Stan Hochman: 2006 Eagles season at center of local writer's novel

MATTHEW QUICK quit his coveted job at Haddonfield High, where he was teaching American literature and film as art to bright, eager kids. Floated down the Amazon, climbed Peru's legendary steps at Machu Picchu, lived in a hut in South Africa, hiked to the snow-carpeted floor of the Grand Canyon.

And then retreated to the concrete basement of his in-laws' home in Holden, Mass., 10, 12 hours at a stretch, the snow piling up outside the backyard door, and wrote a novel, which is what he always wanted to do.

It's called "The Silver Lining Playbook," and it has a kelly-green helmet on the cover, with a silver cumulus cloud where the wings should be, but this is not a football book, even if Quick uses the 2006 Eagles season as a framework for his novel.

Consider yourself warned: Don't judge this book by its cover. It's more cuckoo's nest than Eagles' nest.

"It's about a guy who had a mental breakdown, and that sounds depressing," Quick said the other day. "But it does have a lot of humor in it. It's about a delusional optimist, which makes him an ideal Eagles fan."

It's about a guy named Pat Peoples, who has been sprung from a neural institution by his doting mother. His grumpy father is not thrilled to have Pat back home, frantically trying to recover memories of the last 4 years and stick them back in the script because he thinks his life is a movie. Dad's moods shift with the Eagles' W-L record. Win and he's warm, lose and he's loathsome.

Peoples wears a Hank Baskett jersey, even when he's watching the Eagles on television. Baskett? In 2006?

"Partly because he was a longshot," Quick said with a smile. "The book is about a guy clinging to hope in a delusional way. He'd pick an underdog.

"I had read an article about Hank where he said when he wasn't drafted, he had a coach in high school who told him, 'You get 1 day [to sulk] and then start working on a solution.'

"My initial reaction was, what if my guy's hero was a guy who never played? That would kind of be a joke. Then Hank caught that touchdown and it became this kind of underdog story.

"That whole year, I would just watch him. If he put a good block on somebody, my friends would call me on the phone. Then I got to meet him, we did a signing together, what I suspected was true. He's a phenomenally kind and gracious man."