Letter To A Man In The Fire: Does God Exist And Does He Care

By Reynolds Price

Does God Exist and Does He Care?

In April 1997 Reynolds Price received an eloquent letter from a reader of his cancer memoir, A Whole New Life. The correspondent, a young medical student diagnosed with cancer himself and facing his own mortality, asked these difficultQuestions. The two began a long-distance correspondence, culminating in Price's thoughtful response, originally delivered as the Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture at Auburn Theological Seminary, and now expanded onto the printed page as Letter to a Man in the Fire.

Harvesting a variety of sources -- diverse religious traditions, classical and modern texts, and a lifetime of personal experiences, interactions, and spiritual encounters -- Price meditates on God's participation in our fate. With candor and sympathy, he offers the reader such a rich variety of tools to explore these questions as to place this work in the company of other great tetsaments of faith from St. Augustine to C. S. Lewis.

Letter to a Man in the Fire moves as much as it educates. It is a rare combination of deep erudition, vivid prose, and profound humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: Oct 17, 2000
• ISBN: 9781439105191

Reynolds Price

Reynolds Price (1933–2011) was born in Macon, North Carolina. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University, he taught at Duke beginning in 1958 and was the James B. Duke Professor of English at the time of his death. His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.

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LETTER TO A MAN IN THE FIRE

REYNOLDS PRICE

LETTER TO A MAN IN THE FIRE

DOES GOD EXIST

AND DOES HE CARE?

SCRIBNER

SCRIBNER

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 1999 by Reynolds Price

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

in whole or in part in any form.

SCRIBNER and design are trademarks

of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Set in Electra

Manufactured in the United States of America

1  3  5  7  9  10  8  6  4  2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Price, Reynolds, 1933-

Letter to a man in the fire :

does God exist and does he care? / Reynolds Price.

p.    cm.

1. God.

2. Fox, Jim, 1962-1998.

I. Title.

BT102.P725  1999

231—dc21   98-54197

CIP

ISBN 0-684-85626-3

ISBN: 978-0-684-85626-1

eISBN: 978-1-439-10519-1

BOOKS BY REYNOLDS PRICE

LETTER TO A MAN IN THE FIRE    1999

LEARNING A TRADE    1998

ROXANNA SLADE    1998

THE COLLECTED POEMS    1997

THREE GOSPELS    1996

THE PROMISE OF REST    1995

A WHOLE NEW LIFE    1994

THE COLLECTED STORIES    1993

FULL MOON    1993

BLUE CALHOUN    1992

THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE    1991

NEW MUSIC    1990

THE USE OF FIRE    1990

THE TONGUES OF ANGELS    1990

CLEAR PICTURES    1989

GOOD HEARTS    1988

A COMMON ROOM    1987

THE LAWS OF ICE    1986

KATE VAIDEN    1986

PRIVATE CONTENTMENT    1984

MUSTIAN    1983

VITAL PROVISIONS    1982

THE SOURCE OF LIGHT    1981

A PALPABLE GOD    1978

EARLY DARK    1977

THE SURFACE OF EARTH    1975

THINGS THEMSELVES    1972

PERMANENT ERRORS    1970

LOVE AND WORK    1968

A GENEROUS MAN    1966

THE NAMES AND FACES OF HEROES    1963

A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE    1962

LETTER TO A MAN IN THE FIRE

FOR JIM FOX 1962-1998

PREFACE

O ne especially fine afternoon in April 1997, I received two letters, both unexpected and each with contents that complicated the pleasures of the day. The first I opened was from Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. It invited me to give the Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture at the Seminary sometime in the coming autumn. Their only specification was a lecture on a freely chosen subject of interest to the students of such an institution. Lately, obliged to concentrate, I’ve declined opportunities to speak in churches or other religious institutions of whatever creed; so I folded the letter from Auburn and thought I’d surely decline it.

The second letter of that afternoon, however, was as compelling a communication as I’ve ever got. It was a blunt inquiry from a young man named Jim Fox—a stranger to me—who’d recently been forced to withdraw from medical school because of the recurrence in his body of an avid cancer. He had read a book of mine, A Whole New Life, published in 1994. It’s a book that recounts my ordeal in the 1980s with spinal cancer. The young man’s letter was of such a brief and un-self-pitying eloquence that—despite my inadequacy in the face of its enormous questions about the existence of God and the nature of God’s care, if any, for his creatures—I knew I had no choice but to answer it.

Haste was plainly called for, so I responded quickly and no doubt helplessly in a single telephone contact. That helplessness left me feeling, before the week passed, that I should take the opportunity of the Rudin lecture at Auburn and make myself face the young man’s questions more thoughtfully and at greater length. I’d write the lecture as a longer reply to my young correspondent. I accepted Auburn’s offer then, began to read and think; and I continued sporadic correspondence by e-mail with the young man through the summer as his health seemed to worsen. We were hundreds of miles apart, had never met; and our brief exchanges were unconcerned with his first big questions. But I hoped that these simple exchanges might say the better part of what I meant on the matters that troubled him.

In the summer he sent me the manuscripts of a few short stories he’d written. They expressed a watchful eye and a patent intelligence, but I was unable to think they were publishable. I suggested instead, and honestly, that I suspected his fruitful subject would be his ordeal. There is still a very slender body of readable witness from the endurers and survivors of the kind of scalding he knew so intimately. His next note seemed to take my suggestion in good spirit. All the while, I was reading and making notes for the letter I intended for him and for Auburn. Unsure that I’d have even the scaffolding of an interesting response, I delayed telling him of my plan or its progress.

In the early fall, he wrote to say that he’d decided against returning to medical school for the coming term. A new form of treatment was proving hard. That news hastened me forward in my plan. It seemed better that he see my letter than that Auburn get its lecture. Midway through the fall, then, when I’d finished what felt like a presentable draft—and before I risked intruding on a man in more trouble than I knew—I wrote to my correspondent. No answer. Soon I tried phoning again, in the attempt to invite him to New York for the lecture and the dinner that would follow. At the very least, I hoped to send him my manuscript; but though his pleasant taped voice still spoke on his answering machine, he made no contact in return.

Since his home was far off, and I knew no one among his family and friends, I saw no other immediate choice; and on November 3rd 1997, I read that initial draft of my letter at Auburn Seminary to a courteous audience of students, faculty, and guests. In a brief introduction, I told the

[fieldsli · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Man in the Fire is author Reynold Price’s response to a letter he received from a young medical student facing terminal cancer who wants to know the answer to the question put forth in the title of this book.
Price, who freely admits that he is not a theologian or even a regular church goer, draws on his life experiences, including his struggle with a life-threatening spinal cancer, to answer the young man with heartfelt honesty.
Man in the Fire is a thoughtful and intelligent testament Price’s faith.