David Adams Richards (Photo by Bruce Peters)

November 24, 2009
UNB Saint John News Release: 09-157
Patty O'Brien, Communication Officer (506) 648-5707

Renowned author David Adams Richards will discuss his new work of non-fictional prose entitled God Is: My Search for Faith in a Secular World in an on-stage interview with Mark Tunney on Friday, Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Ganong Hall Lecture Theatre.

David Adams Richards is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, four works of non-fiction, and several screenplays. The recipient of two Governor General’s Awards – one for fiction and one for nonfiction – Richards won the Giller Prize for Mercy Among the Children (2000) and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and Caribbean region) for The Friends of Meager Fortune (2006). Other honours include two Gemini Awards and the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Literary Arts. His 1998 novel, The Bay of Love and Sorrows, became a feature film. Richards’ most recent work of fiction was The Lost Highway (2007), nominated for the Governor General’s Award, and his most recent non-fiction, Extraordinary Canadians: Lord Beaverbrook (2008).

The reading is hosted by the Lorenzo Reading Series and the UNB Saint John Bookstore, and supported by The Canada Council for the Arts. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend. For more information contact The University Bookstore at (506) 648-5540, inprint at (506) 648-2315, or email sjbooks@unbsj.ca.

God Is: My Search for Faith in a Secular World

David Adams Richards scrutinizes the degree of discomfort that exists in the modern, secular world for those who believe in God or believe at least in “Something greater than ourselves.” Those who deride believers – academics, “so-called” intellectuals, CBC commentators, some members of the literary world – are taken to task for their derision and for the posture of “conformity” and the air of “sanctimony” that characterizes their dismissal of faith and the faithful.

Richards tells us about the point in his life, 1970, when he decided he would not be among the mockers, and, as the subtitle My Search for Faith in a Secular World indicates, the book is also a history of his own engagement with faith. In the course of the essay, Richards examines the nature of liberty and where it is to be found; the relationship between faith and equality. He considers the “hubris of moral relativism” and conversely, the possibility that miracles are present and active in the world.

In a prose style that is conversational, speculative, and intensely personal, Richards creates a feeling of immediacy – as if he were thinking these things aloud in our company, offering us ideas and insights and memories as they occur to him. God Is ranges widely, quoting scripture and philosophers, making reference to films and songs and a dozen or more novels – Russian works in particular. Physicists are cited; the careers of historical figures examined. Not surprisingly, the accomplished novelist has stories to tell. Some of these are anecdotes about events in others’ lives, but most are personal stories, testaments really: “In my lifetime I have had certain, if few, remarkable instances of the presence of God.… Make of them what you will,” an invitation that is followed by an “anthology” of stories created around those instances.”

Occasionally he lets us know where he is – place and circumstance – when he is writing a particular section of the book. This is not a stylistic gambit. Rather, it is an aspect of his philosophy: nothing happens by accident. Referring to “a scene from my life,” a near-tragedy, Richards writes, “We were allowed by Something beyond ourselves to live. And if we had not been, then it was willed or allowed that we were not. Why? Because we had absolutely no choice ourselves.” In a self-interrogative manner, he asks, “why did I decide to write this book in the first place?” and responds some pages later, “But if by chance faith does matter, then we might see it in startling ways.” God Is is an exploration of some of those “startling ways.”

“David Adams Richards has firmly established himself as among Canada’s foremost literary craftsmen and finest storytellers.” The Globe and Mail

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