Faith and bad taste
Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is the bad idea that inspired the even worse idea Vampire: The Requiem, which as far as I can tell is the latest incarnation of what used to be called "Vampire: The Masquerade" when I last worked for a retail seller of games and game-related merchandise. Probably you are most familiar with the film incarnation. The tenth novel in Rice's series was released in 2003, and loyal fans have been waiting with concern for the usually one-novel-a-year writer to publish again.
Apparently the renowned author had a spiritual conversion in 1998 (around the time I stopped working for the game store and so lost my tenuous connections to the goth community of West Lafayette, IN). Having returned to the Roman Catholic Church, Rice tells Newsweek, "I promised that from now on I would write only for the Lord." Her new project, due out soon, is called Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. It is meant to be the first in a series of novels chronicling the life of our Lord and savior from the first-person perspective.
No one will doubt that such an undertaking would be tremendously difficult to pull off, but it seems to me that "critics" such as Newsweek's David Gates misunderstand the nature of the problem. We are told that Rice engaged in a tremendous amount of research "to render such a hero and his world believable." Rice admits, "There were times when I thought I couldn't do it." However, "The advance notices say she's pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews' starred rave pronounces her Jesus 'fully believable.'"
I want to say more about what I think is the problem with writing such a novel, but it would be hard to do in the abstract and I have not read (and will not read) the actual thing so as to be in a better position to criticize its particularities. I think "hubris" might be an appropriate word, but I will not use it. Really, I just wanted to point out the irony in supposing that Jesus might not be a believable character. I know there is something of a contradiction in the idea of a person who is both human, with human limitations, and divine, which we might take to mean without (at least some, and in the Christian theological tradition all) human limitations. Nevertheless, anyone who denies that Jesus is believable is a fool.
Apparently the renowned author had a spiritual conversion in 1998 (around the time I stopped working for the game store and so lost my tenuous connections to the goth community of West Lafayette, IN). Having returned to the Roman Catholic Church, Rice tells Newsweek, "I promised that from now on I would write only for the Lord." Her new project, due out soon, is called Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. It is meant to be the first in a series of novels chronicling the life of our Lord and savior from the first-person perspective.
No one will doubt that such an undertaking would be tremendously difficult to pull off, but it seems to me that "critics" such as Newsweek's David Gates misunderstand the nature of the problem. We are told that Rice engaged in a tremendous amount of research "to render such a hero and his world believable." Rice admits, "There were times when I thought I couldn't do it." However, "The advance notices say she's pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews' starred rave pronounces her Jesus 'fully believable.'"
I want to say more about what I think is the problem with writing such a novel, but it would be hard to do in the abstract and I have not read (and will not read) the actual thing so as to be in a better position to criticize its particularities. I think "hubris" might be an appropriate word, but I will not use it. Really, I just wanted to point out the irony in supposing that Jesus might not be a believable character. I know there is something of a contradiction in the idea of a person who is both human, with human limitations, and divine, which we might take to mean without (at least some, and in the Christian theological tradition all) human limitations. Nevertheless, anyone who denies that Jesus is believable is a fool.
posted by gregates at 12:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home