The Devil and Daniel Silverman

by Theodore Roszak

Overview

Danny Silverman’s first novel reached #10 on the New York Times best-seller list, but that was 20 years ago. Now middle-aged, he and his partner, Martin, an African-American actor, are getting by on the residuals from Martin’s cancelled TV cop series when Danny gets an offer he can’t refuse: a speaking gig in a Minnesota bible college that will net him a small fortune. 

Why me? Silverman wonders, but he’ll take the money and run. What can happen? Only a record-breaking snowstorm that traps him under the same roof as the evangelical Christian faculty who see this Jewish homosexual writer from San Francisco as the incarnation of the anti-Christ. Forced to defend all he believes in—sexual equality, human rights, same-sex marriage; dancing! vodka! coffee!—Silverman finds himself on the front lines of the culture wars dividing the nation today.

Best known as a social historian, Theodore Roszak is also the author of cult-status novels such as Flicker, a Hollywood horror satire, and The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, a sensual retelling of the gothic classic. 

Here Roszak brings us a hilarious novel of politics and ideas in which the battle for the moral heart of America is waged between a college full of scripture-spouting fundamentalists and one gay humanist who thinks they’re full of crap.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780979641565
Publisher:	Leapfrog Press
Publication date:	01/01/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	416 KB

About the Author

Theodore Roszak was a professor of history at California State University, Hayward. The author of 18 books, including the international bestseller The Making of a Counter Culture, he has twice been nominated for the National Book Award. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s. The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (Random House) received The James Tiptree Award for "literature that expands our understanding of gender."

Table of Contents

	12K Net to You	13
	Number One Bestseller	20
	The Whole World Isn't San Francisco	36
	Our Glass Nose	46
	Breakfast with Richard and Syl	57
	When Your Peewee Is All Wrong	70
	The Ambassador from Sin City	94
	The Matriarch	108
	Which Holocaust Did You Have in Mind?	116
	The Blue Tattoo	125
	A Good Word for the Monkeys	132
	Video Nirvana	148
	They Hate Jumanistic Hews	156
	Male and Female Created He Them	173
	The Mad Bomber	187
	The Troubled Pilgrim	203
	Concerning the Reality of Satan	211
	The Underworld	219
	The North Fork Gay and Lesbian Alliance	234
	Murdering Mrs. Bloore	257
	The Voice of the Devil	269
	Blood	283
	Quarantine	292
	Arm Us, O Lord, Against the Enemy	300
	World to Come	311
	"Brilliant--The New York Times"	318

Editorial Reviews

Roszak has already demonstrated his remarkable scope, moving easily between the bestselling social history The Making of a Counter Culture and graceful novels such as Flicker and The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein. His latest novel is a very funny satire with wisdom at its heart. Danny Silverman was once a promising fiction writer. His first book rose as high as No. 10 on the New York Times bestseller list, but he has since ebbed into middle-aged mediocrity. Then one day he receives a tantalizing offer: a tidy sum for a single speaking engagement at a Minnesota bible college, whose simple name does little to reflect the fundamentalist dogma of its administrators, the Free Reformed Evangelical Brethren in Christ. Danny is Jewish, and gay, but it's hard to walk away from the money. So he flies to Minnesota, where he's promptly trapped by a snowfall that leaves him at the mercy of the college's bible-thumping faculty, who force him during the course of his interment to defend his humanist position on everything from the Holocaust to dancing and drinking. Roszak has a delightful ear for dialogue, which he employs to great effect. It's fun to watch Silverman's politesse dissolve into sarcasm, then acrid disbelief, when confronted with his conservative captors.

Kevin Greenberg