Guest Post, by Dan Wickett: A Sentence About a Sentence I Love

“Could he maybe take a mulligan on being the messiah?”
–From Adam Novy’s The Avian Gospels
So, this comes from Morgan, the seeming messiah-to-be, of Novy’s forthcoming novel (Short Flight/Long Drive Books, a division of Hobart, June 2010), and it simply jumped out at me as something that just about any messiah must feel at one time or another, once realizing that they’re seen as a messiah figure, but also the usage of the word mulligan, which I always associate with a do-over in golf, seemed an extremely interesting, and funny, choice of words to use for that feeling.

Dan Wickett founded the Emerging Writers Network and co-founded Dzanc Books.

John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). His other fiction is published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His nonfiction is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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