September 16, 2005
Kurt Vonnegut on A Man Without a Country and Death
(Filed under: Book Buzz)
Kurt Vonnegut, author of favorites such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Piano Player, has a new success with his collection of non-fiction essays, A Man Without a Country.
"It's a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life," the 82-year-old Vonnegut said. The book is full of his dark humor and criticism of George W. Bush. With all the attention at his old age, he also talks about death:
He jokes, sort of, that he has "lived too long" and wishes he had been finished off by a fire at his home a few years ago, from which he escaped unharmed. "When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut said with a wheezy laugh worthy of a long-term chain smoker."My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."
Posted by kevin at 8:14 AM | TrackBack
September 15, 2005
CT Interviews Donald Miller
(Filed under: Interviews)
Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and the most recent Through Painted Deserts (which is actually a rewrite of 2000's Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance), talks with CT editor Stan Guthrie. It's actually a really short interview, but it starts to get into questions of absolute truth. It actually ends so abruptly you wonder what happened:
Miller: It wasn't until I understood that the dynamic of our faith is relational rather than logical that I started maturing in my faith.Guthrie: Can't you bring them together?
Miller: Well, certainly you can.Guthrie: "Rather than" is pretty stark.
Miller: It is very stark. But it's the language of our culture.Guthrie: So you're overstating your case.
Miller: I'm overstating my case, because I don't feel like anybody will listen if I don't.
Posted by kevin at 9:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 13, 2005
Adam Palmer on Taming the Liger: Unexpected Spiritual Lessons from Napoleon Dynamite
(Filed under: Interviews)
Filmed in 2003 with an estimated budget of $400,000 nobody expected much from Napoleon Dynamite. But when it came out in 2004 it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Now you can buy "Vote for Pedro" T-shirts at Wal-Mart and Napoleon and Pedro recently reunited to promote the 150th Utah State Fair.
In the midst of all the pop culture hoopla and tater tots comes a book exploring the spiritual dimension of Napoleon Dynamite from a Christian perspective, Taming the Liger: Unexpected Spiritual Lessons from Napoleon Dynamite written by Jeff Dunn and Adam Palmer. We e-mailed Adam for the inside story, and we hope it makes your wildest dreams come true.
What possessed you to write a book about Napoleon Dynamite?
The devil himself. I'm just like Judas Iscariot.
Posted by kevin at 8:37 PM | TrackBack