by Paul Eliefrom Georgetown University
A New Book by Richard Rodriguez
There is a new book by Richard Rodriguez.
I can’t think of a sentence I’d get more pleasure from typing.
There is a new book by Richard Rodriguez!
When he was a guest in the Faith & Culture series at Georgetown (President DeGioia’s introductory remarks are here), I characterized him as the author of a loosely organized trilogy of memoirs: Hunger of Memory, about class; Days of Obligation, about ethnicity; and Brown, about race.
Now there is Darling — about religion — and the trilogy is a quartet.
He’s an author sufficiently esteemed that he gets to write his own jacket copy, and his description of the new book begins this way:
In the aftermath of 9/11, many Americans compulsively searched the sky. Richard Rodriguez turned his imagination toward the desert — the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — and began to consider his relationship to the God of the desert, and terrorists who kill in the name of God.
As it happens, I began reading the book on an airplane this morning. Delta 2457, LaGuardia - New Orleans, seat 13C. That was Eli Manning a few rows ahead of me, I think, returning to his hometown for a rare open weekend (the Giants already lost, last night) to get some advice and counsel from his father after beginning the season 0-6.
As it happens, the book begins in an airport:
In the predawn dark, a young man is bobbing up and down behind the pillar of an airport lounge a few yards from my departure gate. I watch from behind my newspaper. The man turns in a circle before a floor-to-ceiling window, beyond which an airliner lumbers upward like a blue whale to regain the suspended sea. The young man cups his hands behind his ears, then falls out of sight.
One other passenger sees what I see. ”Someone should call the police,” the woman says out loud, not to me, not to anyone — a thought balloon.
To say what? A Muslim is praying at Gate 58.
I am in New Orleans today to give the keynote address at the biennial Walker Percy Conference hosted by Loyola University of New Orleans.
But through the miracle of the advanced technology that is literature, I’ll also be in the desert with Richard Rodriguez.
And posting about the book here.
