Richard Rodriguez on Religion, Atheism and Politics

SOMETIMES I wonder why the words -- especially the personal essays -- of Richard Rodriguez hit me so directly. He is a gay Latino born in the '40s, a devout if conflicted Catholic, and on many issues a political or social conservative. My origins and allegiances are very different and coincide with none of those categories (I have long thought of myself, for instance, as a Protestant agnostic on religious matters.)

Part of my connection to Rodriguez's work, I think, is that he writes so well about California, a major concern for The Misread City. But mainly, our mismatched alliance comes simply from the power of great writing, and deep thinking. I'm always curious what he has to say, even when we (frequently) disagree.

His elegant new book Darling is on religion after 9/11, and it's his first in a decade. It's my favorite work of his going back even longer.

Here is my Salon interview with Richard Rodriguez.

Christianity and Tom Perrotta

ONE of my favorite-ever author meetings was a lunch interview with Tom Perrotta around the time of The Abstinence Teacher. (I was in New England and swung to the fringe of Boston to meet him.) The novel's film adaptation was already rolling despite the fact that the book hadn't come out yet -- credit the success of Little Children for that one.

The Abstinence Teacher, like his new one, The Leftovers, is partially about latter day Christians and the culture of the religiously devout, not often examined in literary fiction.

Perrotta and I spoke about a lot of things -- rock music, fatherhood, literary craft -- and especially his upbringing as a not-terribly-devout Catholic in New Jersey in the '60s and '70s, in the wake of Vatican II and other softenings of the church.

With The Abstinence Teacher, I was struck by the way Perrotta balanced satire with an unexpected empathy. Here's what I wrote at the time:

More than anything, though, his work is defined not by a type of character or a setting in the suburbs but by a tone of voice: cutting and observed with a kind of oracular detachment, but with forgiveness and respect for old-fashioned decency. It's also a tone, rooted in realism, that doesn't draw attention to itself.

In a funny way, the premises and the novels themselves seem to be rendered by a different writer.

"The setups to my stories are often more satirical," he said, "but the execution isn't. In the course of writing, my sense of the characters deepens, and the story becomes something different from what I intended."

HERE is that interview and profile. Looking forward to his new one.