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1. God Is Dead
INTRODUCTION
In his first novel, Ron Currie takes Nietzsche’s audacious pronouncement,“God is dead,” and asks whatwould
happen if God really were dead, literallyand verifiably dead? How would that fact change the way humans see
themselves and treateach other? The imaginative daring ofsuch a premise is onlythe beginning ofmanysurprises
that fill the pages of God Is Dead.
God comes to earth disguised as a Dinka woman,implores Colin Powell to help find her brother, is killed in the Darfur
desert,and then eaten by the wild dogs who follow in the wake of the genocidal Janjaweed.Such a scenario,at once
absurd butnot entirely implausible,invites readers to make an imaginative leap,to suspend their disbeliefand enter
into a world of strange possibilities and nightmare consequences.One group of young men,fearing starvation and
madness,decide to kill themselves ritualistically;another group insists thatGod still exists;and parents with no god
left to worship bestow a divine status on their children.One mightassume thatthat the religious violence thatis now
erupting around the world would disappear ifthere were no god to justify the carnage,but in Currie’s novel,humans
simplyfind other ideologies worth killing for.
The human capacityfor foolishness,self-delusion,and violence are on full displayin God Is Dead.Some people
decide that the dogs who ate God’s body have become gods themselves and decide to worship them,a situation that
any honestobserver ofhuman nature would find frighteninglyplausible and thatreveals Currie’s sly,satirical wit.
“God” is,after all,“dog” spelled backwards.
Satire is,indeed,the dominantintention ofGod Is Dead. Like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse Five,Currie’s novel takes the absurdities,idiocies,and cruelties thathuman beings commitand
magnifies them justenough for us to see them in all their naked foolishness.This,Currie shows us,is the world we
are creating.The book is not written out of contemptfor humanity,however, but out of an unflinching vision that
encompasses preciselythose qualities—compassion,common sense,clear-seeing—thatwe are so busilyengaged
in destroying.
ABOUT RON CURRIE JR.
Ron Currie, Jr.’s prizewinning fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train,The Sun, Other Voices, and
NightTrain. He has been short-listed for the Fish International Short Story Award and Swink
magazine’s Emerging Writer Award. He lives in Waterville, Maine.

2. A CONVERSATION WITH RON CURRIE JR.
Q. Why did you choose an episodic structure for your novel?
A. It justmade sense,given the freewheeling and eclectic topics Iwanted to tackle. It would have been difficult, if not
impossible,to tell both the story of a wild dog with divine omniscience,and the story of a regular guy who works in a
paper plate factory, within the confines of a traditional novel.One justdoes not lead directly to another.
Q. What inspired you to make a living public figure, Colin Powell, into a fictional character in your novel?
A. It’s something thatI don’tthink can be neatly summed up.All sorts of reasons,starting with the fact that Powell did
visit Darfur as secretaryof state,which was convenientfor the purposes ofthe book. Other reasons:my
disappointmentin the Bush administration in general and Powell in particular for doing next to nothing in Darfur (as
evidenced by the fact that God Is Dead is still quite topical four years after I started writing it); the excitementand
challenge offictionalizing a real person;the fun of it; and the thrill of feeling like you’re getting away with something
you probablyshouldn’t.
Q. God Is Dead displays a keenawareness of the absurdities and cruelties of human beliefs and behavior. Do
you consider it primarily a satirical work?
A. It’s funny you ask,because myaunt read the book recently and justtoday told me she didn’tthink it was funny. So
I’m guessing ifyou asked her this question,her answer would be no.But yes, there are obviously satirical elements,
but I’m hesitantto call God Is Dead satire.This could justbe my own inaccurate interpretation ofwhat the word
means,or whatit means in a literary context, but to me satire has connotations ofa certain intellectual coolness,a
detachmentfrom one’s subject.And I hope that regardless ofwhatanyone thinks of the book they won’taccuse it of
not caring.Because it’s all heart, baby. Seriously.
Q. You poke fun at Postmodernists in God Is Dead, but the novel itself could be classified as a work of
postmodern fiction. What is your relation to postmodernism and, for that matter, evolutionary psychology?
