Stephen's got another two-guest night. First up is astronomer Brother Dr. Guy Consolmagno (Jesuit, of course) of the Vatican Observatory, where he's curator of the Vatican meteorite collection (sure, they're just rocks -- but they're cool rocks from Outer Space). Apparently, he's here
to talk with Colbert about how the search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict one’s belief in God. The Pontifical Academy of Science hosted a conference on astrobiology (the study of life beyond Earth) last month in Rome.
I found a not-very-enlightening report on that conference here. I also found an old post at beliefnet:
Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?
A Jesuit priest says the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe would pose no problem for religion
Speaking of alien life forms...it's one of those questions that we get asked over and over again, mostly by reporters or people who don't know us very well. The Weekly World News once ran a story headlined "Missionaries for Mars! Vatican Training Astro-Priests to Spread Gospel to Space Aliens!" And deep down, I suspect some people think that's what the Vatican Observatory is really all about.
It isn't....
That's an excerpt/adaptation from one of his several books, the most recent of which is titled The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican. Here's my favorite review:
I recently received an e-mail from Amazon.com inviting me to write a review for a book I had purchased from them, "The Heavens Proclaim." I am delighted to oblige. 1.) because it's a great book. 2.) because it's edited by my son, Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory.
As a collection of articles on various aspects of astronomy by a dozen astronomers, the book is the equivalent of an overview college course on the subject. It also explains the Vatican's centuries-old interest in Astronomy. The book is a large coffee-table tome, beautifully printed and stunningly illistrated. it cost me $26 from Amazon. And Guy's tuition at MIT.
The last time Sherman Alexie was on Colbert, I didn't give myself enough time to do research. I corrected that today -- even had the time to read the title story of his new collection, War Dances, in the New Yorker. Here's from Publisher's Weekly (Amazon, B&N):
From National Book Award–winner Alexie comes a new collection of stories, poems, question and answer sequences, and hybrids of all three and beyond. In a penetrating voice that mixes humor with anger, Alexie pointedly asks, If it is true that children pay for the sins of their fathers, then is it also true that fathers pay for the sins of their children? Many of the stories revolve around the complexities of fatherhood; in the title story, the Native American narrator recalls his alcoholic father's death as he confronts his own mortality, and The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless is the tale of an eccentric vintage clothing salesman whose sexual attraction to his wife fades following the birth of their children. The collection also contains stirring defenses of artistic integrity; Fearful Symmetry is an incisive account of working as a young screenwriter for a Hollywood studio, and the poem Ode to Mix Tapes endorses hard work as the key ingredient behind any creation. Alexie unfurls highly expressive language, and while at times his jokes bomb and the characters' anger can feel forced, overall this is a spiritedly provocative array of tragic comedies.
His site has links to several reviews & interviews, and I found a few others. Here's from the LATimes:
Leaning against a black couch in his office, Sherman Alexie is laughing. He laughs often and easily -- at others' jokes and his own, at sarcasm and silliness -- and his laughter is contagious. Last year, he cracked up Stephen Colbert when he appeared on "The Colbert Report." Fans are known to walk away from Alexie's book signings gasping for air, wiping their eyes....
...Alexie, who writes with a conversational style, has a wry, subversive sensibility that emerges both in the text and the forms it takes. Funny as it is, "War Dances" includes poems written as call-and-response, a catechism in which the answers veer off strangely, a poem called a haiku that isn't one, and stories that contain lists, a Q&A, and a hail of bullet points. The structure is sophisticated yet playful, a subtle way to bring lightness to heavy topics such as senility, bigotry, cancer and loneliness.
Yet for readers who find short story collections frustratingly choppy, the poems may make things worse. One critique called them filler.
With the freedom afforded him by publisher Grove/Atlantic, a major independent press, Alexie crafted the collection exactly as he wanted. A character who creates epic iPod mixes for his daughters fondly recalls the mix tapes of his youth; I asked Alexie if this wasn't a mix tape of a book, with many voices, pieces of different length, shifting rhythms, an evolving story....
Frustratingly choppy? That's sort of the point of short stories, that they're short... and I guess if you don't like poems, then you don't like poems. Not that I've read the book (it's now on my list), but, y'know, if you don't like wine you don't go to wine-tastings. Anyway, the Valparaiso Poetry Review chose one of his as poem of the week. I'm not quite sure which week it's poem of, but hey.
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