Job: A Comedy of Justice

Rating:
Summary: A Wild Satire
Review: This book pleasantly surprised me. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't the deliciously wild satire I got. The book started out as a fairly typical (though thoroughly enjoyable) Heinlein "stranger in a strange land" story. But then, about half-way through, the book took on a completely unexpected twist, I for one had no idea the book was going the direction it took. The book was very good and it kept me glued to my seat. Outside of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which most consider Heinlein's peak, I'd call this the very best of RAH's post-Stranger fiction.

The novel, being a satire at heart, has some seemingly very deep themes in it, it focuses heavily on religious aspects and is somewhat irrevant. The many underlying themes have their meanings that I think we can each take in our own personal way, though what Heinlein's actual intended message was is anyone's guess. Read it and judge for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Ride!
Review: Heinlein wastes no time in jumping right into the story. Alex Hergensheimer, on vacation in Polynesia, is challenged in a bet to walk through a firepit. Using his faith alone, he walks through the fire...and into another world. It is a world similiar to his own yet with subtle differences. For example, the boat he came on is no longer the same boat and Alex Hergensheimer now answers to the name Alec Graham. This is only the beginning of his journey through many worlds including a trip to the information booths of Heaven and the room service in Hell. And this book is, as the title suggests, a comedy.
The book is a fantastic ride of unexpected twists and turns. If you follow closely, though, you will predict some of them. Most of all, it is a fun and entertaining story that will keep you guessing what God will do next and what year William Jennings Bryan will have been President in the next world (the latter is not obligatory) For a good religious satire, a story of love, a comical examination of man and some sex thrown in to boot, read Job: A Comedy of Justice. It is also an excellent follow-up to Stranger in a Strange Land.

Rating:
Summary: Life-changing and thought-provoking
Review: I first read this book as a teenager. Perhaps this was the best time I could have opened the cover to Job, a time when I was questioning many of the things I had been taught. My mind was pliant clay where ideas were constantly clashing. I was a youth who suspected that society was rife with hypocrisy and lies.

Why do we believe what we do? Why are certain parables regarded as examples of morality? Have we been conditioned to believe that great evils were in fact just and moral? What the heck is morality anyway?

These are a few of the questions that Job will challenge you with. It is a book that left an indelible impression on me, and caused me to reject many of the things I had been force-fed as a child.

If you are looking for Heinlein's typical science-fiction, you won't find it here. Instead you'll find a story spun from Heinlein's ascerbic wit that navigates the human system of beliefs and values, and does so with greater incisiveness than he's done in any other title.

Rating:
Summary: Discovering What Endures
Review: Back in 1942 Heinlein wrote an amazing short story, "The Unleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag." It was an astonishing story for its time and genre. It was out of print for a number of years, but is now available in "The Fantasies of Robert Heinlein." I mention "Jonathan Hoag" because as he often did in the last decades of his life, Heinlein returned to some of the themes of earlier books. He returned to some of the ideas of "Jonathan Hoag" in this remarkable book, "Job."

Read at one level, this novel is a updated biblical Book of Job. The main character is put through the wringer because of a wager made by his Creator. Read at another level, it is the story of transformation: religious bigot and all-around prig Alex Hergensheimer is transformed into a much better person, even if that may not have been anyone's intent. But at another, deeper level, Heinlein illustrates what is really important, what really matters, what really endures. Because Alex discovers, over the course of the story, what real love can be, and how real love is the most important thing in the universe. More important than the dubious Heaven he finds when, about to lose his wager, the Creator pulls the Last Trump and Alex ascends to sainthood and Heaven, without his true love. He abandons Heaven and harrows Hell to find her. Heinlein couldn't have put it much more plainly.

My favorite scene: when, risen into Heaven as a Saint, Alex asks Heaven's help in finding his wife. And Heaven produces his wife. His first wife. From before he found real love. She's a harridan, and the transformed Alex is appalled. Even the angels are embarrassed for Alex.

The denouement hearkens back to the denouement of "Jonathan Hoag." For me, it works, but I can sympathize with those who find the ending, quite literally, too deus machina.

Like "Jonathan Hoag," you are never sure where this story is going to end, and I won't spoil it for you here. Except to say that the implied limits on human understanding are bittersweet. We can find true love, Heinlein seems to be saying, and we can live lives filled with love, but we cannot really understand the universe.

This is Heinlein at his best. No pontificating all-knowing protagonists, very little of the political polemics that started with "Stranger." Just an excellent story that invites deeper thought. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Grab a chair at the Revival Tent....Test your faith in dogma
Review: I also read this one in High School.... Didn't we all? Job IS a comedy of justice. I remember reading this one in rapture. The words flowed into my cranium, like soothing balm. I'll never forget the Tent Revival scene....it made all the real tent revivals I went to, as a child, worthwhile. Like all men who "ask too many questions," The Big Guy puts the smack-down on our man Job...leading to all kinds of weird adventures. Warning: Previous drug users may have falsh-backs, while reading this book, it's a real Trip. Of course, it is very well-written... it's Heinlein! This novel does not probe as deeply into the human condition as "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein), but it is a funny journey full of many twists and surprises, with an irreverence that most people could not handle at the time it was written. This book is a perfect gift for your favorite egghead or fantasy buff. Writing about the novel makes me want to read it again!

