Inconvenience Store
BOOK REVIEW: The Life Of God (As Told By Himself)
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.
A lifetime resident (despite having travelled all over the damn place at one time or another) of Central Florida, James MacLaren took a four-year degree in death thrills riding giant waves on the North Shore back in the 70's. Wound up in the inconvenience store following a lay off from the Cape, where he was involved with the construction of the Space Shuttle launch pads, among other things. Father of best son in the world.
