The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, by Jose Saramago

Of a book with a title as audacious as this, one would expect great theological significance, and not a little blasphemy.  One is not disappointed.  Saramago has clearly given the matter a great deal of thought, and clearly a great deal of research.  I’m not a biblical scholar, and therefore cannot point to every case in which he deviates from the King James version, nor of every case in which his story matches the Bible.  I capitalize Bible not because I fear the wrath of God, again capitalized, but because I fear the wrath of man.  

In the words of God, put there by the author, a man, (and what words has God ever spoken that were not put there by a man?), “...most people overlook the fact that the demons of one religion are powerless to act in another.”  In other words, if I do not believe in this god, he is powerless to harm me.  Continuing, God, in 

Saramago's words, says “...any god, confronting another, can neither vanquish him nor be vanquished by him.”  The profound implication is that any god exists only in the beliefs of people, and the only way for a god to be vanquished is to have people cease to believe in him.  Or cease to believe in his power to meddle in the events of this life or any other, which comes to the same thing.   

This book is one that deserves a second reading.   Saramago slips in wonderful little tidbits of insight, often dangling at the end of a long sentence, or buried amid a chapter-long conversation with God, as when God says of a statement by Jesus, “A subtle reply, but meaningless, although meaninglessness has it’s charm, people should be left perplexed, afraid they don’t understand, and that it is their fault.”

It seems the more fervently adherents feel about their faith, the more violence results.  Even more, it’s the need to spread the word and convert others that really brings out the blood.  The two best examples are Islam and Christianity.  Why don’t we see aggression by Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Native Americans?  Even Jews.  We see them involved in occasional violence but mostly in defensive postures, protecting their own lives and possessions, mostly from Islamic aggressors.  Jews are more intent on policing their own ethnic membership than converting others. Is it correct to say that converts are not generally considered true Jews, and their rights in the so-called Jewish homeland, Israel, are limited?  Judaism is a difficult club to break into, and it’s likely that exclusivity that creates a lot of the resentment against them.  But it’s Christians and Muslims whose creeds require their adherents to spread the word, “good news” as it has been called for two thousand years.  Islam goes the Christians one better by punishing any of its members who lose the faith; the punishment, of course, is death.  

Enough of Islam.  This story takes place a full six centuries before the birth of Mohammed.  It’s a well known story that includes all the familiar episodes, the birth in Bethlehem, the murder of Bethlehem’s babies by Herod, a long gap during the childhood and teens of Jesus, then various miracles, the ministry of Jesus, the betrayal by Judas, the crucifixion.  Saramago spices it up with visitations by angels, and conversations between God, Satan, and Jesus.  Spoiler alert!!   The big question is why, and Saramago has Jesus pose the question directly to God.  Why did God choose to create a son, only to have him crucified.  Saramago’s answer is that God isn’t satisfied with just being the god of the Jews, he wanted more.  He wanted to be the god of all humanity.  Miracles served to generate the awe that captured everyone's attention, Jew and Gentile alike, and the crucifixion locked in martyrdom, the even then time-honored method of capturing and keeping followers.  

Jesus, on hearing this rationale from God, asked him “At what cost?”  God demurred, but Jesus insisted.  What follows is a pages-long list of killings by sword, burning at the stake, chopping block, drawing and quartering, a hideous list of violent murders, the victims actually named (all of them real historic characters, according to Wikipedia; I looked them up), then bleeding into lists of mass deaths from the crusades to modern war.  All in the name of Jesus.  Jesus is rightly horrified at this prospect, but what can he do?  God is God, who is all powerful, can make miracles occur so they appear to have been done by Jesus.  It has already been leaked that he is the son of God.  In a valiant attempt to change the course of events, Jesus declares himself “King of the Jews.”  It’s a clever move, which gains the immediate attention of Pilate, who considers the Jews to be his subjects, and hastens the crucifixion.  As we all now know, Jesus’s attempt to confine his story to the Jews failed.  All the violence and death predicted by God has come to pass, and continues apace.

Saramago presents a case that is sympathetic toward Jesus, a mere pawn caught up in the machinations of a jealous god.  It’s a good read from a serious author whose death in 2010 puts a regrettable bookend on his works.

Cain, by Jose Saramago

I’ve read several books by Saramago, maybe half a dozen.  Why am I drawn to his writing?  Is it the way he treats human foibles, pointing out absurdity in a matter of fact sort of way?  Maybe it’s because he delves into serious matters like religion.  He seems to have a beef against God, and consequently against the insistence by people that God exists.  Regardless, his work is serious and thought-provoking.  

