The way to beat fundamentalism is to find yourself interred at a fundamentalist drug rehabilitation facility for eighteen months as a teenager. “I was only on pills for half as long,” says John Murry about the pharmaceutical speed he was given as a “slow” student at his Mississippi high school. “They gave me the pills and then they locked me up when I took them. I trafficked in righteous indignation when they let me out, but god damn it, it turned out they were right.” Years later, dead from heroin, San Francisco’s first responders showed him how Lazarus felt. A few times. Not born again, but not dead either.

The way to Catholicism if you’re John Murry is through Graham Greene and Walker Percy. Literature goes a long way for some people – the people who read it without prejudice and don’t parade their reading list around in place of personal substance. It’s in John Murry’s blood.

– Interview with UK Uncut Magazine

– John Murry on BBC Radio

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