The Gospel According to the Son

Rating:
Summary: A triumph: a trinity of courage, compassion & poetic genius
Review: "Only a novelist as daring as Mailer would attempt to retell the story of Jesus in Jesus's own words. . . . Its penetration into Jesus's human heart rivals Dostoyevsky for depth and insight. Its re-creation of the world through which Jesus walked is as real as blood. Ultimately, Mailer convinces, more than any writer before him, that for Jesus the man it could have been just like this; and that is, in itself, some sort of literary miracle".

Publishers Weekly
(Quoted from the back cover of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, paperback)

I cannot think of a more perfect book to read and give as gifts for the Holidays, to people of all faiths OR lack thereof.

I have heard for years that Norman Mailer's ego, with its supposedly massive size, has this way of getting in the way of his message and transcendant literary skill in everything he writes; as if there is a watermark of his opinion of himself printed on every one of his sentences that becomes visible when you hold them up to the light of day. Though that isn't my excuse for not reading any of his work before this, I can only imagine how much jealousy lay in the hearts of those who proclaim this as a caveat whenever his work hits the market and touches the surface of the universal human heart after reading THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON. Far from attempting to completely de-spiritualize or Freudian-ize Jesus into spiritual insignificance, Norman Mailer attempts--and for me is successful--at something far more creative, courageous and important.

Mailer, with THE GOSPEL... allows for new spiritual and compassionate eyes to see the Christ, via giving the documents describing the life and Tao of Jesus in the New Testament a completely different context and perspective. He reveals the hidden dynamic of the unconscious deification of the writers of the synoptic gospels--and their writings--that not only runs centuries deep, back into the early stages of the Catholic Church, but perhaps is the genesis of the environment which necessitated the appearance of the Son of Man and his revolutionary message among the Hebrews in Jerusalem in the first place--centuries before he came. And then Mailer returns THEM, not Jesus, back into the very human, epic poet/journalist-symbols of the Ancient Near East Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul originally were; making an unconscious debate over THEIR message (as opposed to Jesus') masquerading as love of Christ, intellectual sophistication or piety--yea or nea--irrelevant. All by trying to tell Jesus's story in something of his own words.

Nietzsche has said in HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN that it is the degree to which one can display a most positive vision or illusion of ONESELF that decides and structures both the opinion we have of people, places and things in the world and the way in which we express it: the Narcissistic impulse of man's ego. Mailer's courage is in revealing this truism's agonizing power, as it may have infused the very religion to which much of Western Civilization has turned to rise above such ego-burdened ways. But his talent shows itself in how this work is nearly devoid of lambast or criticism of those caught in such paradims over the millenia and today, as it enters the loving, complex, but forgiving heart of his subject--the subject of it all. He does this by making us hear Christ; not from the point of view of people who wrote about him many decades after his death/ascenscion, but from an artistic one, a representation of the voice of Christ himself. An artistic representation so compassionate as to, in some passages, incomparably touch the heart and reawaken the soul.

The courage to attempt this would be in and of itself--even in the context of hubris--worth congratulating regardless of success. The compassion to lift oneself beyond judgement and culturally acceptable evaluation and go straight to the heart of such a profound subject, and then write a new yet familiarly compassionate view of the man/spirit, would also be laudable even if it failed to move you. And the erudition necessary to make ancient Jerusalem, Rome, Cairo, Bethlehem and Gallilee come alive alone would make it an enjoyable read, even if the subject and purpose of it all was lost and missed. Norman Mailer didn't just combine all three of these essential gifts and distill out most of the possible downsides associated with them with THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON. I counted only about four or five times in all 200-odd pages of the book (totalling maybe ten or fifteen lines of text) where the presence of a 20th century man with his own opinions about life, religion and his own significance bled through the gentle, non-sentimental, purely magnificent poetic prose.

Norman's personal trinity of courage, compassion and erudition created this vehicle, via which he let his spirit/muse and it's Gabriel-like message for us rise above the confines of his ego. (And, again, as I've never met him, that ego may still be being overexaggerated by those in a culture that, unlike the eyes of the Christ, cannot see the many ironic forms of it's own arrogance.) As such, this book--if only for a moment (smile)-- can have you doing the same for the Holidays.

