A Summary of the Plot

*

A novel? A diseased allegory? Here is the plot of "The Ridiculous Knight" with pointers to the chapters.

*

A suburban church has gone into an interim condition -- an emergency wrapped in cotton? -- after the former rector known as "Father Sam" is forced to leave in order to dry out. [ADD DATE POINTER]. The church is fairly well demarcated into insiders and outsiders ("the broken") [DATE]. But in fact the insiders are broken too, and one example is the conflicted character Don [DATE]. He is a youth minister, teacher and gung ho Christian, one who has "washed his hands" like the speaker of Psalm 26. But he breaks down when he accidentally touches a student, not because of what he's done but because of all the things he thinks about and doesn't do. [DATE] He disappears and abandons his apartment and his cat. [DATE]

Meanwhile one of the church's members has been entrusted with church finances -- not a great idea. [DATE] It takes a criminal to spot another, they say, and the only person whose suspicions are aroused is a slightly seedy ex-con named Dave. This man somehow becomes the main character of the "novel" against his will and against anyone's will.

When the de facto leader of the church, a woman named Elise, discovers that Don is missing, she seems to panic and asks Dave to go on a quest of recovery. [DATE] The quest takes him through the allegorical land of his own sexual trauma and self doubt -- no end or bottom to that land! He meets the false Duessa, in fa light from Spenser's Faerie Queene epic, as well as the vicious "Sans" brothers -- without law, without faith, without joy -- and a guardian angel or 2: the asexual girl Elf and the anchoress, who sometimes plays the role of Wisdom as best a mere human can. [DATE]

Dave passes through 3 temptations. He and Elf free Don from some ugly sexual game playing, too mean and futile to be described. [DATE] But Dave becomes emmeshed and re-entangled in his own trauma when the man he rescues kisses him in Christian love. [DATE] And so Dave disappears. [DATE] Someone perhaps Elf may need to go on a brand new quest.

The spiritual reflections that sometimes hide the narrative, and at other times move it along, offer, not an explanation of the story, but the reason that the story is worth telling and living over. No ridiculous knight ever reaches his shelter on earth.

*