Badpuppy Gay Today

Thursday, 17 April 1997

After being critiqued only last week by columnist Maureen Dowd as irrelevant to today's readers, Norman Mailer has returned to bathe under the spotlight with a controversial new book, "The Gospel According to the Son," in which the founder of Christianity reputedly represents himself. Jesus' self-image comes across in Mailer's work as peevish and irksome, a cranky, somewhat sarcastic snob who suffers difficult bouts of lust.

Though humanized biographies of Jesus are common (Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus, written in the last century, portrayed the human side of Christ) accounts of his life written as though by Jesus himself are, perhaps, unprecedented among famed novelists. Outraged critics have already accused Mailer of being afflicted with exceeding hubris. One announced that Mailer should "thank heaven" Christians don't issue fatwas (the death sentence passed on such as Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollahs). Mailer's fame was launched decades ago with "The Naked and the Dead," a war story. Remembered in his younger days as a macho brawler, Mailer remains, nevertheless, a significant American literary figure still working in the last half the 20th century.

Other history-prone novelists, such as Gore Vidal, are known for summoning unconventional images of the first Christian as well. In Vidal's 1992 novel, "Live From Golgotha," Jesus is described by the author through the eyes of a tap-dancing St. Paul: "Wide as he was tall, Jesus waddled toward me...That face, Those luminous eyes hidden somewhere in all that golden fat. The ineffable smile like the first slice of a honeydew melon."

Mailer's Jesus and his Father God, are a limited pair in "The Gospel According to the Son," and while the Father God ---the character known in Vidal's writing as 'The Sky God'--gets respect, he's somewhat distant. Mailer's Jesus lacks self-confidence, especially when he reflects on his role as Savior. His memory is also riddled with blank spots. In Mailer's account Jesus forgets he was miraculously born, while insisting the Virgin Mother fails to comprehend him.

Miracles, Mailer allows, are among Jesus' continuing sources of apprehension. He fears that with each usage, his powers decline. One reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, says that Mailer's Jesus seems "less the historical personage we have come to know as Jesus, (never mind the Christian Savior), than just another chatty cult leader." Kukutani also says that "sometimes Mr. Mailer's Jesus sounds an awful lot like a guest on Oprah. Sometimes he sounds like Do and Ti (aka Bo and Peep, Pig and Guinea). And sometimes he sounds like Luke Skywalker, the appretice Jedi trying to master the Force."

Author Kate Millett once critiqued what she called Norman Mailer's obsession with violence, quoting from "The Naked and the Dead," to highlight Mailer's connections between violence and sex, writing of "the phallus shell that rides through a vagina of steel."