Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Novelist Converts

Not only are they converting to Christianity, but then combating secularization's inability to compute such data by talking it up. Here's Andrew Klavan (video) who provides what is by far the most salacious argument against materialism I'm aware of. And here's Anne Rice (audio) who irenically observes that for an outsider, bishops John A.T. Robinson and N.T. Wright are on the same side, both exposing - by superior scholarship - the dishonesty of New Testament criticism set out to "disprove faith."

Ten years ago, were someone to say that the blood-sucking vampires in Anne Rice's novels were in fact a subconscious longing for the eucharist of her Catholic youth, they'd be laughed out of the book club. That is, however, the exact interpretation that Rice has of her earlier novels now. (Suddenly, patristic interpretations of pagan myths as anticipations of Christianity don't look so strange.)

Klaven and Rice are reminiscent of other novelist converts such as Susan Howatch and Dean Koontz. Perhaps there's something about writing stories that puts one in touch with the world's truest one.