{"id":238,"date":"2009-07-05T22:30:04","date_gmt":"2009-07-06T02:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/05\/brooks-hansen-interview\/"},"modified":"2009-07-05T22:30:04","modified_gmt":"2009-07-06T02:30:04","slug":"brooks-hansen-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/05\/brooks-hansen-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving John the Baptist from “Opening Act” to Headliner"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Brooks Hansen’s new novel, John the Baptizer<\/i><\/a>, was published just shy of two weeks ago, on John’s feast day. But when we met in a café near the offices of his publisher, W.W. Norton, to discuss the book, he confessed early into the interview that he had not been a big fan of the Baptist attending Mass as a child. “I didn’t really buy this guy,” Hansen recalled. “He seemed angry, he seemed cartoonish… he felt like an opening act. What you’re taught to understand about John doesn’t make sense when you’re a little boy—his willingness to point at Jesus and then withdraw. It was only in returning to the story later in life that I felt compelled by him.”<\/p>\n

(For more about what drew Hansen to John’s story, be sure to watch the video interview embedded above or on YouTube<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

There are some distinct challenges to building a story around John, however. “The second you make him the central character,” Hansen explained, “Jesus becomes the bad guy, the guy who comes in and steals the spotlight.” In fact, one of Hansen’s primary sources for his version of events was the sacred writings of the Mandaeans, a religious group that reveres John the Baptist as its greatest prophet and Jesus as a false messiah who betrayed John’s teachings. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that Hansen’s novel contradicts Christian doctrine. “Even the most controversial aspects of the story I’m telling are found in the Gospels,” he said. “And John’s story concludes before<\/i> Jesus’ death and resurrection, so you can explore John’s story entirely without having to address the central Christian issue.”<\/p>\n

In addition to the Mandaean scriptures and the Christian gospels, Hansen also drew upon the Roman historian Josephus (particularly when it comes to the Herods). Altogether, he spent seven years writing John the Baptizer<\/i>, although he admits some of that time was spent working on another project. “But the only way of getting away with this was to tell the story as if I knew it like the back of my hand,” he confided. “You can’t shoot from the hip with this story.” As far as I’m concerned, he’s done a fantastic job—in prose that recalls the majesty of scriptural language but remains modern enough to engage contemporary audiences. But don’t just take my word for it: You can listen to Hansen reading excerpts from the novel on YouTube, starting with the fate of John’s head<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brooks Hansen’s new novel, John the Baptizer, was published just shy of two weeks ago, on John’s feast day. But when we met in a café near the offices of his publisher, W.W. Norton, to discuss the book, he confessed early into the interview that he had not been a big fan of the Baptist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}