Rating:
Summary: Heinlein's theological 'cosmic comedy'
Review: This late-period Heinlein work is one of my personal favorites of his, although I don't think it's one of his absolutely top-drawer novels. Heinlein kept experimenting right up to the very end; this is his last novel but two, and the final two were just as daringly experimental.

This one is essentially a retelling of the story of Job, with Alexander Hergensheimer as the put-upon protagonist. The outcome, too, parallels the story of Job, but I can't tell you how without giving away the ending. Let's just say that Heinlein borrows from, and builds on, some of his own nearly-forgotten early fantasy/horror works, particularly 'They' and 'The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag'.

It's also a grand homage to two of Heinlein's literary forebears -- James Branch Cabell (_Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice_) and Samuel Langhorne Clemens ('Mark Twain'; 'Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven'). You don't _have_ to know this in order to appreciate the story, but it helps.

You probably already know the plot. On a bet, Hergensheimer undertakes a firewalk and comes out the other side in a different world, one in which people keep calling him 'Alec Graham'. Level One plot: Who is Graham and how did Hergensheimer come to take his place? And what's up with this world-changing business?

Hergensheimer is also a minister in a conservative Protestant sect, and he's married. But in his new world, he's got Graham's girlfriend: a stunning Danish beauty named Margrethe, with whom he commits all sorts of 'sins' and for whose soul he is deeply concerned (she worships Odin). Level Two plot: How does Hergensheimer handle all the moral quandaries, and how does he grow and change in the process? (I'm sure you can guess that he 'grows' toward a more Heinleinian tolerance and open-mindedness; much of the religious satire here is directed at the usual suspects, who of course denounced the book as soon as it was published.)

I can't say much about the Level Three plot because it has to do with the aforementioned structure of the biblical book of Job. However, I will tell you that readers who think that structure falls apart in the end don't know Job as well as they think they do. If you're still puzzled after you read (Heinlein's) _Job_, you may want to skim over the excellent introduction to Stephen Mitchell's fine translation of the (Hebrew) book of Job. At any rate, it has to do with the nature of reality and what's really of the most central importance to human beings.

Note: there's a little bit (by a Heinleinian standard, i.e., compared to 'a lot' in his other late-period works) of preachery here, and also a little bit (by the same standard) of sex; none of it (i.e., neither the preaching nor the sex) is in conformity to the moral codes of the major branches of Protestantism. Neither will surprise or bother any of Heinlein's regular readers, but both will probably upset the targets of Heinlein's satire. If that's you, be warned.

Rating:
Summary: Great, but not his best
Review: I love Robert A. Heinlein's quriky brand of libertarian sci-fi, and I enjoyed this book. However, it didn't compare to some of his other work like "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," a real sci-fi classic. This book is more psychedelic and postmodern. It centers around a conservative protestant minister who's life is turned upside down when, after walking through fire while on vacation, he find himself in another world that is just slightly different than his own. Every time he gets a little used to it, the world changes again and he has to start from scratch. The religious irreverence and social commentary that ensue are fun, but after the fifth world or so I was getting a little bored, and wishing the inevitable would just happen already. Still, a good read, and I would recommend it, just not as an introduction to Heinlein.

Rating:
Summary: Utter Futility
Review: I personally did not find this tragedy to be a comedy, rather a well done work about utter futility. Heinlein deffinitly decided to stray from his beaten path in this book, and the result is very good. No Jubal Hershal/Lazrus Long types will you find in excess...just one pious man for whom life has turned utterly wrong, and his love.

The various paralell universes turn out to be prety interresting themselves, the wonder of such things as street lights(people will actually obey a light?) or other minor things add to the story. As they move through elaborate tests, the world changing around them with no warning at random intervals they seek some kind of stability on which to stand. At every turn they work hard, save thier money, only to find all thier hard work for nothing, and themselves destitute once more.

And why all the suffering? His "all-powerful" god wants to have fun with a wager, and send him all this suffering and pain. Unlike the biblical Job, our protaginist does not suffer from boiles and fevers and sickness. Finally, he comes to understand that the world of his creator is not as he had thought, and those enemies of his creator are not all bad.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Gaffe
Review: The good: It was a page-turner with some rich characters and a compelling study of human nature. And Heinlein as usual makes the reader feel just as his characters do. The bad: It got tiring near the middle--or is that part of the good? I'll get to that in a moment. It also got silly at the climax. Suddenly, there were so many strange things happening, and the main character just accepted it. Here was a man who had challenged his peers at every turn, just accepting that his whole conception of life was invalid. I was certain that if I just hung on 'til the last chapter, the character would wake up and discover that the entire thing was a dream or a joke. Then he would live happily ever after, paralleling the biblical story.

