BOOK REVIEW: The Life Of God (As Told By Himself)

by James MacLaren

Franco Ferruci, 1996, University of Chicago Press

Goodness sakes alive, whatever can I properly say about this one? Just put it

down and I know that I need to say something before the memories of the read

start to shimmer and disappear into the mists of my own personal past.

Even God Himself has problems with His memory, to which he freely admits

throughout this wonderful, inexplicable, occasionally annoying, oftentimes

rewarding tale.

The thing operates at several levels simultaneously, and steadfastly refuses to

maintain any one guise.

Part of the attraction of the book is how it has the uncanny ability to keep you

expecting something really cool about to happen shortly, but never delivering.

All the while, feeding you all sorts of other things that you weren’t really

expecting and that after suitable contemplation, you discover were quite cool in

and of themselves. At which point, you go right back into expecting all over

again, only to be rewarded as before. Weird.

Outrageously iconoclastic, the story rebuilds the icons, phoenix-like, from

their own clasts.

Moses is an ambitious bastard, up to no good.

Mary is a prostitute.

Jesus drank too much.

God’s not fully in control of pretty much anything at all, especially those

things He creates, and is stumped for answers to even the most simple of questions.

And yet, despite the story’s wry distortions, epic questions get puzzled over

and given their due.

And the due they are given is worthy.

Damned if I know what to say about this thing.

Read it, memorize it as best as possible, and then go regurgitate it all over

the hardshell, fundamentalist, dipshit of your choosing. Add, embellish, and

generally modify things as whim and circumstance dictate.

This fucker’s got some awfully good bullets packed away inside of it.

Put them to the use for which they were intended.