My first reading of The Gargoyle was an act of determination. Andrew Davidson was a fellow Comparative Literature major during my years at The American University of Paris, and being an aspiring writer myself, I felt compelled to familiarize myself with his work. But in so doing, I experienced the unique privilege of getting to know the author whose book I was reading, and suddenly found it difficult to separate the writer from his story. Andrew appeared to be someone seemingly kind and considerate, but I felt in conversation with him, a dark and crafted undertone. I was never able to reconcile the dis-ease I felt about this at the time, nor could I adequately capture all the ways it mirrored my own internal struggle. As a consequence, in reading The Gargoyle, I felt afflicted with a kind of rage and at times a deep sense of nostalgia for a life I had not led. But more interestingly I found, though writers very often shy from admitting it, Andrew had written himself into his story, his heart was weaved into it, like a trinket from his female lead, a sculptress, Marianne Engel.
I sat down to interview Andrew five years later, having arrived at a point where I could begin to perceive my potential as unfulfilled. The humility of it all put me in a position where I was able to inquire of his work sincerely, and upon reexamination of The Gargoyle a few subtle details stood out to me. Mostly a particular atmosphere, one which at first appeared to have less to do with moral degradation and more so to do with redemption. It was not only the vile nature of the book's protagonist that spoke to me, but the contrast between his physical beauty and his spiritual repugnance that really captured the depth of meaning applied to Andrew’s first Novel, and distinguished it as not only a New York times best seller, but to my view, a fictional biography.