In this book he starts with the generally accepted Christian version of Cain’s life, and then places him on the spot as a witness to other key events of the Old Testament.  As a consequence he happens along just in time to stop Abraham from killing his son to prove his obedience to God; he shows up in the city of Ur to pleasure Lilith at the height of her sexual appetites; he watches Job as God permits Satan to kill all his family, destroy all his wealth, and cover his body with painful boils, again as a test of loyalty; he sees the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah killing all the innocents along with the sinners; and he rides with Noah in the ark as the flood destroys all mankind.  

Saramago pitches God as an ugly, flawed character--jealous, mean, vengeful, petty, unjust.  Anything but loving.  I suspect it would be easy to see the Old Testament that way, in fact hard not to.  I can’t say I’ve read the Bible in its entirety, just certain passages, but I did go to Sunday School and heard a lot of the stories retold.  It seems to be a sort of history of the Middle East, with God as the leading character, appearing occasionally, sometimes in person, sometimes as angels, archangels and the like, handing out edicts, passing judgment and delivering rewards and punishments.  The consistent theme seems to be his powerfulness, and the lesson is that we should offer praises and cower in fear....or he’ll kick our ass.  It fits that the first five of the ten commandments are all about ME, ME, ME.  

Saramago is merciless in his retelling of familiar stories that are supposed to teach us to worship God.  For instance, he describes the situation when Cain arrives at the mountain where Abraham has been told to sacrifice his son Isaac.   “Yes, you read that correctly, the lord ordered Abraham to sacrifice his own son, and he did so as naturally as if he were asking for a glass of water to slake his thirst, which means it was a deep-seated habit of his.”  Repeatedly Cain appeals to God and argues for justice, to no avail.

How does Cain get to all these places and times?  After killing his brother Abel, he becomes a wanderer and just shows up.  Saramago has presented events in other books that are far more inexplicable than that, and besides, the Bible is full of inexplicable events anyway.  

This book, published in 2009, is a sort of companion to The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, which was published in 1991, almost twenty years earlier.  Saramago died in 2010 so Cain was his last book, a final statement, one might conclude.  There remain a few that I haven’t read.  I look forward to them and, possibly some re-readings.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor

This novel, first published in 1976, is another on the long list of important works that I am working to catch up on. It is the story of a black family struggling to survive in 1940s rural Mississippi, as told by a nine year old girl in that family. For anyone ignorant of, or even not well informed about, the ugliness of full-throated racism, this book must be an eye opener.  In that time and place it was taken as a norm, by whites and blacks alike, that whites considered blacks inferior, and that they could get away with acting on that belief. Whites saw that as the rightful way of the world; blacks saw it as the unjust way of the world.

Taylor presents a nuanced portrait of both races. There is Cassie, the proud justice-seeking nine year old who narrates the story, her parents who are world-wise and determined not to be swindled out of their beloved two hundred acres, Uncle Hammer with his quick temper, and TJ, a foolish neighbor boy who ultimately pays for his dishonesty and his need to be liked. Among whites, most are mean-spirited in their behavior toward blacks, but there is the exception, Mr. Jamison, an attorney who uses the law and a lot of courage to stand up for the black people in the story.

Some whites reading the story may say it portrays them unfairly but I suspect it's pretty accurate for 1940s Deep South. That setting is only three quarters of a century after the Civil War in which poor southern whites fought and died to preserve their right to own black slaves, and their belief in the inherited fiction that whites are superior to blacks. Now, another three quarters of a century later, there is still deep-seated racism, latent and overt, despite enormous progress toward equality of opportunity and freedom for blacks to achieve. In the 2016 film, "I Am Not Your Negro," the civil rights leader James Baldwin asserts that whites need to ask themselves why they need to have someone they can look down on. Three quarters of a century from now , will our descendants still need to confront that deeply moral question?

Truth or Not

A few days ago a guy I know held up his phone for me to see a picture Obama with the caption "Defying the president and hoping he will fail is not called patriotism, it's TREASON," with the source shown as Occupy Democrats. It's a pretty good meme showcasing hypocrisy on the part of Democrats.  A Jon Stewart style gotcha.  But wait. Occupy Democrats didn't start until at least 2011 after the Occupy Wall Street protests started. The opposition to Obama started as soon as he was elected in 2008. Now this guy I know, let's call him Joe, is a hyperactive troll who gets his jollies by pissing people off on social media. So I said, "Joe, that's bs. That meme was created by some internet troll to get passed around by right wingers. Occupy Democrats didn't even exist then."  Joe grinned and released a big puff of his vape. Got him. Maybe....  Truth in the internet age. Was it really Democrat hypocrisy?  Or was it as I suspect, a R creating the impression od D hypocrisy?  Or a D masquerading as a R fabricating D hypocrisy?  Or a R pretending to be a D masquerading as a R fabricating D hypocrisy?  What can you trust any more?

