Domers by Kevin Coyne
Freeman, Mary Lee
POLISHING THE GOLDEN DONE A Year at Notre Dame Kevin Coyne Mary Lee Freeman In his highly acclaimed A Day in the Night of America (Viking), about high school football in a small Texas town, Kevin...
...A diverse cross-section of students, faculty, and staff is highlighted, and the soon-familiar names and stories allow for an appreciation of the rhythms and events of the academic year...
...Swear on the Dome...
...He didn't miss much...
...Coyne, in addition to being a journalist and free-lance writer, is also the grandson of a "subway alum"-one of the vast array of men and women who have never set foot on the campus of Notre Dame but who are fiercely loyal to her...
...You walk around the lake and look up at the Dome and you tell me the Garden of Eden is that beautiful...
...The dust motes caught in the sun's path were spotlighted in rainbow hues, like the floating stars a fullback sees after taking a sharp hit...
...one student asked a friend as he left...
...The back cover blurb indicates that Coyne had "unprecedented access to every corner of Notre Dame," and indeed it appears as though the only things to which he was not privy were trustees' meetings and investment decisions...
...POLISHING THE GOLDEN DONE A Year at Notre Dame Kevin Coyne Mary Lee Freeman In his highly acclaimed A Day in the Night of America (Viking), about high school football in a small Texas town, Kevin Coyne combined a talent for astute observation of meaningful daily details with a penchant for soppy turns of phrase...
...Promise me...
...Among those whom Coyne follows are Dana Ciacciarelli, an aspiring entomologist...
...Though Coyne handles the Catholicity issue-and others-well, the cotton candy mix of religiosity and hubris tends to overwhelm the palate...
...Steve Sabo, alternative rock DJ...
...Domers is rather like a 352-page version of the thirty-second promo spot one sees during televised football games-but with a journalistic kick...
...Promise," the friend declared, blessing himself...
...But like a lemming to the sea, Coyne is impelled to a certain nostalgic and credibility-straining portrait of the university that he considers "the nearest thing Catholic America has to a capital city...
...Geoff Slevin, her engineering boyfriend...
...Coyne does not comment on the subtleties of the current debate on the state of Catholic higher education...
...And the journalist in him sees no reason to steer clear of contentious faculty meetings and administration building sit-ins...
...It gets to be a bit much...
...I suspect that Domers will discomfit many who love Notre Dame, and further exasperate those who have already had their fill of "high Domer bliss...
...Allowing Coyne to give these tendencies free rein on the 1,250 tradition-laden acres of the campus of the University of Notre Dame has resulted in a book of impressive scope and telling detail, but one also peppered with lines like these: "The morning light slanted into the empty nave through the tall stained glass windows...
...At Coyne's Notre Dame, students engage in "earnest, half-drunk arguments about Saint Thomas Aquinas" at Senior Bar...
...Swear on the Dome...
...and Jimmy Z, campus night cook and "Ultimate Fan...
...Swear to God...
...Even the leaves of campus trees are not immune-they don't just fall, they fall "like sins cast off at confession, signaling the arrival of a long, penitential South Bend winter...
...The often caustic discussions about Catholic character-discussions which were at times quite heated during his year on a campus "that attracts every stripe of Catholic, from severe traditionalists to vow-of-poverty liberals, all of whom, to some degree, expect Notre Dame to reflect their vision of Catholicism"-are recorded...
...His extracurricular talks with the gadfly scientist, the priest author of a memo that sparked an outcry, and presidents past and present, are balanced, frank and, at times, quite fascinating...
...and they toss out saccharine lines with all the aplomb of Father Chuck O'Malley: "Meet me for breakfast...
...Working his way into the nooks and crannies that make up the Notre Dame experience, Coyne acquires an insider's feel for everything from administrative conundrums to the innuendoes and in-jokes of dormitory skits...
...Claire Johnson, ardent prolife activist...
...On a quest to feed his curiousi-ty about the university's mystique, Coyne attended the football games whose telecasts subway alumni never miss, but he then kept his tape rolling long after the NBC cameramen had packed up theirs...
...Corey Babington, rap artist and science-business major...
...Coyne takes the reader to a cleric-led English seminar, a nationally reputed entomology laboratory, women's intramural touch football games, and volunteer tutoring sessions with South Bend gradeschoolers...
...Coyne's keen and sympathetic eye is not unlike that of the master of the nonfic-tion participant-observer genre, Tracy Kidder (House, Among Schoolchildren...
...Father Bill Seetch, dorm rector...
...He stayed around to see Saturday's "Fighting Irish" become the rest of the week's "Domers" (as students call themselves, referring to the landmark golden dome that sits atop the administration building...
...Coyne attended a regular series of faculty meetings called "Conversation on the Catholic Character" and his faithful transcription of snatches of dialogue concerning hiring quotas, Catholic intellectual life, and the mission of the Catholic university are provocative without being sensational...
...their families "leave the Volvos to the Ivies, [because] Notre Dame is a Detroit crowd...
...When Coyne runs out of unfortunate similes and metaphors, there is always night cook Jimmy Z to pick up the slack: "I'm absolutely driven with the idea that this is the only place in the world, that this is the Garden of Eden...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 1
