Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited

darcey steinke rick moody

Like many of their contemporaries, novelists Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke attended Sunday school as kids but drifted away from religion as adolescents. Now, as adults, they are grappling anew with the teachings of the Bible. Rejecting the hard-edged dogmas of many mainline denominations, they have reread the New Testament, reviewed their own life experiences -- and come up with their own personal interpretations of Christian tenets.

Moody and Steinke's renewed interest in Christianity struck a chord with other notable writers -- and the result is this extraordinary collection of original essays. Gathering together some of the freshest and most thought-provoking voices in contemporary literature -- including Madison Smartt Bell, Benjamin Cheever, Lydia Davis, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lucy Grealey, bell hooks, Ann Padgett, Joanna Scott, and Kim Wozencraft -- Joyful Noise offers a fascinating range of probing and very personal interpretations of what Christianity means today. Whether it's Kathy Bowman's poetic riffs on the significance of "Jesus's Feet" or Barry Hannah's guilt-tinged recollections of a neighborhood outcast who went on to find fulfillment as a hippie minister, these remarkable and wonderfully eclectic meditations are sure to find an eager audience among boomers and twentysomethings looking to renew their faith.

Genres religionessaysnonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 1,1997

This edition

Format: 256 pages, Paperback
Published: March 1, 1999 by Back Bay Books
ISBN: 9780316579957
ASIN: 0316579955
Language: English

About the author

darcey steinke

Darcey Steinke is the daughter of a Lutheran minister. She grew up in upstate New York; Connecticut; Philadelphia; and Roanoke, Virginia. She is a graduate of Cave Spring High School, Goucher College, and the University of Virginia, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. She also completed a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University.

Steinke teaches creative writing at Princeton University, the American University of Paris, and in the graduate programs at New School University and Columbia University. She previously taught at the University of Mississippi, where she was a writer-in-residence, and at Barnard College. Steinke lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the investigative journalist Michael Hudson, and her daughter Abbie.