"Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan

 

 

No doubt like many other people, I first heard about Reza Aslan and his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013) on NPR in reference to an interview he had had on Fox News. For a week or so, a ridiculous controversy arose about if a Moslem could write about what Christians call the Old and New Testaments. My feeling is that anyone who can find a publisher can write and publish a book about whatever he wants. The question should be is it a book worth reading.

In Zealot, Aslan sets out to separate the historical Jesus of Nazareth from Jesus Christ the Son of God around whom modern Christianity is formed. It’s a reasonable inquiry. After I returned from a pilgrimage in Spain in 2000, I started rereading the Christian Bible and became interested in the historical Jesus, too. And like Aslan, I read John Dominic Crossan’s works The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant and Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography as well as other books and articles by Crossan and other writers. To me, it has been and still is a rewarding exercise that has helped my meditations each time I read the New Testament.

The search for the historical Jesus of Nazareth is an incredible challenge. After all, the books the New Testament itself were written after the crucifixion. Nevertheless, Aslan has done an excellent job of extracting the Galilean from what was written about him after his death and placing him within his own social, economic, political and religious times. Aslan then makes some interesting conclusions about the rise of Jesus Christ the Son of God after the death of Jesus of Nazareth also by looking at the historical times when the letters of Paul, the four gospels and the rest of the New Testament were written (with the exception of Revelations).

Besides the narrative itself, Aslan includes a meaty “Author’s Notes” section where he discusses his sources and some of his reasoning and conclusions. He also has a lengthy bibliography of the books and articles that he has read for those readers who are also interested in taking up the modern quest for the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Since coming back from Spain in 2000, I have tried to read the Christian Bible every year and I try to read the New Testament an additional time during the Lenten season. Before starting that exercise (but sometimes during or after), I enjoy reading some other book which will stimulate my own meditations about what I’m reading. Aslan’s Zealot would be a worthwhile read before reading the New Testament, and I heartily recommend it.

When I finish reading any book, there are three questions that I ask myself: Is this book worth buying? Is this book worth rereading? Would it be worthwhile to read something else by the same writer? My answers for Zealot: The Life and Times Jesus of Nazareth are yes, yes and yes.

20 September 2013

Harvest moon rising
along a lunar-lit path__
strolling moon shadows

summer morning rain

summer morning rain
drops wash away desert dust
overcast skies gray
soothing restorative balm
soothing
restorative
calm

"A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway

I decided to read A Moveable Feast after reading and enjoying Enrique Vila-Matas’ novel Never Any End to Paris which was inspired in part by this Hemingway favorite . In some ways, it was about time. I had known about the attraction of this book and the idea of a young artist run off to the Left Bank to find his self. Julio Cortazar had done just that in the 1950s; his reminiscents are recorded in Hopscotch. Roberto Bolaño leaves his impression of being in Paris in The Savage Detectives. A descendent of Hemingway used the title in a similarly-titled cookbook filled with recipes for picnic foods. When you consider how poor and hungry Hemmingway was during his time in Paris, the appropriation of the memoir’s title might be considered facetious.
The book was written at the end of the author’s life and published after his death. It’s about the beginnings of his literary career when he was working on his first great novel The Sun Also Rises. With him in Paris were other members of the Lost Generation (so named by his mentor Gertrude Stein) including James Joyce, Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Besides recounting his adventures and impressions with them and others, the memoir is a testimony to his love for his first wife Hadley and the time they spent together in the City of Light.
This was a good book; I recommend it to all Hemingway fans.

"Never Any End to Paris" by Enrique Vila-Matas

 

 

Like Ernest Hemmingway in the 1920s and Julio Cortazar in the 1950s, well-known and award-winning Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas spent two years in the 1970s finding himself by losing himself in the City of Lights. The author recounts his adventures and misadventures in the 2003 novel Paris no se acaba nunca which was translated by Anne McLean in 2011 as Never Any End to Paris. The book is supposed to be a tale about a modern day writer who is giving a seminar workshop on irony. By the end of the book, however, that façade has faded away, and the author is talking directly to his readers about his experiences.