A. I’ve been pretty heavily influenced by postmodern approaches to fiction—thatis,what I think is the mostcommonly
accepted definition of postmodernism in regard to fiction, which is work that breaks from convention in style, in
content, in form,in language.The reason for this is fairly simple:I’m uniquelyamused and excited by this sortof
experimentation,so long as it’s notgratuitous. God Is Dead ended up being a mishmash ofstarkly postmodern forms,
as in “Interview,” and more conventional forms,as in “The Bridge.” And this odd combination is indicative,I think, of
my eclectic but spotty and certainly informal education.Writing-wise Iam very much a product of contemporary
literature,meaning I’ve read comparatively few books older than,say, fifty years, and even fewer older than one
hundred.So guys like Barthelme and Vonneguthave had a lot more opportunityto mold me than,say, Joseph
Conrad.I’ve spenta lot more time with Sherman Alexie and George Saunders than Fitzgerald or Hemingway.And so
I guess I’m shaped bywhat I’ve exposed myselfto.
Basicallywith the PoMo Anthropologists and the Evolutionary Psychologists Iwas trying to find the mostridiculous
and unlikely ideologies for people to rally behind,en masse,in a Nazi Germany sortof way. And there is,to my

3. understanding,a very real debate between academics in the postmodern anthropologyand evolutionarypsychology
camps.Apparently it’s quite heated, though I don’t believe anyone’s lostany teeth over it. Tenure,maybe. But not
teeth.
Q. It’s startling to read a work of contemporary fiction about an ongoing humanitarian crisis like the one in
Darfur. What prompted you to write about the genocide there?
A. It started with my own introduction to the crisis there,which came in the form of an article in The Believer
magazine aboutone of the famous LostBoys of Sudan.It’s horrifying, of course,but the horror of the situation wasn’t
what prompted me to write aboutit. As I read about the hundreds ofthousands murdered and the millions displaced
and starving, I thoughtabout, years before,visiting Dachau and seeing the sculpture in front of the museum there,a
wrought-iron piece depicting the bodies ofconcentration camp victims lying together in death, intertwined.I thought
specificallyof the inscription on the sculpture,the same words in halfa dozen languages:NEVER AGAIN. And then I
thoughtabout Cambodia and Rwanda and now Sudan,and I got mad,because nothing pisses me offlike hypocrisy
and empty gestures,even though I myselfam guilty of both. But that was when I was inspired to get to work. I find
anger to be a great motivator.
Q. To what extent does the novel reflect your own views of religious and secular ideologies?
A. It’s pretty much a laundry listof complaints Ihave regarding theologies and secular ideologies.It could be
considered a protestagainstgroupthink ofany kind.We’re stupid when we gather in groups.This is hardly news,and
yet it bears repeating.We stop thinking for ourselves.We demonize those who don’t subscribe to our way of not-
thinking.We believe fairy tales.We defer to the judgmentofidiots with silver tongues.We approve of, vote for, and
even engage directly in horrid behavior we would never otherwise consider.
We need to get the hell away from one another,put some space between ourselves and our neighbors,so we can
breathe and use our heads.Yet here we are, gathering in the world’s urban centers in ever-increasing,ever more
dense numbers.Ofcourse,keep in mind these are the rants of a country boy who has an instinctive allergic reaction
to large crowds.
Q. Many writers today go through MFA programs and aspire to teach in universities. Does that path interest
you? Do you think MFA programs are a good way for young writers to learn their art?
A. Well I couldn’tsay, because Ihaven’t been to one. I think, based on what I’ve read and heard,that MFA programs
provide students with one thing of tremendous value,especiallyto an apprentice writer, and that’s two solid years to
write uninterrupted.There is,of course,the super-tired debate aboutwhether or not MFA programs are churning out
cookie-cutter writers.My instinctis that that’s not true, that no matter what path you take you’ll either reach a point
where you’re writing good,original,entertaining stuff,or you won’t. And that it has more to do with how much and
how widely you read,and whether or not you arrange your life with writing as your first priority, than with whether or
not you got into Iowa.
Q. What writers have been most influential for you? What young writers would you recommend to your
readers?

4. A. Influences come from pretty much every creative discipline,from pop music to pottery (okay, maybe not pottery),
so it’s tough and sortof unproductive to single outa handful.
I would recommend anybook that readers won’tswap outfor the TV remote after two pages.Not that I have anything
againstTV. I love TV.
Q. This is your first novel. Where do you see your work heading next?
A. It’s already headed there. My next novel—which,not surprisingly,is also aboutthe end of the world—is nearly
finished and should see the lightof day sometime in the next couple years. This time,the end of the world comes in
the form of a cometand the novel’s main character knows aboutthe impending apocalypse thirty years in advance
through somewhatinexplicable circumstances thatmay or may not be divine in nature.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What is mostsurprising aboutCurrie’s depiction ofGod?
2. God Is Dead takes the form of separate but interconnected stories.Whateffect does Ron Currie create by
structuring the novel in this way? How are the stories connected?
