The Murderer of God

God is dead; the whole book has assumed it, and only now does anyone explain how it happened. Clancy Martin calls these chapters an autopsy of God, and the two witnesses could not be stranger. First comes a retired pope, out of work because his master died, still loyal enough to correct Zarathustra on the details. Then the murderer himself arrives, the ugliest man, whose motive cuts closer than theology: he could not bear being seen. Martin answers him with the most impossible advice he ever received, two sentences from the writer Diane Williams, sent to him when his own life was coming apart.