A Childhood Memoir.
When I see these movies again today, it’s obvious to me that they’re allegories. They’re about the nuclear age, the “new world of gods and monsters” that had burst into being in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s why I found the older American movies so dull: they were about the first stirrings of the new world, the first dawning horror over the gods and monsters emerging into the light. In practice this meant, to my continual frustration, that you didn’t see the monsters very often. ...
On Certain Religious Questions.
“Everywhere there are people. There aren’t the carefully vetted shortlist of heroes and gods that make up the bulk of the stories of pagan antiquity; they’re the people swarming the streets and back alleys, trudging down the roads, jamming the inns, riding the cheapest boats across the Sea of Galilee: fishermen, farmers, lawyers, priests, customs officials, merchants, sailors, landowners, clerks, soldiers, artisans, day laborers, beggars, slaves. There are women from all classes of society, aristocratic ladies and merchants’ wives and village women and prostitutes. They are invariably shown as busy ...”