The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [74]
But before you start praying to manifest the wounds of Christ yourself, be forewarned: simply exhibiting the stigmata won’t get you canonized. If you want to be honored in the Vatican’s hall of fame, you’ll have to start performing some real miracles. Heal the sick. Feed the poor and ask the powers that be why they have no food. Develop a love strategy. And embrace the radical notion that you can please God by being simply and untheatrically yourself.
A Reader’s Group Guide
When we are first introduced to Frankka in the prologue, she immediately categorizes herself as a lapsed, or recovering, Catholic. Did this categorization make you more drawn toward Frankka as a character or did you respond negatively to that phrase? What does it mean to be a recovering Catholic? How do you relate to her?
A recurring emotional conflict in The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show is the tension Frankka feels between her “wondering faith” and the stricter belief system she grew up with. Do you think Frankka successfully reconciles this conflict in the course of the book? Do any of her other travelers seem to struggle with this same issue? How do they resolve it? Do you still hold the same beliefs you were taught by your parents? Why or why not?
After being orphaned at a young age, Frankka begins to search to find a place where she truly belongs. After she’s been traveling with the show for over seven years, it becomes clear that her fellow misfits have become a sort of surrogate family for her. Have you ever experienced this kind of community? What would be your second family?
If you are a person of faith, where do you fall on the spectrum between religious literalism and mysticism?
Which of Frankka’s saint stories did you relate to the most? Have you ever gotten creative with an element of your religion? Can you share how you did it and what your motivation was? How does such creativity help or hinder faith?
“You can’t just take the parts of a religion you like,” Tony tells Madre Pia in Chapter five. What parts of Catholicism did Frankka embrace? Which parts did she run from? Do you agree with Tony? Why?
What do you think is the significance of the tunnel leading from the church to the old minister’s house?
When Frankka is in the mountains, she muses that Dorothy might represent a waking dream—her intrinsic loneliness manifesting a caretaker. Considering that Frankka’s experience includes visitations from saints, do you interpret Dorothy to be a normal human being or could she be some kind of visitation? Does it make a difference to the story?
What does Dorothy mean when she tells Frankka, “We’re all Christ and we all get crucified”?
Frankka seems to protect herself with a certain inaccessibility. Does this remoteness make her harder to like? Why might she make herself hard to know?
Why do you think Frankka loses her “talent”?
In light of the basic theories regarding the stigmata—that they are either self-inflicted, relate to a mental disorder. manifest themselves psychosomatically by a powerful imagination engaged in prayer, or are the result of direct contact with the Divine—how would you classify Frankka’s stigmata?
If you could have one mystical talent, what would it be?
13 Questions with Ariel Gore
1. Who would play Frankka in the ideal movie version of The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show? What about Madre Pia? Barbaro?
Frankka: Can Lili Taylor look 28? If not, Christina Ricci
Madre Pia: Rikki Lake
Barbaro: Adrien Brody or Gael Garcia Bernal could both do it, though really differently. Maybe Adrien would be better.
2. Name the four people—living or dead—you would like most to invite to a dinner party at your house. What would you cook?
Haruki Murakami, Gertrude and Alice, Jorge Luis Borges. Order out and pretend that I made it.
3. Are you a cat person or a dog person?
I’ve had it with all my pets.
4. Of the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth), which one is the hardest for you to resist?
Gluttony.