The Gospel According to the Son - Hardcover

Mailer, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679457836 ISBN 13: 9780679457831

Publisher: Random House, 1997

Synopsis

For two thousand years, the brief ministry of a young Nazarene preacher has remained the largest single determinant of Western civilization's triumphs and disasters. Now, Norman Mailer has written a novel about Jesus's life. Is God speaking to me? Jesus asks. Or am I hearing voices? If the voices are from God, why has He chosen me as His son? And if they are not from God, then who gave me the power to perform these miracles?

It soon becomes evident that we are being told the story of a skilled and most devout carpenter who is living with prodigious questions. The result is an intimately readable account of a man thrust forward by the visions he receives, the sermons he offers, and the miracles he enacts until he comes to the apocalyptic end of his powers.

The Gospel According to the Son vividly recreates the world of Galilee and Jerusalem two thousand years ago. In a time of uneasy stability, the Holy Land is governed by a complacent but fearful establishment who rule over a despairing underclass -- it is a time of great change, open to comparison with our own. Mailer's signal accomplishment is to create for us a man wholly unlike others who is nonetheless filled with passion and doubt, strength and weakness; a protagonist divine and human, a son of God who shares our condition.

In The Gospel According to the Son, one of America's greatest living writers has brought us a remarkable book -- by turns bold, thoughtful, poetic, tragic, passionate, and, to our surprise and pleasure, suspenseful.

About this title

About the Author

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Harvard, he served as a rifleman in the South Pacific during World War II. He published his first book, The Naked and the Dead, in 1948. The Gospel According to the Son is his thirtieth book. Mailer won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for The Armies of the Night and was awarded the Pulitzer prize again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song. He has directed four feature-length films, was a co-founder of The Village Voice in 1955, ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York in 1969, and was President of the American PEN from 1984 to 1986.

From the Inside Flap

sand years, the brief ministry of a young Nazarene preacher has remained the largest single determinant of Western civilization's triumphs and disasters. Now, Norman Mailer has written a novel about Jesus's life. Is God speaking to me? Jesus asks. Or am I hearing voices? If the voices are from God, why has He chosen me as His son? And if they are not from God, then who gave me the power to perform these miracles?

It soon becomes evident that we are being told the story of a skilled and most devout carpenter who is living with prodigious questions. The result is an intimately readable account of a man thrust forward by the visions he receives, the sermons he offers, and the miracles he enacts until he comes to the apocalyptic end of his powers.

The Gospel According to the Son vividly recreates the world of Galilee and Jerusalem two thousand years ago. In a time of uneasy stability, the Holy Land is governed by a complacent but fearful establishment who rule over a

Reviews

One of the most curious products of Mailer's perpetually surprising career, this gracefully written short novel chronicles the life of Jesus, as told by Himself long after his crucifixion and assumption into heaven. Making continual references to the four traditional gospels (whose authors are gently chided for their inaccuracies and exaggerations), Mailer's Jesus offers a generally plainspoken and sometimes plodding account of his youth and apprenticeship in Nazareth, his acceptance of the burden with which the voice of God charges him, his ministry and miracles, encounters with the Pharisees and conviction for blasphemy, and his death at Golgotha. There's real tension, and little glints of inventive power, in such episodes as Jesus's temptation by a suave Satan, and his exorcism of the giant Legion and destruction of the Gadarene swine. But many other passages (most flagrantly, the Sermon on the Mount) amount to no more than flat paraphrase. Occasional flashes of Mailer's pugnacious intellectual gamesmanship surge through in his characterization of a Jesus who devoutly recalls and recites the wisdom of the Old Testament (in one arresting sequence, his rescue of the woman taken in adultery is followed by his memory of the most sensual verses in the ``Song of Solomon''), and in random vivid metaphor (``I could feel the love of God. . . like an animal of heavenly beauty. Its eyes glowed in my heart''). Yet the text is marred by anachronistic lapses in tone, and one waits in vain for fuller development of the God-vs.-Devil dialectic that elsewhere dominates Mailer's fiction (though it must be said that this novel's God explains Himself rather more than the biblical one ever did). Only Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate emerge as even perfunctorily characterized individuals; everyone and everything else is subordinated to the narrator's exploration of his mission and his nature. It's lucid, competent, to all appearances sincere--and thoroughly unexceptional. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This novel is exactly what it sounds like: the gospel story retold from Christ's point of view. Although Mailer treats his New Testament sources with respect, Jesus turns out to be just the sort of character one would expect to find in a Norman Mailer novel. He is embarrassed by his Jewish mother and complains that God the Father barely speaks to him. He questions his success in healing the sick and struggles with his growing celebrity. Worse, he waffles on crucial issues like voluntary poverty, alienating Judas and other hardcore revolutionaries. Of particular interest is the central role Mailer assigns to Satan. Jesus believes that God and Satan are equally matched and that neither one will ever get the upper hand. In short, Mailer has concocted a profoundly heretical "gnostic" gospel. The problem is that few readers will have much interest in Mailer's theology, and, taken simply as a novel, the book leaves much to be desired. Recommended mainly for comprehensive collections of Mailer's work.
-?Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angeles
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

No matter what Mailer's books are about, they really seem to be about him; too often, his indefatigable personality casts itself like a shadow over his material. (Remember the excesses of Ancient Evenings?) His latest book, though, remarkably escapes Mailer's own image. This time, in standing back and letting his work speak for itself, he offers a limpid, nonflamboyant novel set in the historical past. In form, this is a first-person account of the life of Jesus, who deems it necessary to provide his autobiography, since "while I would not say that Mark's gospel is false, it has much exaggeration. And I would offer less for Matthew, and for Luke and John, who gave me words I never uttered." Being well versed in history and theology stands Mailer in good stead, as does the flair for engaging storytelling he's forged to perfection. The result is that Jesus' extraordinariness is given not only a history but also a believability. Of particular interest are the relationships Mailer has drawn between Jesus and Mary and between Jesus and his disciples. Students of the Bible will find food for thought; fiction readers, particularly Mailer's fans, will discover a provocatively imagined historical novel. Brad Hooper

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In those days, I was the one who came down from Nazareth to be baptized by John in the River Jordan. And the gospel of Mark would declare that on my immersion, the heavens opened, and I saw "a spirit like a dove descending." A mighty voice said "You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." Then the Spirit drove me into the wilderness, and I was there for forty days, and was tempted by Satan.

While I would not say that Mark's gospel is without truth, I would say that it is much exaggerated. And I would offer less for Matthew, Luke and John who gave me words I never uttered, and described me as gentle when I was pale with rage. Their words were written many years after I was gone, and only repeat what other men told them. Very old men. Such tales are to be leaned upon no more than a bush that is cut away from its root and blown about by the wind.

So I will try to give my own account. For those who ask how my words have come to this page, I would tell them to look upon all that is here as no more than a small miracle. (My gospel, after all, will speak of miracles.) Yet, I hope to remain closer to the truth ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679457836
• ISBN 13: 9780679457831
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242