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USC Annenberg School for Communications journalism professor Jack Langguth autographs his recently reprinted classic Jesus Christs.
A.J. Langguth's Jesus Christs garnered favorable review attention when first released in 1968 and is even more relevant today.
Langguth casts a mesmerizing net of words depicting Jesus and his life. Jesus Christs is a collection of vignettes sharing a common character, but in a non-linear fashion. Langguth's storytelling grabs the reader and forces a shift in perspective, shoving one's idea of "history" and "time" off-center. Jesus is no longer an isolated figure in history but instead expands into an archetype. He is a recurring character who shows up in different scenarios and situations ranging from the era of ancient Judea to Nazi Germany to a radio station in the twentieth century. He is seen as a prisoner, a priest, a teenager, a schoolboy, a talk-show host and, of course, the prophet. Langguth portrays Jesus as a man who must explore the ramifications of his extraordinary mission and the human foibles that complicate it.
Langguth was a New York Times war correspondent during the Vietnam era and covered other key news stories including the 1963 civil rights demonstrations in the south, various Presidential and gubernatorial elections, and the assassination of President Kennedy. Later, he became a Southeast Asia correspondent and Saigon bureau chief, and served three tours of duty in Vietnam. The book that resulted, Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975, took six years of research and evolved into an historical narrative of America's longest war.
He is the author of 10 fiction and non-fiction books and his opinion pieces and articles have been published in major newspapers and magazines.
Professor Langguth began teaching full-time at USC in 1978 and has received the Outstanding Faculty Award three times from USC's Graduate Journalism Student Association (1989, 1996, and 2000). In 1995, he received a USC Good Neighbor Volunteer Award for encouraging his journalism students to help two neighborhood schools start a newspaper as part of his "Directed Research" course.
Jesus Christs has been highly praised in numerous critical reviews:
"In probing wit and Zen-like, glancing--even farcical insight, Mr. Langguth provides an utterly original and continuously provoking succession of angles on his ever-shifting subject...The most rewarding English-language attempt" (to treat Christ in fiction.)--Reynolds Prince, The New York Times Book Review, May 4, 1997.
"Langguth's book is both original in form and exciting in content, beautifully written and philosophically wise. It is wit at its most serious."--William Gass.
"Just as we had become accustomed to the fact that the only first-rate religious fiction today is being written by Norman Mailer, this mad novel comes along to surprise and enchant us. A comic religious novel? A mixture of Joseph Heller and Nikos Kazantzakis in the form of Pascal's Pensees? Impossible, but it has happened...It is either one of the canniest rejections of the Christian enterprise in our time, or one of the subtlest expressions of admiration for Jesus. Or both. Or neither. There can be few readers it will not infuriate, delight and help."--William Hamilton, co-author, Radical Theology and the Death of God, The New Republic, April 6, 1968.
"A masterpiece."--James Bentley, New Christian (London), August 22, 1968.
"A rare tour de force...an engrossing narrative...a work of great originality and technical accomplishment."--Wallace Hildick, The Listener (London), August 22, 1968
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