There wasn’t a single time, in the week that I devoured this book, where I did not very actively look forward to my next frolic through Keenan’s clouds and meadows of language. Keenan hasn’t really got much sense of pacing or scene craft; most of his writing is a kind of rambling discourse, sometimes of a pseudo-philosophical nature. In the absence of finding any monument, Keenan maintains that his great-aunt began to believe that William was still alive. Freelance journalist Cosmo Landesman spoke to the author about dedicating his book to 'the glory of God', hearing voices during the writing process and why reading for Keenan is all about pleasure and awe. They’re constructed to withstand through multiple generations and centuries, always there for the visits of loved ones, friends, even strangers.

Some of the sentences are pages long, some of the little details turn into pages of falling down a rabbit hole of information (like the idea that Goya should paint what might possibly be on the flag that is planted on the moon if we were to land in a joint world effort and why). Linda Sweeney does a wonderful job explaining the rich history behind one America's most talented artists (at least in my opinion).I loved his playfulness, as when the six Piccirilli brothers (the sons of Italian immigrants who carved Daniel’s art into stone) were rendered solely at the bottom of a page, the top halves of their heads popping up like Kirby. Pictures commemorating beloved dogs, cats or other pets, or wild and larger animals to convey affinity for other living beings. A fixation with the religious architecture of France gives way to a variety of meditations on time and art. Creativity is often kept on a short leash (possibly in part because of the time constraints large publishers place on their artists).

In 2666, Bolaño wrote that reading is as natural as thinking, praying, talking, walking, or listening to music.This beautifully illustrated book fills in many of the details that one would want to know about this talented artist. Almost deliberately off-putting; a self-consciously monumental book by a straight white man, driven by a devout if deeply unorthodox Christianity, suffused with the male gaze and occasionally a colonial one too. And imperfections are very much key to the project; at the live launch for this, Keenan was impassioned on the theme, his conviction a big part of almost convincing me he might have hit on that rarest of things, a theodicy that isn't insultingly stupid. I picked this book up from the library, forgot completely about it, and then was quarantined with it and decided I should give it a try. The novel is divided into sections named after aspects of a cathedral: transept, nave, apse, sedilia.

There is an extensive timeline about Daniel French that provides much additional information about him and his career.

The only possible downside to the book in a library collection is that the black and white cover might make it less likely for a child to pick up. Details about the attention French gave to Lincoln's hands and why they are shaped and positioned as they are will fascinate artists and students of history.

Hell, this is a book where the concluding dramatis personae is the best part of 50 pages long, often spectacularly unhelpful, and yet has to be read because it contains information not previously mentioned. No matter how many times I tell publishers, it is difficult for a librarian or bookseller to hand sell a black and white or sepia cover. Yet the good parts of this book, the parts that are more meditation than narrative, are actually very good, whether they are dealing with pyramids or mortality, Chagall, Ouspensky, Bernini, Saint Anselm, Hans Frank or Arthur Rimbaud – all fleeting presences. The book is at once a bravura exhibition of cross genre-writing; a multi-layered occultist phantasmagoria; a revelation of the "subterranea of the moment, the very scaffolding of reality"; a philosophical investigation into the limits of art and the experience of being in time; and a deeply personal attempt to "turn history into dust" and "rescue the disappeared" .Growing up inAirdrie, a small town about 21 miles outside of Glasgow, Keenan was a self-professed teenage “geek”, obsessed withscience-fiction, Dostoyevsky, Heavy Metal, fanzines, Lester Bangs, Burroughs, Lermontov, Picasso, Tarot Cards and Throbbing Gristle.