As it is, Heinlein's novel bears only a superficial resemblance to Job. Namely, lots of bad things happened to Job; lots of bad things happened to Alex Hergensheimer. The story begins as Alex, head of the Churches United for Decency, walks a bed of fiery coals on a stupid bet and suddenly finds himself in a different universe--or is it he that changed, not the universe--a universe in which there is no Alex Hergensheimer. Rather, he is Alec Graham, a man with a beautiful mistress, Margrethe. They connect and marry, and together, the two shift from universe to universe, each time losing money, jobs, friends, everything, sometimes their shirts. And pants even. It is a compelling testament to the power of relationships in a person's life. As long as one has real love, one can endure almost anything.

In the beginning, I wondered what was causing these changes of world. At least, was there a pattern to them? Then as the pattern became more established, my focus turned to Alec and Margrethe, how they handled their predicament and when it would end. As the story approached the climax, this became tiring. My heart wrenched each time the world changed, and I just wanted to give up. Usually, that level of repetition would be merely boring, but in Heinlein's hand it reflects his characters' torment, and I got to revel in the way they handle it.

Then the climax hit. In the biblical story, Job talks to God, comes to terms with his experiences, then lives on better than he had ever lived before. In Heinlein's story, Alex goes to heaven, hell, and everywhere inbetween, and it's so weird that Alex himself, being a fundamentalist theologian, should've called God to account. He should've thought he himself was dreaming or being deceived. That would be part of his character. But he didn't. H.P. Lovecraft once pointed out that you have to manage the strange elements of your story carefully; otherwise, your story will lose all credibility. And that is the gaffe Heinlein fell into here. At the climax, the story quickly turned boring, boring, boring. I glossed through page after page of heavenly weirdness, then page after page of hell, then some more stuff. At first, I knew Alex was going to wake up and have an epiphany--or at least I thought I knew; I just didn't know how it would come. As the prose went on, I gradually came to realize that, no, this was not supposed to be a dream or deception. Oh well, I guess not all stories can have plausible endings.

However, if not plausible, at least it kept me scanning until I reached the epilogue, because I wanted to find out how things turned out for Alec and Marga. In summary, it was a compelling story, even though it did have a storytelling gaffe. It was not, as some of the cover blurbs imply, the best Heinlein ever. I enjoyed The Moon is a Harsh Mistress much more than JOB, as that earlier work left me satisfied and convinced. It was all real, despite the fact that its premise is impossible, SF gibberish (though it wasn't at the time Heinlein wrote it). Not so with JOB, in which the premise turned out to be merely unbelievable.

Rating:
Summary: Back to the Future, Back to the Past, and Back to Eternity..
Review: ...what if everything you believe in and everything you know to be true were tested? Tested so much so that one moment you're walking into an ice cream parlor with your taste buds set for a delicious sundae and the next moment as you take a seat in the place it changes to a Skid Row tavern...? And, all of a sudden, your cash is worthless, the happy soda jerk transmogrifies into a burly, weather-beaten, cirrhotic barkeep, and instead of getting closer to Oz, you wind up in the godforsaken dregs of Texas...?

Well, if you are Alex Hergensheimer you have been chosen to find out what one can endure if all of a sudden, the time changed and the world changed and uncertainties arise which question whether you are who you really think you are. All Hergenshiemer knew was that originally he was challengened to walk across a fire pit in a Polynesian village. The next thing he knew he was playing the part of 'Alex Graham' who has a lot of money--one million samolians--aboard the good ship(?) Konge Knut. The best thing about this new life is that he meets the devoted Margrethe, she of Denmark. Apparently, they have been having a fling Alex doesn't recall being part of, but hey! That's okay. Margrethe is a babe....well, actually, Alex is drawn to her because she is helping him make sense of these crazy things that keep happening to him.

Then, the unspeakable happens. The ship crashes and begins to sink a la The Titanic. Alex and Margrethe is saved by a Mexican militia which is flying overhead in a helioplane. And the world? It seems to have been changed! They end up being sold to a restaurantuer who has Alex doing the dishes and Margrethe doing the waitressing...then, on their day off, as they plot purchasing their freedom, high up on the hill they witness the most terrible earthquake in the township....they go back to the town and *that* world? It seems to have been changed, also....!

So, things like this happens to Alex and Margrethe a few more times until the *truly* unspeakable occurs. Let's just say that graves open wide and the occupants seem to be reborn and days, weeks of time pass by for Alex in a warp very similar to a tornado. Very similar to a Dorothy goes to Oz experience. And all that happens afterwards seems to Alex that he is in the place most of the faithful and saved winds up after Judgment Day--the place where he'd always hoped to wind up. But, it turns out not quite as he dreamed...AND...he is without his darling Margrethe! Eternity in heaven, hell or in between for Alex will not be right without Margrethe! See what happens when he finally gets to understand why he has been tried so and how he gets his life back...

In the hands of master yarnsmith Heinlein, Alex's journey becomes an enjoyable, thought provoking personal journey for the reader. The reader can't help but smile when Heinlein tosses in tidbits like 'The Sans Souci Sheridan' and 'Is this Hell? Or Is this Texas?' And the story is a mix of Faustus, Voltaire's "Candide", The Book of Ecclesiastes and the Story of Job. Get it and enjoy.