Anne Rice "Stations of A Journey, Jesus Christ by Marcia Z. Nelson

"Anne Rice: Stations on a Journey"
The best-selling author gives up writing about vampires to write about the 'ultimate supernatural hero'--Jesus Christ.
c. 2005 Beliefnet.com
October 31, 2005

By Marcia Z. Nelson
Anne Rice has nailed her vampire novels into a coffin.

"I will never write those kind of books again -- never," Rice said, referring to three decades of work that include bestsellers like "Interview with the Vampire" and other books in the Vampire Chronicles series. Her books about witches and dark angels, she said, "were reflections of a world that didn't include redemption."

"In 2002 I made up my mind that I would not write anything that wasn't for Christ," the former vampire queen explained. The title of her latest novel stakes out Rice's new preoccupation. "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" tells the story of a young Jesus from his point of view: a 7-year-old boy who is discovering his powers and his identity.

This transformation is startling for a writer who previously summoned vampires, witches and ghosts to life in tale after tale of supernatural life. Two series of vampire books that began in 1976 with "Interview with the Vampire," one series dealing with witches, and even a trio of erotica written under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure all established an elaborate network of mysterious characters, complex relationships, and dark themes. Rice's use of the supernatural allowed her to look back into history for baroque settings as well as contemporary ones for her stories.

But though they didn't include Jesus, the writer, 64, says her previous books have always pursued questions of morality. From the vampire Lestat to the devil Memnoch, all her heroes are immortal outsiders who have supernatural powers and who live in worlds where right and wrong matter deeply. If the Russian novelist Dostoevsky had his Grand Inquisitor interrogate Christ in "The Brothers Karamazov," Rice conducted her own theological investigation in "Memnoch the Devil."

"The books in a way are like stations on a journey," Rice said. "They reflect different points on a lifelong quest."

Her own faith journey is something of a round trip. Her new book is a reflection of her return, in 1998, to the faith of her childhood. Raised a Catholic in 1940s and 1950s New Orleans, that childhood experience of a gumbo of cultures strongly spiced by religion gave her a keen awareness of the beauty of faith. A sensual longing for beauty threads through her work: from the Vampire Lestat's frock coat to rosewood furniture to rapacious wisteria, the particulars of dress, décor, art, and music are palpable on the pages of Rice's books.

But she left the church at age 18, beckoned by an adult world where faith seemed unnecessary. Shortly thereafter she married a painter, the late Stan Rice, whom she says was a "passionate atheist."

Decades and books later, the influence of Catholic friends and intense curiosity about Jesus and his times slowly nudged her back to faith, but not without soul-searching. "I pent a year tearing my hair out over moral questions," she said. One afternoon in 1998 she asked her assistant to recommend a priest who might hear her confession, a Catholic rite of penitence. "She said, 'I know the perfect person, and he's there now,'" Rice recalls. After a two-hour--"maybe even three"--session with her confessor, Rice returned to the Church, setting aside her reservations, especially the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality. (Rice's son, Christopher, is gay.) "I said, 'I will leave these things in the hands of God.'"

"I offer this book to those who know nothing of Jesus Christ..."

She later remarried her husband in a Catholic ceremony at the parish church of her childhood. He had accepted her return to faith. "We didn't argue much about that sort of thing," she said. She had already begun working on her Jesus novel when her husband became ill with a brain tumor in 2002 and died four months later. Research for "Christ the Lord" sustained her, she writes in a personal and revealing author's note that both concludes the book and explains its genesis.

Rice says her return to the Church made writing about Jesus more challenging. "I had to digest my experience and regain my sense that I could do this," she said.

Rice immersed herself in Christian scholarship, and her book draws heavily from many sources, from Josephus to N.T. Wright. But she discards much of modern New Testament scholarship, as she explains in the author's note. Her contempt for what she calls "skeptical scholarship"--including "arguments that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts"--is obvious throughout the note.

The story of Jesus that she constructs includes some legends about miracles the boy performed. But she makes her tale consistent with the Gospel of Luke, forming an elaborate and imaginative addition based on a few lines describing Jesus' childhood. "I took my cue from Luke," she says. "I saw a great framework there."

Rice's Christ is the young son of Mary who journeys with his family from Alexandria, Egypt, where they fled after his birth, back to Nazareth. He observes the social ostracism of his mother, who people believe conceived her child before marriage. He also witnesses political unrest among Jews and imperial Roman harshness toward their Jewish subjects. Rice paints a picture of a young Christ who is both fully human and fully divine. She elegantly captures his growing awareness of who he is and the times in which he lives.

Rice was unsure of how both her traditional fans and traditional Christians would react to her work. But her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, signaled its confidence in her new turn with its initial print run of 500,000 copies. Rice has been relieved and gratified by early responses to the book. When retired New Orleans Archbishop Philip M. Hannan sent a letter praising her work, "I practically fainted with gratitude," Rice said. One review calls it one of the bolder retellings of the story of Jesus.

As for her fans who are more accustomed to reading about immortal vampires, Rice believes her newest character might not be so different. "Is Christ our Lord not the ultimate supernatural hero," she asks rhetorically in the author's ote, "the ultimate outsider, the ultimate immortal of them all?"

In the end, Rice seems to consider her new book a gift, both to Christians and to non-Christian fans of her previous work. "This is a book I offer to all Christians," she writes, "to the fundamentalists, to the Roman Catholics, to the most liberal Christians in the hope that my embrace of more conservative doctrines will have some coherence for them in the here and now of the book...

"I offer this book to those who know nothing of Jesus Christ in the hope that you will see him in these pages in some form. I offer this novel with love to my readers who've followed me through one strange turn after another in the hope that Jesus will be as real to you as any other character I've ever launched into the world we share."

Rice's future "strange turns" are likely to continue to be inspired by Jesus. "My life is committed to Christ the Lord," she said. "My books will be a reflection of that commitment."

Marcia Z. Nelson is a freelance religion writer and the author of 'The Gospel According to Oprah.'