open book on "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt"

Amy Welborn of open book reviews Anne Rice's new novel here.

She likes Ms. Rice's motivation:

The most interesting, even fascinating part of the book is the "Author's Note," in which Rice explains why she wrote the novel and how she went about it. Her motivations are movingly related, as she characterizes her earlier work in a spiritual context, her reasons for leaving the Church at 18, and her return decades later. Christianity caught her interest again, paradoxically (or not) enough, because of another mystery: "I stumbled upon a mystery without a solution...the mystery was the survival of the Jews..." (309). Her obsession with this question led to a renewed interest in Jesus, a desire to understand him, and finally to this novel.

It's when Rice addresses contemporary Scripture scholarship that things really get cracking. It's fascinating and instructive to see an "outsider" to the field of Scripture scholarship look at it with wide-open, frankly innocent eyes, and be 1)appalled at the shoddy nature of much of what's out there and 2)even more appalled and mystified by the animus some of these scholars have for their subject. In short, she discovered, Many of these scholars who apparently devoted their lives to New Testament scholarship disliked Jesus Christ. Period.

She contrasts this with other fields and says that one would simply not find this. She drills much of what she found: Some books were no more than assumptions piled on assumptions...arguments against the historicity of the NT were not made: Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I'd ever read

In contrast, she holds up others whom she's discovered, giving her highest props to our man N.T. Wright. Natch.

She's not satisfied with the author's choice of narrator, however:

Christ the Lord differs from other books of this type because most of them, like Nicodemus, are exploring the Jesus-moment by examining the reactions of others to him - obviously, the book I read last night is about Nicodemus,the Pharisee who comes to Jesus in the middle of the night with his questions. That's not what Rice does - she attempts to get inside Jesus' head and explore his reaction to himself. I think the latter angle is, besides being frought with theological landmines, much less interesting because it is, in the end, much less engaging to the reader. We are not Jesus - we are witnesses to Jesus, would-be friends of Jesus, and it is more natural for us to connect with others like ourselves than with the purported inner life of Jesus. Reading the books I have over the past two years has heightened my appreciation and understanding of the narrative stance in fiction - the story is one thing, but the one through whose eyes we see the story makes all the difference. A good example is Mr. Blue, in which the same central narrative could have come off as just a sappy parable. But because the narrator is such a doubter, and frankly believes Blue is nuts, yet at the same time is challenged by him...the story has power. Brideshead Revisited would be the story of just another eccentric British family but for the narrator, Charles Ryder, whose relationship to the family is actually the central dynamic.

It all comes down to this: The desire to understand Jesus' inner life is perfectly ...understandable. It is an astonishing mystery. But it is also not the point. Jesus did not come among us to be perfectly understood, for that is not the point of any relationship anyway. Of course we want to know, to "get" our beloved, but in the end, while love may seek understanding, it is not dependent on it. If God were perfectly understandable then, guess what? He wouldn't be God anymore.

I confess: I've enjoyed Anne Rice's fiction for a long time. Granted, some of her excesses in verbiage--and her thematic overload in Memnoch the Devil--turned me off. Still, I found her narrative voice compelling. She finds a way to draw you into the worlds that she creates; you find yourself caring about the deep conflicts her characters face, for which there are no easy or pat solutions. I think she succeeded in creating genuine literature out of a forgotten niche within a well-worn genre. She pitches shut-outs on Stephen King's home field.

I'm happy that she's returned to the Catholic Faith. I'm curious to see how her reversion may have influenced her storytelling, particularly this story. I'll give her another opportunity to impress me.

Having said all that, I agree with Amy's perspective on the truly compelling dynamic of Christ. We're to love and follow him, not to psycho-analyze him. He's not another person whom we can understand, and therefore control. We're not gnostics; we gain no salvation from intimate knowledge of him. We experience salvation through Faith in him, and that means participation in his life through our shared life in the Church. I'll welcome any inspiration Ms. Rice's new novel provides me. However, the Gospels remain my guide. Her novel will be, in the end, just a novel.