3. What ironies are involved in God taking the form of a Dinka woman,being killed by the Janjaweed,and then
eaten by wild dogs? Why is God powerless,in Currie’s novel,to stop the slaughter in Darfur or to save her
own life? What are the larger implications ofthis powerlessness?
4. Dostoevskysaid that “If God is dead, everything is permissible.” How does the death of God affect peop le in
the novel? How do they react? How do their lives change because ofit?
5. Professor Oswalt says that “One of our great dilemmas . . . is how to strike a balance between our principles,
as Postmodern Anthropologists,and our security.” What are the principles ofthe Postmodern
Anthropologists? Whyare those principles incompatible with maintaining their own security? Why are the
PoMo Anthropologists atwar with the Evolutionary Psychologists? Whatis Currie satirizing here?
6. In what ways does God Is Dead illuminate our currentsocial,political,and religious milieu? In whatways
can it be read as a kind of satirical fable or commentaryon our time?
7. Rick says that “by the time they told us God was dead and all hell broke loose,itseemed like kind of a
blessing to me.. . . I understood those guys who climb clock towers or walk into a McDonald’s with guns
blazing. I felt more like them than the people who stand around after the rampages crying and asking why,
why, why. Because I understood there is no why. There’s the impulse,and the act. But nothing else” [p. 49].
Why does Rick see God’s death as “a blessing”? Is he rightin implying that withoutGod there are only
meaningless impulses and meaningless acts?
8. What are some ofthis novel’s more surprising features? In whatways —formallyand thematically—does it
differ from mostcontemporaryfiction? What is the value of Currie’s breaking ofconvention?
9. How do the Biblical passages Currie places atthe beginning ofeach chapter illuminate whatfollows? What
is the effect of quoting the Bible in a novel aboutthe death of God?
10. At the end of the novel, Arnold and Ty drive “through the bombs and the fire and the people in the streets
who didn’tseem to notice that their world was being destroyed.” What is the significance ofpeople not
noticing their world is being destroyed, having been drugged into forgetting there is a war going on? Why
would Currie end the novel this way?

5. 11. Before we get to God Is Dead, Ron Currie, Jr.’s first book, I’d like to mention a few
authors and their work for some historical context. Think of the following: Dostoevsky
and his character Ivan Karamazov, who might or might not have suggested that God’s
disappearance would create a moral universe that permitted anything; Nietzsche and his
madman, who announced God’s death in The Gay Science; Sartre and his criminally thick
Being and Nothingness; and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens, who recently wrote
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
12. We’re fascinated with the whether or not of God’s existence; it is a question that
everyone seems to consider at one point or another, and no matter how one answers that
question, consequences arise, both good and bad. But in God Is Dead, Currie doesn’t
concern himself with the question. He just assumes that God is dead and writes of
consequences, the imaginative scenarios they create, and the deep sense of loss from
which we seem to suffer now more than ever. As a result, his collection is a moving,
intelligent work of fiction that gives us a refreshing, if dismal, perspective on our modern
plight.
13. When Currie sat down to write “False Idols,” a short story in which adults religiously
worship their children, he didn’t expect to publish a book. In a guest post on Ron
Hogan’s lit-blog, Beatrice, Currie said, “I ran into what was for me an unexpected
problem. . . . Why exactly did people start worshipping their kids in the first place? What
the hell was the catalyst here? And then the solution occurred to me instantly: It’s a
transference of the innate human need to worship something. God died, so kids took His
place. Simple. Easy.” The innate human need to worship something; seven words, and
Currie defines existential dread. If only it were that easy to solve.
14. When Currie wrote this first story, it naturally generated plenty of other concerns: How
did God die? How might believers react upon hearing the news? Over what will humans
wage war in this Godless era? Does suicide cease to be a sin? What happens if animals
chew upon his divine corpse? Such a series of tough questions might’ve proven too much
had Currie been working in the philosophical discipline, but as fictional devices they
provided inspiration for the nine loosely related stories in this book.
15. God Is Dead reads like a modern apocalyptic work; God dies during the opening pages,
thus depriving the world of an ancient revelatory source. This void causes a panicked
humanity to act out some profane sort of revelation; Currie’s characters must lift their
own veils. Disaster ensues. Not surprisingly, Currie’s post-God world looks a lot like the
God-filled one described by John the Apostle, with the biggest difference being the
source of suffering: in the Book of Revelation God causes all the mayhem, but in God Is
Dead, humans do. If we take Currie’s statement about our need to worship something and
combine it with an apocalyptic sensibility, then we can read the stories in this book as
minor revelations of loss. They are stories about how humans cope with the sudden
emptiness loss creates.
