James Hynes

Here's another Halloween treat: my pal John Marks has interviewed Stephen King for Salon, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Stand. You can read the interview here, and listen to it here. It's pretty interesting stuff, all about the writing of the book, King's religious background, his current spiritual beliefs, the current election, and the end of the world. Not necessarily in that order.

My friend John Marks never does things halfway; it's balls to the wall, or not at all. So not only is he touring with Reasons to Believe, his wonderful new book about evangelical Christianity, he's touring with A Purple State of Mind, the new film he's made with his old Davidson College roommate, Craig Detweiler. (Watch the trailer here.) Craig and John's years of sharing a room coincided with the first stirrings of Craig's faith, and the last stirrings of John's, and they've made a terrific, funny, and moving film about it, chronicling their history as friends and their diametrically opposed (but still respectfully and affectionately expressed) views on faith.

They've been traveling around the country, showing the film and engaging in intense discussions with audiences, and at last they're coming to John's home state. They're screening the film at 6 pm on Monday, March 31, in my neighborhood, at the Alamo Drafthouse South in Austin; the show will feature music by local fave John Dee Graham, the film, and a discussion with John and Craig afterwards. Then, since Craig will have braved the godless Obamanians of my neighborhood, John will brave the Christians of Baylor University, when they show the film on Baylor's campus on Tuesday, April 1. On April 2, John will return to Austin (if he survives his night in Waco) to read from his book at Bookpeople at 7 pm.

It promises to be an interesting few days, especially for John: some of his family will be in the audience in Austin, and I'm looking forward to hearing their reaction to John's first question to Craig about Jesus in the film. Now that I think about it, John may not make it to Waco.

Anyway, it's going to be lively, provocative, and fun. Y'all come!

Today, a shameless plug for a new book and a new movie from my good friend John Marks over at the Purple State of John. John's a gifted novelist, a veteran journalist, a fluent speaker of German, a lover of country music and barbecue, and my partner in horror movie self-indulgence (Rawhead Rex, anyone? Hellraiser IV? Tombs of the Blind Dead? No?). Here are three things you need to know about John:

1) He's just published his first nonfiction book, Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind, in which John interweaves brilliant and insightful reportage about evangelical Christianity with a powerful memoir of his personal journey from born-again Christian to unbeliever. Most books on this subject are written by journalists who treat their subjects like aliens and act like visiting a megachurch in Colorado Springs is as dangerous as dropping in on Osama Bin Laden in Tora Bora. John, on the other hand, writes without condescension and with genuine compassion and respect, even when (especially when) he disagrees with them. It's a terrific book, and I say this as an atheist who is somewhere to left of Richard Dawkins.

2) A byproduct of the book is John and Craig Detweiler's provocative new documentary film, Purple State of Mind. In the course of researching Reasons to Believe, John renewed his friendship with Craig, who had been John's roommate at Davidson College in the 1980s and who had been witness to the first stirrings of John's unbelief. Craig's a filmmaker, an author, a minister, and a professor at Biola University, a Christian university. They started to talk about their faith or their lack of it for the first time in years, and they've filmed four of their conversations for the documentary. It's riveting stuff, often very funny, and finally incredibly moving. Which leads me to the third thing you need to know, which is that...

3) John and Craig are on tour with the film and with John's book. They're screening the film and continuing their conversation with audiences at colleges, churches, and bookstores across the country through April. John's been blogging about their appearances and getting some passionate and unexpected responses from viewers, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in Austin in April and asking them a couple of unexpected questions myself.

John and Craig, I'd say "Godspeed" to you both, but, well, you know. So good luck, and see you in April!

John Marks has a fascinating post about Mark Bowden's Atlantic article about David Simon. John's a journalist as well as a novelist, and his take is vastly more knowledeable than mine.

And David Simon himself writes about his days at the Baltimore Sun in Esquire.

For a different take on No Country for Old Men, from a native Texan and a considerable novelist in his own right, read my buddy John Marks over at the Purple State of John. (I'll let him explain the title of that blog.) John and I got to be friends during the long hot summers in Iowa City in the late 80s, when we were at the Writers' Workshop together. We were the only horror movie fans in Iowa City, apparently, because we were often the only two people in the Astro Theater during screenings of 976-Evil and Hellraiser. Hellraiser I, that is, though I believe we subsequently saw II, III, and IV, together, too. Not like it's anything to be proud of. If you've ever read any of our books—and you should—this obsession with low-rent horror explains a lot.

Another shared obsession is (god help us both) The Lord of the Rings. Lately, I've been working toward finishing a novel that is rather more serious, and even a little grimmer, than what I usually write, and perhaps for that reason, I've been reading and watching a lot of fairly grim stuff, from both ends of the -brow spectrum (high to low, in other words), and all points in between. Along with the aforementioned No Country for Old Men, I also recently read McCarthy's The Road, which makes his previous grim masterpiece, Blood Meridian, play like Singin' in the Rain. (Oprah, what were you thinking?) In between violent and melancholy Cormac McCarthy novels, I've been reading my way through the first volume of the Library of America edition of the novels of Dawn Powell, on the recommendation of another Iowa pal, the novelist Kate Christensen. (You can read Kate on Powell here). I've read the first two so far, Dance Night (which is like Dreiser with all the excess boiled away, and with much better prose) and Come Back to Sorrento, which is gorgeously written but merciless. I love these books, and maybe will write something here about Powell when I've read a couple more, but they are, minus the violent psychopaths and cannibalism, almost as dark about human nature as McCarthy's books are. Top that off with the apocalyptic horror films I've seen lately, 30 Days of Night and The Mist, which I saw late Thanksgiving night, and I was just about ready to slit my wrists.

Which brings me back at last (whew!) to Lord of the Rings. By the Friday after Thanksgiving, having lost much of a night's sleep to the viciously ironic ending of The Mist, I needed something that traveled through darkness but came out into the light again at the end. So I took the phone off the hook, gave the cats extra food, and settled in to watch all three LOTR films in their extended versions, straight through. Took me a day and a half--The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers on Friday and then The Return of the King on Saturday. Which was glorious and redemptive and thrilling and heartbreaking, and led me finally to take down and start reading Tom Shippey's J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Academics who study Tolkien (like novelists who admit to admiring him) are rather outside the mainstream, and Shippey comes across as a little defensive in his forward. And even I'd admit that, while I really do think Tolkien is an important author of the 20th century, he's not the most important. (In case you're wondering, I don't think anybody is; it's a silly and pointless argument to enter into.) But if you can get past that minor point of tendentiousness, Shippey really knows his literary history, his Tolkien, and his Anglo-Saxon, and I'm learning a lot. His account of The Hobbit, which is as far as I've gotten, is wonderfully shrewd, and has added greatly to my appreciation of the book. More on Shippey, perhaps, after I've finished the book.