"Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus by anne rice

from 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.

Oh no...we've lost her to the cult of jesus.
I still believe she is a great writer...so I'm going to check this out at Borders when it comes out and read the first few pages...but honestly, I don't think I'll buy it.
I'm too much of a fan of her past novels to sell out to jesus right now.

Quote:

---

"I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord."

---

(insert sound effect of a fog-horn)

oh well, we still have Clive Barker. and who knows, maybe this year's National Novel Writing Month will throw up someone new.

well doesn't that just bite.......thoughly depressed now.
well I guess I gonna have to hit the book stores and see what I can dig up to read.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by karyn

from newsweek
'You may not want what I'm doing next'.
'I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord'.

---

Does that mean she's giving away her new novel like in hotel rooms?
Or maybe more like she's writing for the Lord Almighty Dollar.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Evilbink

Or maybe more like she's writing for the Lord Almighty Dollar.

---

if money is the root of all evil why do churches want it? :baicon7:

And while im on the topic..
since stevie wonders blind how does he know when to stop wiping his ass? The world may never know *_*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VoldtaEngler

if money is the root of all evil why do churches want it? :baicon7:

And while im on the topic..
since stevie wonders blind how does he know when to stop wiping his ass? The world may never know *_*

---

Answers:
#1 They think they are doing the world a service by keeping it away from us.

#2 He's rich enough that he dosen't have to wipe his own ass.

Well one can't be too shocked she's focusing on Christ at the moment...she started off deeply religious remember? You don't write the characters she has without that kind of influence. Plus she can do whatever she wants at this stage...she redefined the Vampire and shed new light on the occult. So if she wants to do the same with Jesus...more power to her.

I doubt it's about the $$$..she made enough with the Vampire books...plus if that WAS the focus she could just pump out The Chronicles of Lestat and make a killing.

Also "...that from now on I would write only for the Lord." could mean a bit more than just novels about Jesus given her religious background. I gotta say she could do quite a bit with the stories of the Bible alone.

Oddly enough I remember Frank Miller was talking about a comic based on the life of Jesus a few years back.

I got faith in her...(pun intended.)

Yikes.. :eek: That is VERY disappointing. :( ...Having been raised Catholic and I am able to relate to the pull to return to the church at times but to become absolutely devout after being 'free' for that long..Shocking.. :eeek:

do you ever get the feeling that those who 'find god' are just pretending to believe in it because they don't want to admit that they wasted all that time?

like my repentant catholic sister who said i personally was the antichrist. not AN antichrist. THE antchrist

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by vixta

do you ever get the feeling that those who 'find god' are just pretending to believe in it because they don't want to admit that they wasted all that time?

like my repentant catholic sister who said i personally was the antichrist. not AN antichrist. THE antchrist

---

That wouldn't be uncommon...kinda like those last second death bed conversions and vicious criminals who think cause they read the bible in prison they're reformed and "good people" now.

Quote:

---

under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters

---

i read her 'Sleeping beauty" series... yummy.
this one though actualy sounds really interesting... im not a religious person at all, but i do love a good book!

eh... she's a hack.

...and talk about megalomanically pretentious claptrap...

jesus?

the Hey-Zeus?

fuuuuuuck.

well hopefully it's just a shitty as everything else she's ever written and convinces a bunch of the hottopic crowd to embrace the mother church...

...I mean, why not Eastern Orthodox? or some weird backwoods pentacostal sect?...fuck even Quakers.... hahahaha...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tequila Zaire

That wouldn't be uncommon...kinda like those last second death bed conversions and vicious criminals who think cause they read the bible in prison they're reformed and "good people" now.

---

Better yet..all the ex drunken/drugged up losers, "now I have found the Lord" self-appointed preachers, that have done nothing but trade one crutch for another. Addicted personalities who need something/anything just to get throught the rest of their pathetic lives.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by vixta

my repentant catholic sister who said i personally was the antichrist. not AN antichrist. THE antchrist

---

I've been told the same thing by the majority of my crazy, bible thumping relatives. :thumb:

scary. and proof that people take things overboard way too often :(

The threat of dying is what makes a lot of people go back....

People have a great time living a life of sin.
It's fun.

But once they are sitting in a hospital bed, ready to die,
they freak out about what will happen after they die.
So that's when they get religion...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheDeathKnight

The threat of dying is what makes a lot of people go back....

People have a great time living a life of sin.
It's fun.

---

You bet it is!

It's like buying a scrach-off lotto ticket I guess, you sure don't know if your going to win, but it's worth a try.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by vixta

do you ever get the feeling that those who 'find god' are just pretending to believe in it because they don't want to admit that they wasted all that time?

like my repentant catholic sister who said i personally was the antichrist. not AN antichrist. THE antchrist

---

Yep, I do get the feeling. Sometimes people throw themselves into religion because of extreme guilt, or other reasons..so they get overzealous..

Others think their life is meaningless without something to 'believe' in, so they take up the cross, or the pentacle, or the star of david, or the..well, you get my point.

Religion is an organized scientific psychological cult.

But man needs something to 'believe' in. It gives men hope..and sometimes, even the power to do things beyond human (ie: the cancer patients that 'pray' themselves into remission or being well, etc) So I can't knock it.

Now I believe I'll have another beer....(quote, unquote)

There is a Broadway show opening next spring called 'Lestat' at the Palace Theatre. That much is confirmed, I just read it in the Times.

Unfortunatly I heard (not confirmed) that it's a MUSICAL with music by ELTON JOHN!! NOOOOOO!!! :1zhelp: :maxgne:

Stupid sod, if I see his bloated face stuffed into a tracksuit one more time I'm going to vomit! You'd think with how much money he's got he could fix that gap in his fucking grill. :mad:

I'm sorry...this was too funny...
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...r99/scared.jpg
I love his music in the early days..and as far as musicals, he can compose very well...but as far as LESTAT???? Ummmmm.......

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sunkarma

I love his music in the early days..and as far as musicals, he can compose very well...but as far as LESTAT???? Ummmmm.......

---

WHAT? Are you crazy? Okay, Benny and the jets was pretty good, but after that I get a nervous twitch listening to that shit. It's like Kenny G bad.



http://tinypic.com/faschg.jpg

i digress from the elton john thing, but last night a coworker and i were discussing the whole anne rice thing, prompted by her book displayed in the new releases section. he actually got some of her books off the shelf and we compared the pictures of her on them to see what was going on... then i found out today that she had found jesus, and it all made sense... another coworker said "yeah, she found jesus, and i hear he has fangs", that was good for a laugh.... okies, there's my lame story from the bookstore. i now return you all to the discussion in progress.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by the_darkness_calls

i now return you all to the discussion in progress.

---

thank you.

So Elton John. How the fuck did he get Knighted? Me thinks the Queen Mum might be getting a bit senile in elderly years. I don't think of chivalry when I think of Elton John. I think of a tubby has-been buggering some young lads in bathroom at a community rec-center. Quite a shame really. :(