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

This is a title I would think most people have heard of, and associate it with adulterous sexuality and scandal.  Fair enough, that happens, but don’t go looking for any salacious lurid description.  Here’s the juiciest line in the book: ”She tipped back her head, her white throat swelled with a sigh; and weakened, bathed in tears, hiding her face, with a long tremor she gave herself up to him.”  It’s a long way from fifty shades.  

So what’s the big deal?  First published in France in 1856, it appeared in six weekly installments in the magazine La Revue de Paris.  It caused quite a stir.  Certainly adultery was nothing new.  I’ve read in reviews that the scandalous aspect of the story was that it failed to present Mme Bovary in a harsh light, one that would judge her immoral, evil, deserving of scorn.  Instead it largely presented all the characters without judgment, which apparently deviated from the norm and the expectation of writings of the time.  By contrast Julien, of Stendhal’s novel around the same time, The Red and the Black, is arrested, tried, convicted, and executed, a result that is presented as just deserts for his immoral behavior.  In the year following the magazine publication of Madame Bovary, Flaubert and the editors of La Revue were tried for offenses against public morality and religion; they were acquitted, and the story was subsequently published in book form. Doubtless the trial did much to boost sales of the book.

On the title page, the subtitle “Provincial Ways” appears.  Most of the story takes place in a small town, with portions in Rouen, a modest sized city.  Characters include a pharmacist, an innkeeper, a curé (priest), a law clerk, an idle rich dandy, and Madame’s husband, Dr. Charles Bovary.  Flaubert lays out in detail the social norms, dreams, expectations, and fears of such plain people of the time.  Emotions and dreams of glory are pretty over the top for me.  While in a convent in her youth, being read passages from “The Genius of Christianity, “How she listened, the first few times, to those sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholy, re-echoing through the earth and eternity!”  Sheesh.  I was reminded of an incident in my youth, on a beach when a woman was freaking out because my wet dog had shaken on her, and my Uncle Jim, always the one with a ready remark, said, “Great Scott madam! You are distraught!”  There’s a lot of distraught in this book.

An interesting side story is an ongoing argument between the pharmacist and the curé. The pharmacist is a firm believer in science, obviously at odds with the faithful curé.  They debate, argue, and insult each other, though at their last encounter, the curé pats him on the shoulder, saying, “We’ll end up friends yet, one day!”  Interesting that despite 150 years of scientific progress, this debate remains much the same.

I’m glad to have read the book, just so I understand references to Madame Bovary, but I would only recommend it to readers intent on the classics.

The Red and the Black, by Stendhal

Marie-Henri Beyle is the author’s real name.  According to the foreword, Stendhal was one of more than two hundred pseudonyms he used during his writing life. He served in Napoleon’s army, wrote travelogues, biographies, novels, perhaps even some plays, lived many years in Italy, and died in Paris in 1842.

The book is subtitled “A Chronicle of 1830” which was the year it was published.  It’s a fairly long book, just shy of 500 pages, and they are not small pages.  I would imagine it took several years to compose so the work must have been done in the 1820s, perhaps the latter part of the decade, some 10 years after Napoleon’s final banishment to Elba, perhaps five years after his death there.  This was the time of the restoration of the monarchy, and strict division of society into classes.  

Stendhal detested social pretension and such is apparent in this book, which traces the rise of a poor carpenter’s son, Julien Sorel, to the finest salons of Paris.  Julien is handsome, smart, possessing an impressive ability to memorize, and above all, ambitious.  In Julien's youth a retired surgeon had lived in the household and taught him Latin.  It is this learning that lands him a position of tutor in the finest household in the little provincial town.  Julien also lets it be known that he aims to join the clergy, a creditworthy aim for a young man who can read Latin.  In truth Julien has no religious faith; he is a hypocrite. However, he is honest with himself about his hypocrisy, and acknowledges to himself that it is just a device to serve his social ambition.  

Stendhal mocks the pretensions of the well heeled, as well as the sly obsequiousness of peasants.  When the small town mayor is speaking to Julien’s father, proposing to take the young man in as a tutor, the father “...listened with that air of downcast discontent, and absolutely no interest, which the shrewd inhabitants of these mountains understood only too well how to drape over themselves.”  Later, the mayor’s wife, when suggesting that one of her servants may have knowledge relevant to some intrigue, complains to her husband, “It costs us twenty francs for every one of the servants, to keep them from cutting our throats, some fine day.”  

