The Gospel According to the Son (1997)

There's a significant temptation here to make fun of Norman Mailer for choosing to tell the Jesus story in the first person—colossal ego, overweening self-aggrandizement, etc. Perhaps not surprisingly, Satan is the most vivid and interesting character in the whole slender thing, which is about the size of a book of the Bible. He is more interesting than Jesus, God, and all the disciples. And Joseph and Mary too. I have to admit Mailer is probably better than anyone else who ever told this story on Jesus' carpentry, which after all is what he spent most of his life doing. Curiouser and curiouser. Between Ancient Evenings and this it's apparent Mailer had a reasonably informed interest in the ancient world. He also had some batty and/or stimulating ideas about good and evil, and God and Satan, which he interjected into much of what he wrote willy-nilly along the way. The Gospel According to the Son is almost pure willy and nilly. It's brief and easy to read—you'll recognize most of the story if you ever went to Sunday school—but as with Ancient Evenings I'm not sure why it exists. As it turns out, Mailer's Jesus is a lot like Mailer, an improv artist on a mission he doesn't understand himself, though his faith is strong. This version includes the miracles—water into wine, fishes and loaves, walking on the water, etc.—so it's one of "those" gospels. This Jesus is aware of and has quarrels with the few gospel writers who made it into the New Testament (namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). According to this Jesus they all got parts of the story way wrong. Jesus' feelings toward them sound like an aggrieved novelist pouting about bad reviews. That's pretty funny, but I'm not sure Mailer intended any of this to be funny. There's an air of sanctimony and self-seriousness to it too (which is also funny, so he seems to be having it both ways a lot with this one). This Jesus is telling the story from centuries beyond the grave (such as it is)—in the 20th century, to put a date on it. This Jesus is no hippie, nor warrior for the Second Amendment. He's steely in some ways, unfocused and wishy-washy in others. Come to think of it, in our culture it might actually make sense for everyone to write their own gospel, except that would require mandatory Sunday school in every child's life and that's probably going too far. The title is wrong, of course. This is the gospel according to Mailer, albeit told from the point of view of Jesus. So it's Norman Mailer wearing a Jesus mask, if you can imagine. Still, as long as something as fundamental as our system of counting time still revolves around Jesus, we probably need new gospels like this all the time. So I take it back about not knowing why it exists. In fact, it's amazing to me that there aren't more of these.

In case it's not at the library.