http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9785289/site/newsweek/ The Gospel According to Anne The queen of the occult has been gone awhile. What's Anne Rice been up to? Getting healthy, finding God—and writing her most daring book yet. By David Gates Newsweek Oct. 31, 2005 issue - Sometimes Anne Rice won't leave her bedroom for days on end—and neither would you. Glass doors open onto a terrace that looks over the red-tiled roofs of La Jolla, Calif., to the Pacific Ocean. A live-in staffer brings meals to the table at the foot of her ornately carved wooden bed, which faces an ornately carved stone fireplace. She exercises in a huge bike-in closet. She's got two computers and enough books to last her a year. Splendid isolation? Splendid, sure. But she's often got family visiting in a downstairs guest suite, she reads The New York Times every morning—"Nicholas Kristof is a hero to me"—watches news "till I can't stand it anymore," and spends up to an hour and a half a day e-mailing with her extraordinarily faithful readers. They've been worried about her. After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn't published a book since 2003's "Blood Chronicle," the tenth volume of her best-selling vampire series. They may have heard she came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18. They surely knew that Stan Rice, her husband of 41 years, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And though she'd moved out of their longtime home in New Orleans more than a year before Hurricane Katrina, she still has property there—and the deep emotional connection that led her to make the city the setting for such novels as "Interview With the Vampire." What's up with her? "For the last six months," she says, "people have been sending e-mails saying, 'What are you doing next?' And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'." We'll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again. Meeting the still youthful-looking Rice, you'd never suspect she'd been ill—except that on a warm October afternoon she's chilly enough to have a fire blazing. And if you were expecting Morticia Addams with a strange new light in her eyes, forget it. "We make good coffee," she says, beckoning you to where a silver pot sits on the white tablecloth. "We're from New Orleans." Rice knows "Out of Egypt" and its projected sequels—three, she thinks—could alienate her following; as she writes in the afterword, "I was ready to do violence to my career." But she sees a continuity with her old books, whose compulsive, conscience-stricken evildoers reflect her long spiritual unease. "I mean, I was in despair." In that afterword she calls Christ "the ultimate supernatural hero ... the ultimate immortal of them all." To render such a hero and his world believable, she immersed herself not only in Scripture, but in first-century histories and New Testament scholarship—some of which she found disturbingly skeptical. "Even Hitler scholarship usually allows Hitler a certain amount of power and mystery." She also watched every Biblical movie she could find, from "The Robe" to "The Passion of the Christ" ("I loved it"). And she dipped into previous novels, from "Quo Vadis" to Norman Mailer's "The Gospel According to the Son" to Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's apocalyptic Left Behind series. ("I was intrigued. But their vision is not my vision.") She can cite scholarly authority for giving her Christ a birth date of 11 B.C., and for making James, his disciple, the son of Joseph by a previous marriage. But she's also taken liberties where they don't explicitly conflict with Scripture. No one reports that the young Jesus studied with the historian Philo of Alexandria, as the novel has it—or that Jesus' family was in Alexandria at all. And she's used legends of the boy Messiah's miracles from the noncanonical Apocrypha: bringing clay birds to life, striking a bully dead and resurrecting him. Rice's most daring move, though, is to try to get inside the head of a 7-year-old kid who's intermittently aware that he's also God Almighty. "There were times when I thought I couldn't do it," she admits. The advance notices say she's pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews' starred rave pronounces her Jesus "fully believable." But it's hard to imagine all readers will be convinced when he delivers such lines as "And there came in a flash to me a feeling of understanding everything, everything!" The attempt to render a child's point of view can read like a Sunday-school text crossed with Hemingway: "It was time for the blessing. The first prayer we all said together in Jerusalem ... The words were a little different to me. But it was still very good." Yet in the novel's best scene, a dream in which Jesus meets a bewitchingly handsome Satan—smiling, then weeping, then raging—Rice shows she still has her great gift: to imbue Gothic chills with moral complexity and heartfelt sorrow. Rice already has much of the next volume written. ("Of course I've been advised not to talk about it.") But what's she going to do with herself once her hero ascends to Heaven? "If I really complete the life of Christ the way I want to do it," she says, "then I might go on and write a new type of fiction. It won't be like the other. It'll be in a world that includes redemption." Still, you can bet the Devil's going to get the best lines. © 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
The "Left Behind" series is rather intriguing, it made for a good read. (I know this is not what the article is about )
I'm sorry that you feel she is a fool for being so touched by Christ's message that she did a 180 degree turn in the direction and focus of her lifelong career. Perhaps we could say the same for those who choose to ridicule others for their beliefs, religious or otherwise.
