S8 Ep. 35: Paul Elie on Art, Faith, and Sex in 1980s America–and the New Pope

Nonfiction writer Paul Elie joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s and Pope Leo XIV. Elie compares the new pope to John Paul II, whose conservative views shaped the 1980s. He explains how and why ’80s artists like Andy Warhol, U2, and Bob Dylan produced art he considers “crypto-religious,” a term coined by poet Czesław Miłosz. He analyzes limbo and purgatory in the work of writers of the period, including Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison, and recalls the culture wars, including iconic incidents like Sinéad O’Connor tearing up the pope’s picture on Saturday Night Live, as well as the controversy over Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ. He reads from The Last Supper.

Selected Readings:

Paul Elie

• The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s

• Reinventing Bach: The Search for Transcendence in Sound

• The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage

• The Down-to-Earth Pope: Pope Francis Has Died at Eighty-eight | The New Yorker 

Others

• Madame Bovary

• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose 

• Love Medicine

• The Handmaid’s Tale

• Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz

• U2 - Gloria 

  
  “The Controversial Saturday Night Live Performance That Made Sinéad O'Connor an Icon,” Time Magazine, July 26, 2023

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