What a strange and wonderful time this young man had living in the Left Bank during the 1970s in a garret at the house of Marguerite Duras as he wrote his first novel. He crossed paths with people like playwright Samuel Beckett, author Jorge Luis Borges, actress Jean Seberg, costumer designer Paloma Picasso and other well-known people who were drawn to Paris as a center of culture and celebrity. He also knew many other young artists who would later become famous, but at that time they were just getting started in their respective careers. In fact, I encourage you to have your computer or tablet handy to google the different people that you’ll encounter in this book. I did, and now I have a new list of books I want to read.

This is a wonderful book that runs the gamut of reminiscences from laugh-out-loud funny to quite quite sad. It is also in its own way a very good study of irony and an interesting meditation on the craft of writing.

"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell

I became interested in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell after seeing the preview of the movie starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and others. While reading the book, I got to see the movie, and while both were good, they however were quite different. But let me come back to that.

Mitchell describes what the Cloud Atlas is the book as a "sextet for overlapping soloists . . . each in its own language of key, scale and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finish, and by then it'll be too late."

What results is a set of six novellas one nested inside another that extend from the 19th Century to somewhere in the future. Each story is linked to the story that occurs before it in time. Each story has its own distinct language and style. And each story is linked together by having one its characters have in a birthmark in the shape of a comet that represents the universal theme of all six stories. Here is where the book differs from the movie.

In the movie, the uniting theme is union of a love between two souls. That theme is better expressed, though, in Laura Esquivel's La Ley del Amor [The Law of Love], a great book that's also cleverly presented. This book’s uniting theme, however, centers around the idea that there are two types in this world: those that exploit and those that are exploited be it by bullies, murderers, cultural institutions, corporate greed, genetic engineering or whatever. The comet birthmark represents the resistance to being exploited unjustly, or as Dylan Thomas wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

"Snakes and Earrings" by Hitomi Kanehara

This is an odd disturbing little book. In fact, I had to read it twice. Hitomi Kanehara’s 2005 novel Hebi ni piasu, which was translated by David James Karashima also in 2005 as Snakes and Earrings, is set in the dark side of Tokyo’s youth culture. The narrator is a young woman named Lui who recounts her relationship with Ama, a boy friend who she met at a strange bar. He was the scariest-looking guy there.

Besides having a face full of earrings, Ama has an unique body modification: his tongue is forked at the end like a snake’s; he also has a large distinctive-looking dragon tattoo. Lui becomes fascinated and follows Ama home. The next day they go to meet Shiba-san who is the artist that gave Ama both his split tongue and large tattoo.

So it is, that Lui who up this point been a Barbie girl type-complete with blonde hair-is drawn into the punk/goth world of Japanese counterculture and into the lives of two very dangerous men. What disturbed me about this book after the first reading was Lui’s seeming ennui and nihilism. Like Meursault in Camus’ The Stranger, Lui simply reports what happens to herself and the world around her in a matter-of-fact way. She also reminded me of what NPR commenter Andrei Codrescu once said that one reason why goths and punks like tattoos and body piercings was that the pain of receiving them was the only thing that broke through the ennui.

On the second reading, however, I decided that Lui was no Meursault. She tries to shape the world around her so she can live the way she wants to live. And while she wants to be different, she knows that there are boundaries. When Ama tries to give her an inappropriate token of his affection, for example, she responds “That’s no symbol of love. At least not in Japan.” So there are limits to her rebellion.

This is author Hitomi Kanehara first novel. It won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. She is the youngest writer to win this important Japanese literary award. Interestingly one of the judges was Ryu Murakami. His first novel Almost Transparent Blue also won the Akutagawa Price back in 1976. His book, not surprisingly, was as disturbing as Snakes and Earrings.

This book was a good read; I look forward to reading more by Hitomi Kanehara.