Divine Madness

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot ... will be shot.                                                         --Mark Twain

Divine Madness is a true tragicomedy, blending a humorous satire of religion and philosophy with a tragic love story. The title is taken from Plato's Theia Mania, the divine madness of poets, prophets, and seers. Joseph Colocento lost his fiancée, Mary Malin, in a car accident just before college graduation. He no longer believed in God, yet for years and years after the accident he couldn't stop blaming the God of his Catholic youth. Then finally the real God appeared to him, a God too big for any one religion, a God too big in fact for any one universe, a God who is not at odds with our current understanding of the vastness of our universe, as well as the infinity beyond it, a God who tells Joseph, "Heaven is not the end of your journey, it's the maternity ward."

The author graduated from Princeton with a BA in theoretical psychology, but claims to be a "hay fever" admit. That's when the dean of admission throws an application onto the reject pile, but sneezes and blows it onto the acceptance pile. He's retired with too many hobbies already, so he doesn't know what put the ridiculous idea in his head not long ago to start writing a novel. He said that while he felt like a Ouija board at times--the novel seemed to just speak itself into existence, that may be a symptom of some other ailment.