I got this book as a teenager, and read it, and it seemed interesting at the time, although I felt the whole time that, while I got it, I fundamentally didn't understand it. The misremembering of history and of literature, of the canon: Yes. The commentary on the form of the Bible, the offering of other possibilities: Sure. But the book still felt mysterious and elusive.
I haven't really looked at it since, and thinking about it, I'm still not sure it was any good, or what exactly was going on, or why it was written, or anything like that.
So: C/D, and what is the, well, the point of it all?
― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 2 March 2005 03:35 (twenty years ago)
Yes, and there's millions of them, and they reference things like "Played by Clint Eastwood" and "which shows you that there's no point in arguing with Zeus", and it overlays the whole history of the world with something woven out of a hundred repeated wisecracks, where the repitition actually starts to achieve a surreal rhythm, and you start to recognise the references before you look them up (okay, not more than 10% of them).
And the history is patterned as the rise and fall, rise and fall of a dozen empires (the Greeks, the Romans, the Giants (IE the Rennaisance), the Spics, the Frogs, The Brits, The Yanks etc) all of them powered by unstoppable manifest destiny, for a first testament.
The second testament is the story of a christ/antichrist, and his followers - an Einstein, an Ed Sullivan, a Dave Letterman, and the modern history of each of their specialities is told in their gospels, which are as large as the first, because everyone knows modern stuff is as interesting as old stuff, right? The cross references between the two halves can be fantastic here - the fall of Byzantium seen as an episode of the Honeymooners, and vice versa. But even without the notes, it's a black, blunt satire of the idiocity and vanity of the boomer generation's achievements (so, like the first testament, just with a different target).
The last testament is the story of some punks on the streets of Philadelphia in the last seventies, told as an origin myth. They're living in the focal point of the world, where you can tilt history along a million axes and see the patterns, see the foolishness of the ancients and the foolishness of the boomers and see that they are one. They do standard year zero stuff - fight and fuck and develop the golden rule, and head out to spread the gospel. This is also satirical, but I found it really hopeful as well (Andrew sucker for punk mythos shocker).
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 3 March 2005 00:37 (twenty years ago)
Yeah, it seems like the text is there, mostly saying somewhat obvious (but not necessarily untrue) things about history and science, but the juice is bundled in the cross-references.
I dunno, I should probably look at this again.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 3 March 2005 00:52 (twenty years ago)