With brilliant and audacious strokes, the author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate creates a breathtaking collage of memories, events, visions, and provocative thought, all centered on the idea of a modern reality of God. At the heart of this stylistically daring and dazzling inventive tour-de-force is a riveting detective story about a cross that vanishes from a Lower-East-Side church, only to reappear on the roof of an Upper-West-Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery--and by the Episcopal priest and female rabbi who investigate the strange desecration--is a well-known novelist whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age.
Employing a multi-voiced narrative that perfectly captures the riffs and rhythms of latter-day New York, then broadens to implicate a cast of characters including scientists, war veterans, prelates, Holocaust survivors, cabinet members, theologians, filmmakers, and crooners, City of God is E. L. Doctorow's most ambitious and intensely personal work. Vast in scope, biblical in tone, it is a monumental work of spiritual reflection, philosophy, and history by America's preeminent novelist and chronicler of our time.
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Let's return, however, to that mystery. In the early pages of the novel, an enormous brass cross is pilfered from a church on the Lower East Side. Father Thomas Pemberton of St. Timothy's promptly sets off in search of it, dubbing himself the Divinity Detective. Yet he suspects from the start that this is no ordinary theft, with no ordinary solution:
So now these people, whoever they are, have lifted our cross. It bothered me at first. But now I'm beginning to see it differently. That whoever stole the cross had to do it. And wouldn't that be blessed? Christ going where He is needed?Where He seems to be needed is the opposite side of the ecumenical aisle. The cross turns up on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism, a tiny Manhattan institution to which Pemberton has clearly been led by fate. His encounter with the synagogue's rabbinical duo--a husband-and-wife team struggling to reclaim a pre-scriptural state of "unmediated awe"--transforms his life. It also destroys what's left of his conventional Christian belief. Augustine's spin on original sin, for example, now strikes him as "a nifty little act of deconstruction--passing it on to the children, like HIV." And as his relationship with Judaism deepens, he discards the clerical collar altogether and embarks upon a penitential exploration of the Holocaust--which in turn allows Doctorow to loop his narrative back and forth between several generations of (mostly) Jew and Gentile.
Astonishingly enough, the foregoing only scratches the surface of City of God. This marvelous hybrid also includes a metafictional framework (i.e., an author-as-character with a rather Doctorovian resume), an ongoing rumination on city life, and a dozen other major strands and minor players. There are, not surprisingly, a number of misfires. For example, Doctorow has long been interested in the power of American popular song--in the way that, say, Gershwin's work has come to function as a kind of secular hymnal. Yet the author's postmodernist variations on the standards, which appear at regular intervals throughout the novel under the ominous rubric of "The Midrash Jazz Quartet Plays the Standards," are jaw-droppingly awful. One might also argue that the book is too centrifugal, too devoted to the storytelling principle of the big bang. Still, there is an undeniable power to the way Doctorow makes his fictional worlds collide, setting off all manner of historical and philosophical conflagrations. At one point he imagines "the totality of intimate human narrations / composing a hymn to enlightenment / if that were possible." A tall order, yes. But despite its occasional longueurs, City of God suggests that it's possible indeed. --James Marcus
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Good Condition hard cover 272 pages. Seller Inventory # 029906
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. City Of God This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. Seller Inventory # 7719-9780316854702
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. Seller Inventory # 6545-9780316854702
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Book Description Condition: Very Good. Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. Seller Inventory # 39897210-20
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Book Description Trade Paperback. Condition: Near Fine. Trade Paperback. *** PUBLISHING DETAILS: Little, Brown, UK, 2000. *** CONDITION: This book is in near fine condition. *** ABOUT THIS BOOK: In the autumn of 1999, the large brass cross behind the altar of St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in lower Manhattan disappears - and mysteriously reappears on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism. The church's maverick rector and young rabbinical couple who lead the synagogue set about attempting to learn who the vandals are. *** Quantity Available: 1. Category: Fiction; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; ISBN: 0316854700. ISBN/EAN: 9780316854702. Inventory No: 10050207. The photo of this book is of the actual book for sale. Seller Inventory # 10050207
Book Description Large Softcover. Condition: Good. First UK Trade Paperback Edition. Large softcover, first UK trade paperback edition, 460gms, 272 pages. Book is in good condition with minor general wear and tear and light page discolouration/spotting throughout, otherwise no other pre-loved markings. Seller Inventory # GENFIC10047