book THE ACCIDENTAL JESUS, as well as how he chose the title of his book.

Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!

• What is the moment that brought you to the writing of your book?

There was no one moment that brought me to the writing of The Accidental Jesus. I grew up Catholic but drifted away. Actually, I was kicked off the altar boys for being late for Mass and sipping the wine! Plus, I got a divorce, at that time a serious infraction. A friend encouraged me to come back some years ago, inviting me to Masses at her parish. I had issues with the doctrine and had considered writing a version of St. Augustine’s Confessions for some time, given my deviations. She got me an email address for Pope John Paul II and I started sending drafts to him. His people were excited, even encouraged me to come to the Vatican. I sent the final version, “Snookered Calculus,” twenty minutes before he passed on April 2nd, 2005. After many further revisions, this essay was published about a year ago. The catalyst that started me writing the novel was the experience at my high school reunion. I witnessed many changes in my fellow grads, so I created a fictional version of these changes and weaved it together with a narrative about my own struggles with the Catholic faith that had been dormant since my interchanges with the Vatican. I penned versions of early chapters on Huffpost.com, titled The Glory Days. This title is from Bruce Springsteen’s song in which he lyricizes about the changes he witnessed at his own high school reunion.

• What is the message you want to communicate to your readers?

Dear readers, I want you to understand that while this book appears to be a fairly straightforward if comical yarn about a character struggling with his faith, his religious identity, it contains subtexts and tangents that support the main drift of the story while being meaningful stories in themselves. This makes it difficult to fit the book into one category. There’s the Liberation Theology story that challenges mainstream Catholicism. There’s the apocalypse story in the final section, influenced by St’ Peter’s writings. There’s the high-tech story about the scientific search for the proof of God’s existence. There’s the story of the Gaffey Street Prayer Group that stalks the main character, believing he’s the returning Messiah. There’s the bar scene with a character modeled on Charles Bukowski. There’s the rebellious cult that occupies the local Church to draw attention to Christianity’s underground origins, the flares of Magical Realism that give the story an otherworldly dimension, and the borrowings from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra to give the main character mythic status.

• How did you choose the title of your book?

I am ecstatic about The Accidental Jesus being published. I started writing it fifteen years ago on a whim. Having already published a significant amount of non-fiction, a friend suggested I should try fiction. I published my first effort in a magazine under a made-up name. The positive responses it received propelled me forward, but I dropped the project several times since then. When I finally proceeded in earnest to finalize it, I took ill. This set me back several months. Then my editor, Dan Marcus, took ill as well. So the anticipation has been building for some time. These gaps actually gave me the opportunity to advance it onto a higher level. I owe a great deal to the good folks at Europa, their patience in letting me turn my manuscript into what I envisioned. And when all is said and done, it’s been my great honor to dedicate The Accidental Jesus to Pope Francis.

• How did it feel to see your book published?

The title of the book went through several changes. This is mostly due to the delays in finalizing the book over an extended period of time which I explained above. The first title I had in mind was The Glory Days. In fact. I serialized the first few chapters with this title on Huffpost.com. But at this point I had yet to think through the full story. And during the subsequent time lapses, as explained above, I shifted my focus from a mere reunion at a Catholic high school, a nostalgic reminiscence about coming of age, to a larger theme about coming to terms with one’s path in life, spiritual and otherwise. As my main character evolved, I realized that he was drawing unwanted attention for his resemblance to the historical Jesus, at least the way his image is generally portrayed in Western culture. So, I pondered the ordinary elements of his life and how the protagonist of my book could morph into a higher being, consistent with the nature of the historical Jesus. Even the unlikeliest circumstances can force an ordinary person to become someone he never thought possible. Hence, the “accidental” Jesus.

• Are you working on a new writing project you can tell us about?

My new project and recent works in progress are also fiction, unlike my first five books which primarily consist of literary journalism and op-ed collections. Two collections of short stories preceded The Accidental Jesus. I have another story collection circulating, Jukebox Confessionals, and a novel as well, The Easy Rider Fan Club. Also, I am currently hard at work completing Altz House. It is a novel about an experimental nursing home—benevolently Orwellian—for aging creative people, bohemians with Alzheimer’s. It exposes this facility’s attempts to retrieve the residents’ memories through various therapies and age-reversing medications and how the chaotic results require intrusive surgical techniques to stabilize the community. In Notes from Aboveground, I reimagine Dostoevsky’s 1864 classic, showing how some of his existentialist ideas still resonate in the culture of these times.

https://www.europebooks.blog/europe-books-is-proud-to-present-the-accidental-jesus-a-book-by-john-okane/