He Gets It

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Here’s a nice review of Dreamers & Misfits by fan Mark Stansell. It’s always gratifying to see readers who get what you are trying to accomplish with a book. See, Dreamers & Misfits is not about me, and I’m thrilled that Mark’s takeaway has nothing to do with me:

It’s an easy read and as the book progresses, he intersperses comments from the nearly 700 fan responses, sometimes for pages at a time, which are apropos to the subject of the chapter. While I was genuinely honored to see my own comments included, I thought the most touching were those of Mrs. Laura O, who commented,

“We have Neil’s words engraved on our wedding rings, and we used his words when we can’t find how to say it ourselves, RUSH lyrics are our secret code.”

Some fans were more forthcoming it seems, in their responses, and Hellene includes three full fan profiles interspersed through out the book. There are also several interviews in the appendices, and no book about Rush fans would be complete without an interview with Ms. Donna Halper. However, for me the most interesting was that with an Orthodox bishop, the Metropolitan Tikhon Mollard. I found his comments particularly thoughtful and poignant, especially this:

“Ultimately, I think Neil was searching throughout his life for ‘the real relation, the underlying theme.’ For me, those are found in Christ and the Church but for him they are found elsewhere. But the fact that he was searching for answers to those questions reveal him to be a genuinely human person looking for honesty and integrity, which is what we should all strive for.”

Check out the entire review here, as well as Mark’s excellent tribute to Neil Peart. And of course, check out Dreamers & Misfits here.