The first thing that’ll trip you up is the name: Buechner. How on earth do you say it? I once suffered through an entire presentation on Christianity and the arts in which the speaker leaned heavily into the u: “The novels of Frederick Be-you-chner are a great example of Christian art that’s aesthetically excellent.” I was peeved, but Buechner wouldn’t have been. In the entry for “Buechner” in his delightful Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, he confesses, “It is my name. It is pronounced Beekner. If somebody mispronounces it in some foolish way, I have the feeling that what’s foolish is me.” I don’t think it’s pure speculation to suggest that Buechner would have followed this up by pointing out that our Lord has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise.
So what’s foolish about an Ivy League-educated writer who took the literary world by storm with his first novel, A Long Day’s Dying? That’s the kind of success story that makes…