If you want to grab attention you certainly went about it the wrong way. I find it amazing that the non-christians of the US urge the Christians to be accepting of others, but when it comes to accepting Christians for who they are we don't get the same respect they urge us to give.
The left behind series is a great read... they have a "kids" version that is really cool too. The movies are also worth the price of admission, and you can find the DVDs in the Wal-Mart bargain bins for like 5 bucks each. I know a few non-christians who enjoyed both the books and movies, it is a great story if you don't believe it to begin with. As a Christian I am facinated the most about the book of Revelations, and it is probably the book I study the most... a lot of Christians fear or are spooked by Revelations and the series makes it a lot easier to understand.
That's really surprising. Considering what she wrote in Memnoch The Devil I would have never thought her capable of reconciling her spirituality with Christ.
Christians are the establishment in this country. Almost all of our leaders are CHristians, or at least claim to be. They don't make that claim because they think it will get them a lack of respect or acceptance. Christians in this nation have a much easier time of things, face less discrimination, and negative stereotypes about their relgions than do almost any other religion in our nation. Are there still some negative stereotypes about Christians? Yes, of course. But as a Christian I don't feel I have a tougher time from others. I might have a tougher time because of my own understanding of how I should live my life, but by any laws or major groups in this country.
You can't be serious, can you? Christians and their beliefs are attacked on a daily basis in this country. Every time you turn around someone is attacking Christian beliefs and way of life. Saying "God" in the pledge, the fight for the sanctity of "marriage," removing a statue of the Ten Commandments from a courthouse, the same courthouse where you swear on a Bible containing said commandments, the “pro life” fight, the fight for student lead prayers in school, the continued battle to keep smut off of TV in primetime hours, and countless other things... As said in my post above I find it amazing that people want Christians to be so understanding of those with differing views, but those same people don’t want anything to do with understanding and accepting Christians for their views. To say that Christians “have it easy” in America is laughable, because everywhere you look there are actions against our beliefs going on right out in the open. See the last few decades of “decadence” that is all over the TV, radio and film. See Hollywood’s corruption of our youth and society. Now I’m not saying I’m the most practiced Christian, I am just stating the facts of how it is tough to live in today’s society and be Christian… to say it is easy or the “silver spoon” religion is far from the truth. Every time I turn on a news channel I see someone bashing my way of life and pissing all over my belief system and I supposedly live in a country founded on my beliefs… too bad people forget that.
the title probably encouraged more Christians to read the thread. I find that most atheists people are indifferent to any sort of articles with religious overtones in it.
I'd definately agree... in my opinion it should be a Christian's duty to respond to things like this.
Several of the items you mentioned demonstrate issues where christians are persecuting other people's choices, and usually trying to restrict them via legislation or financial threats. Those choices are protected by the US constitution - it's rather difficult for me to feel sorry for christians when they utilize their majority to implement theocratic policies. The "attacks" on christians (as you see it) are more often than not people who arent christian just trying to get christians to mind their own f*cking business.
Your posts though shows that you're mistaking a general separation of church and state with an attack on Christianity. Christianity has gotten special treatment in our society and culture because Christians are a majority so removal of things like mandated prayer in School or Ten Commandments displays aren't attacks on Christianity per se but seperating religion in general from government. Its not like we are now allowing chanting of the Heart Sutra in school or allowing display of Ganesha on court houses. Its only that Christians have had a culture hegemony for so long that they interpret it as an attack on their religion Christiainity isn't being singled out.
I'd liek to respond to your post as your tone is a bit harsh, but you're being too vague. Can you please be more specific?
Everytime I say something Sishir comes along behind me and says the same thing so much more eloquently. Nuts.