I rate this so close to five stars that I might as well call it that: a five star beautiful achievement. A masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Jesus, still contemporary after all these 2000 years!
Review:

This book is a remarkable feat of scholarship, especially in its ablility to remain highly readable despite its scholarship. We find here a very human portrayal of a man struggling to literally embody God, and, despite the scope of such circumstances, we are oddly able to empathize with Jesus. He confronts his extraordinary situation, paradoxically, as an ordinary man.

The spareness of the biblical style helps us forget the author and the complex theological and historical weight that the story carries. We are able to focus on the personal, day-to-day, hour-by-hour inner life of Jesus, the man.

If you expect quirks and controversy, forget it. If you expect either a born-again, hysterical excitement or a ponderous intellectual examination, take a pass. But, if you are looking for an intimate look at the plausible humanity beneath the religeous and emotional furvor, then read this book.

Mailer's account is particularly comprehensible to the 90's mind in that he allows us to see Jesus coping consciously with the dangers his "celebrity" as a miracle worker begin to pose. In our celebrity conscious, media saturated time, we are perhaps more ready to appreciate the "crowd-control" aspects of the story of Christ, and the practical and psychological impact that those factors must have had on Jesus' day-to-day decisions.

So how can a jewish author in the 1990's create a plain spoken text in biblical dialects that becomes an exciting "page turner" even though we all know from page one exactly how it is going to turn out in the end? No matter how unlikely, Mr. Mailer has accomplished that feat. Read it with an open mind and your mind will open still further.

Rating:
Summary: well done and highly recommended
Review: I had never read in the genera called "Life of Jesus." I had heard good things about this book, and it was well reviewed by many sources I trust. I've not been disappointed. It tells about Jesus' ministry in a Mark-like fashion (i.e. minimal interpretation, more a description of events) but with a twist: Much of the time we are treated to Jesus' own introspections about what he is doing and what he is wrestling with. Obviously this is fiction, but the deeper question is where along the spectrum of reporting among documentary, interpretation, and fiction do the gospels lie? Mailer has also read in some ancient Jewish and Christian sources and has incorporated things that, ceteris paribus, Jesus would probably have been aware of as his own ministry progressed. The style has a hauntingly minimalist grammar to it, pithy and saying-like, which we come to often associate with the words of Jesus. This makes the work all the more effective. This was my first Mailer book too, so I'm not a groupie, but I've come to respect this author already.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Mixed Bag
Review: I really wonder if Mailer only wrote this after a bet, a dare, or a few beers, or all three. It's a sometimes adequate....at times very insightful and moving....rewrite of a Gospel. But, gees, Norm, this is a damn serious subject about a very complex guy.... couldn'ya have tried just a little bit harder? The characters (especially Jesus) are flat and dull. The overall story is dead boring. Where Mailer has a flash of insight, the dialogue and monologues are good....where he doesn't, he simply quotes the Gospels literally....those parts are intensely irritating. Come on, Norm. Next time you want to do a serious work, stay away from your mates and stay off the piss. And do a bit more thinking and research.

Rating:
Summary: If You Do Not Like This Book, You Have Missed the Point
Review: While I could write pages on the excellence of this book, I will simply say that from its presentation (3- to 7-page chapters) to its content, this book is entirely refreshing, enthralling and entertaining. I see very low ratings on this page and must, with a bit of confessed arrogance, say that those who did not enjoy this book were/are simpletons who expected an "important Jesus book". Mailer makes no attempt to impress us with his high intelligence quotient. On the contrary, he brings Jesus right to our heart and hearth by humanizing him in a surprisingly non-religious manner. If you were bored by the material, give Mr. Mailer a lower rating for dullness. But to generically dismiss this creative endeavor as worthless simply because it is not what was expected or because it was grossly misunderstood only reveals a low intelligence quotient. One need only compare the grammar in some of the reviews on this page to that of Mr. Mailer to understand where true brilliance lies