SOURCE: “Moody on Dark Humor, Bright Angels, and Quantum Leaps,” in Poets & Writers, Vol. 27, No. 2, March–April, 1999, pp. 37, 39, 41.

In the following interview, Moody discusses the themes and writing of Purple America, his views on spirituality and morality, and the development of his prose style and artistic concerns.

[Gordon:] Your work seems to center on how spirit might illuminate the soulless structure of social process. Are you aware of this when you write? And how important a role does social conscience play in your work?

[Moody:] Well, I certainly thought of Purple America as being a book that tried to elaborate valid, genuine, spiritual structures that were outside of institutional religious edifices, and to do so without being secular at the same time. In other words, to believe—to the extent that that really means something—but to resist received articulations about belief. And as far as the popular-culture...