16. The first story here, the titular “God Is Dead,” bears the weight of being first and
succeeding in a number of ways: it orients the reader to the universal laws of the book; it
sets up the basic premise; it introduces the guiding themes of loss and transference.
Although all of this is important, this story’s most important job is to lay the groundwork
for the integrity of the entire work. If the reader cannot accept the world Currie has
created then this book is finished.

6. 17. Currie confidently solves the problem in the opening sentences of the book by redefining
our concept of God. He writes, “Disguised as a young Dinka woman, God came at dusk
to a refugee camp in the North Darfur region of Sudan. He wore a flimsy green cotton
dress, battered leather sandals, hoop earrings, and a length of black-and-white beads
around his neck.” Next we learn that God has manifested a wound in his right calf. “The
purpose of the wound was twofold. First it enabled him to blend in with the residents of
the camp, many of whom bore injuries from the slashing machetes of Janjaweed raiding
parties.” Why would God have to do such a thing? He is God, after all. “The intense
burning ache helped to mitigate the guilt he felt at the lot of the refugees, over which he
was, due to an implacable polytheistic bureaucracy, completely powerless.” Now we
understand how desperate God’s situation has become; Currie’s confident narrative voice
first grounds us in the reality of God’s plight before stripping away God’s power.
18. And then God dies. He travels to the refugee camp in order to find a boy named Thomas
Mawien, to whom He must apologize, but when Thomas cannot be located, God, we
come to understand, suffers a tremendous loss, the loss of His ability to seek forgiveness
and cleanse Himself of guilt. God receives a second chance, though; in an epiphanic
moment, He transfers His apology to another boy. “He realized with sudden certainty that
this boy, or any of the people in the camp—the men suddenly alone in their old age, the
young women with disappeared husbands and hungry children—were as deserving as
Thomas of his apology, would serve just as well as the altar for him to confess his sins of
omission and beg forgiveness.” When shortly after God falls to His knees to ask
forgiveness, planes bomb the refugee camp and Janjaweed horsemen murder the injured
survivors, thus killing God and setting in motion a series of apocalyptic events.
19. The remaining stories in this book further explore the consequences of God’s absence
and tell how certain characters react to this alarming new world. These stories vary in
their degree of formal inventiveness: the collection has its share of realistic tales,
including “The Bridge,” a story told from the close, third-person point of view of a high
school graduate who witnesses a priest jump to his death. In “Indian Summer” a group of
teenagers act out the violent nightmare of a suicide pact—instead of worshipping their
futures, which have disappeared with the collapse of modern society, the boys worship
the never-ending now of death.
20. The collection also includes representatives of the more experimental, satirical modes,
such as “Interview with the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed
on God’s Corpse,” in which an enlightened feral dog struggles with its loss of innocence.
In this story, the playfulness of Currie’s imagination adds another delightful element,
making this one of the strongest pieces in the book. The skillfully evoked feral dog stands
out against the overwritten character of Colin Powell (from “God is Dead”), with whom I
felt that Currie was having too much fun.
21. Currie’s writing seems most successful when the inventiveness supports the emotional
currents of the work. In the final story, “Retreat,” a soldier flees down a road choked with
dead bodies, his army having lost the final battle of Armageddon, and all he can think of
is returning home to his mother, who is dying of dementia. But sadly, the soldier has
forgotten what she looks like. Currie writes, “It was exhausting work, scaling corpses. To
distract himself from the fatigue, the thirst and hunger, the sharp flare of pain that
occurred each time he moved his leg, Arnold thought of his mother. First he tried, with
the usual lack of success, to picture her in his mind’s eye. Then he concentrated on

7. willing her lucid, so that when he arrived home she would be who she always had been,
not some bewildered stranger who merely looked like his mother, and she would hear
what he had to say.” Despite the unfamiliarity of the world that Currie has created, we
feel the emotional weight of this moment in Arnold’s life; in a way, it seems to be a
connection with our own, as we too fumble to remember the faces of our family, the
voices of our friends.
22. Ultimately, these connections give this book its sad charm. We understand the
connections easily enough, because in some way they exist for all of us whether or not
we believe in God: the terrible reality of genocide, the pleasant sense of anticipation we
feel before seeing a loved one, the hope we carry for better times in the coming years.
And these connections hide away in the depths of Currie’s revelation text and wait for us
to discover them, to take them up as our own, thus transferring our need to worship
something, anything, either pleasant or painful, across the entirety of our lives.