David Schickler’s fiction first made a splash in 2000, when The New Yorker published his story “The Smoker,†which led to a collection called “Kissing in Manhattan.†His new book, “The Dark Path,†is a memoir about his desire as a young man to become a Catholic priest. The book recounts his struggle between serving God and being with women; between trying to communicate with a higher power and giving up out of frustration. In a recent e-mail interview, Mr. Schickler discussed the demands of celibacy, his experience with the inappropriate behavior of a priest, why he prays and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:
Why did you decide to write a memoir at this point in your career? Is it something you had always thought of doing while you were writing fiction?
Whether I’m working on fiction or nonfiction, I have to feel obsession, dread and excitement to write a book. I just felt that my 18th to 25th years made a good, suspenseful story: a young man in love with God (the Catholic priesthood) on one hand and women on the other; a man torn between the two. I made big blunders in my prayer life, professional life and sex life in those years, and blunders are fun for readers to witness. Those were the seven years of my life that seemed about as colorful as anything I could dream up as fiction, so I wrote the truth and just structured it like a novel.
Do you have any regrets now about not becoming a Catholic priest?
No. I have known some wonderful Catholic priests who honestly seem to have callings to celibacy and who seem impressively at peace with it. But for me to have become celibate for life would have been to become half-human.
You write of the special feeling you had about a wooded area during your childhood: “Sometimes I want someone else to see what I see. Other times I want to be the only one.†How much did or does spirituality mean to you as a private experience versus a communal one?
The communal versus the private: I hope I’m not comparing my spiritual experiences to those of Christ’s too much when I say that I totally understand his bone-deep love of other people’s company but also his frequent need to get the hell away from everyone. Even if I just take Christ as a story character, I’m amazed at how generously attuned he always is to those around him (especially to their sufferings), while at the same time he always seems a man apart, a man aching to be alone in the literal desert and also the desert inside himself where only God can find him. That duality is a model for my daily spiritual life.
You were briefly touched in an inappropriate way by a priest when you were in college. Looking back, what role did that play in your crisis of faith?
Yes, a priest I knew well grabbed my [rear] one time when I was in his apartment, and it was an upsetting breach of trust when he did. It would dishonor those who have been truly sexually abused by clergy for me to make too much of what happened to me (i.e., I wasn’t naked and his brief advance seemed more exploratory than downright predatory).
I can say this, though: it disturbed me most because when it happened I thought: There are no women in this room. Something intimate was on the verge of occurring, yet it seemed to be happening in a sterile vacuum, a space not meant for intimacy. In my experience a Catholic priest’s living quarters rarely feels like a home. It often feels like a way station or hotel room because it’s not really his. He doesn’t own it, the Church does, just as he doesn’t own his time, the Church does, just as (in the intimate sense) he doesn’t even own his own body: God does. Well, when that priest grabbed me, I suddenly and jarringly felt like I belonged somewhere else, with a woman, either in a bed with her, or maybe at a bar, leaning close to catch her laughter.
Were you worried about that priest being identifiable to certain readers?
Not really. Out of respect, especially for the Jesuits, I changed that priest’s physical attributes and name and the nationality of his last name and everything I could think of. Even my closest friends from Georgetown wouldn’t necessarily know to whom I was referring.
Are you still in touch with any of the priests you knew when you were younger?
Somewhat. The book is partially dedicated to Larry Wroblewski, a Jesuit who was my first, best writing teacher. He had an earthy sense of humor and he loved earthy, gripping fiction. He died years ago, but I still know several priests who share Larry’s grounded, genial take on life. True Jesuits are never pessimists, and I like them for that.
Martha Schickler David SchicklerHow regularly do you attend church now?
I go to Mass on Sundays and very occasionally during the week.
How do you approach religion with your two children? Would you be disappointed if they became nonbelievers? Relieved?
My wife is a Protestant. Our two children go to Catholic grammar school. We all go to Mass together semi-regularly, though I myself go alone each week if we don’t go as a family.
I love and have too many friends who are very good people and who are Protestant, Jewish, agnostic (the whole gamut, really) for me to declare that I’d be disappointed if my children became nonbelievers as adults.
I mostly just play with them right now and love them and help them with homework, but when it comes to touching on religion, I try gently to share with them what I believe is one of the deepest truths of Christianity, which is that all of us live in poverty somehow, whether in actual physical need or emotional desolation or spiritual brokenness.
Do you still pray? And if you do, what function does it serve in your life?
I pray daily. Prayer is my method for being as searingly frank with myself and with God as I possibly can be about my talents, loves, sins and shortcomings. But prayer for me is not about self-help or self-advancement. I don’t feel when I pray that I am improving. For me, prayer is just utter candor, the effort to start clean in your day and not lie to yourself, ever.
