A Conversation with Mary Gordon -- in audio

In my dreams, I get to take a master class with Terry Gross of NPR's "Fresh Air" and learn how to conduct interviews that more closely approximate hers (although her style is inimitable). One of the reasons I'd like to keep improving my interviewing chops is the subject of this interview, Mary Gordon. The opportunity to speak one on one with the articulate, erudite, warm, funny, and thoughtful Gordon is one that I never want to squander. I've been fortunate enough to interview her twice, now -- you'll see the links below, with our first interview having taken place in this site's early "Author, Author!" days in 2007, when Gordon was on tour for her memoir "Circling My Mother."

Gordon's latest book is "Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels" (Pantheon Books), and it's exactly what you would expect from an articulate, erudite, warm, funny, and thoughtful writer. Gordon wants to reclaim Jesus Christ from religious types who would claim that their version of this great figure is the only valid one: "Jesus is the ultimate un-bourgeois," says Gordon. She also says that she wanted to write a book that would provide a new perspective on Jesus for non-Christians, including atheists. 

It's good, then, that what Gordon produced in "Reading Jesus" is not a step-by-step reader's guide -- she's not in the business of exegesis here. She is trying to show, through her own experience combined with her own lack thereof (one of the things we discuss is how American Catholics of her generation were actually discouraged from reading Scripture), that there is something to be found in the Christian Gospels that can speak to many humans at different levels of meaning. 

As far as I'm concerned, that's the kind of holiday message books and reading can bring -- and so even if this is not a perfect interview (I swear my questions ramble on for way too long), it's still with a perfect interview subject. Thanks, Mary Gordon, for returning to The Book Studio!