Eventually Julien is tried and punished for an attempted murder.  At his trial he rises to speak, saying that the jury wishes “...to discourage forever all young people born into an inferior class, and in one way or another oppressed by poverty, who wish for themselves the happiness of a good education, young people who might have the audacity to mingle among those who are labeled, by the arrogance of the rich, ‘society.’”  He adds, “I do not see, on these jury benches, a single wealthy peasant, but only the angry and indignant bourgeoisie.”  

The novel has a lot to say about French society and the politics of the day, much of which is relevant in any place, any age.  In a secret meeting of aristocrats, a Marquis forcefully addresses the gathering with, “France must have two parties, not only in name but two clearly defined parties, distinct and separate.  We need to be aware of who and what must be crushed.  On the one hand journalists, voters, public opinion--in short, youth and all who admire it.  While they stupefy themselves with the noise of their empty words, we--we have the clear advantage of consuming the budget.”

Though it’s not what I would call an easy read, the novel’s universality gives it lasting value.  It’s worth a read for anyone particularly interested in the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the accompanying turmoil in French society.  Relevant reviews on this blog include Napoleon Symphony, Eugenie Grandet, and Madame Bovary.

London Fields, by Martin Amis

Wow, just wow.  This book was exhausting.  Such amped, supercharged writing takes it out of you.  Easy read?  No way.  I had to re-read lines, look up words, re-read paragraphs, go back fifty pages to pick up a thread, pause to laugh out loud.  Exhausting.  And totally worth the effort.

The story is set in end-of-the-twentieth century London and revolves around the intersection of three characters.  Keith Talent is a lowlife small time cheating criminal; Nicola Six is a drop dead gorgeous duplicitous femme fatale; Guy Clinch is a tall, handsome, rich and totally clueless family man.  Names of characters, as you might guess, names like Chick Purchase, Trish Shirt, Dink Heckler, Thelonius (very felonious), are reminiscent of Dickens, only edgy.  The entire book is edgy, at times foul, but never pornographic.  How can a writer be so knowledgeable about the sleazy underworld of cheats, burglars, and drunks?  Has Martin Amis spent time in that world, studied its character and characters, its scummy hopeless yet self-satisfied prospect?  I don’t know but he presents a convincing case.  

Keith’s speech is rife with street slang, expressions like ‘No danger’ meaning ‘don’t worry’ and he finishes many of his comments with ‘like’, or ‘as such’, or innit’ as in his thought on Nicola Six, “Class skirt innit.”  There’s a wonderful passage about cheating, which is Keith’s career choice, and what happens when the cheaters get cheated, when everyone is cheating. Later, this comical notion is reprised on the subject of burglary, with the burglars getting burgled.  It’s a clever idea, and masterfully laid out with all its pathetic ramifications.  Amis presents this seedy criminal pornographic world with sympathy, selectively finding principles being upheld, a dysfunctional society, but a society nevertheless.  Here’s a young man who doesn’t figure into the story, but paints for the reader a portrait of the lowlife life. “‘I got into a fight, I came out the wrong side of it, and that’s life.  No complaints,  Fair enough.  That’s life.’....The two girls he told it to listened in postures of mild sympathy.  Conversationally, philosophically, and often pausing to hawk blood into the street....this very recent altercation had cost him a broken nose and cheekbone and the loss of nearly all his top teeth....And here was this wreck, back in the pub the very next morning, with his pint and his tabloid, his ruined face....Already he had changed the subject, and was talking about the weather, the price of beer.”

Amis uses a good many words that I had to look up.  Some, like ‘recondite’ are good words, ones I’ve seen before an am likely to see again, making good additions to the old vocab.  Others, like ‘berk’, are British slang that I will probably never see again, but a quick consult with an online dictionary enriched my comprehension (it means ‘fool’).  I was reminded of reading books by Anthony Burgess, which absolutely mandates a handy dictionary and Google to understand at all what’s going on.  

I have to say this story is nowhere close to my life and my experiences.  I’ve lived such a sheltered life, hee hee.  I’m a soft touch for the emotional moment, and this story never came close to evoking a tear.  No danger.  I give it high compliments.  I recently read a book by Martin Amis’s father, Kingsley Amis, which was terrific, and I wondered if the work of the son could measure up.  No danger lads as such.