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I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SLIP SOME BENZEDRINE INTO THIS GUY’S COFFEE
This is a very peculiar novel. I’m not quite sure what the hell it is. Some of it reads like deleted scenes from Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Now be off with you, said God, for I have work to do and can’t stay here chatting all day
Or
Mary : Is there any proof that it was the Lord’s seed which engendered my first-born?
Angel : Well, it’s a delicate matter, and what you’re demanding is nothing less than a paternity test.
The rest of it is a whole lot of mumbling, bumbling, fumbling, irritating, rambling, moaning, groaning, huffing and puffing by a narrator who appears to be some ancient old codger who is a shoo-in for the world finals of the Most Boring Man in the World contest.
AUTHOR VERSUS READER – DING DING, ROUND ONE
Is there any need for this or are we in the land of pretentious literary wankery? Jose Saramago serves us up massive slabs of undifferentiated prose, page after page – he ends a paragraph with extreme reluctance, it’s like pulling teeth with Jose, it’s like asking John Lee Hooker to change chords. Every paragraph is one or two pages long. As for indicators of dialogue, forget it, pal, you’re on your own. The dialogue is run into the giant paragraphs as part of the ongoing flow, and the lines of dialogue are not separated by anything helpful like he said or she said, and not even by full stops, only commas, maybe there was a full stop shortage in Portugal in the late 1980s. I never heard about that, you might think it would have made the news. (“Crates of full stops are still being held up at Lisbon airport as the dispute enters its 9th week”). Anyway, these stylistic choices make the reading a whole lot more annoying and turgid than it might be.
AUTHOR VERSUS READER – DING DING, ROUND TWO
As well as being an old fart, the narrator is a misogynist –
Joseph wondered if he should ask Mary if the pains were still there, but in the end said nothing, for we must not forget that this whole process is unclean from the moment of impregnation until the moment of birth, that horrific female organ, vortex and abyss, the seat of all the world’s evils, an inner labyrinth, blood, sweat, discharges, gushing waters, revolting afterbirth, dear God, how can you permit Your beloved children to be born from such impurity.
WORLD’S MOST BORING MAN – A FEW EXAMPLES
In the first place, there are Samaritans and Samaritans, which means that even at that time one swallow was not enough to make a summer, one needed two, that is to say, two swallows rather than summers, provided there is a fertile male and female and they have offspring.
Suddenly a beggar appeared at the yard gate, a somewhat rare occurrence in this village where people were poor, a fact unlikely to have escaped the begging fraternity which had a nose for places where there were rich pickings for the asking, and this was certainly not the case here.
As for possessions, the only thing Joseph and Job had in common was the number of sons. Job had seven sons and three daughters, while Joseph had seven sons and two daughters, giving the carpenter the advantage of having put one woman less into the world. And there’s no denying that it is one thing to feed two mouths, then a third, even if only indirectly during the first year, and quite another to find oneself saddled with a houseful of children who demand more and more food once they start growing.
This narrator even knows perfectly well how dull he is!
Four years hence, Jesus will meet God. This unexpected revelation, which is probably premature according to the rules of effective narration mentioned earlier, is simply intended to prepare the reader for some everyday scenes from pastoral life which will add little of substance to the main thread of our story, thus excusing any reader who might be tempted to jump ahead.
WAIT – COULD IT BE THAT THIS NARRATOR IS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE A VILLAGE ELDER FROM THE PERIOD? THAT WOULD EXPLAIN ALL THE BORING RAMBLING
But no, this logical explanation is wrecked by comments like the following
It may seem wholly inappropriate to put the complex theories of modern thinkers into the head of a Palestinian who lived so many years before Freud, Jung, Groddeck and Lacan appeared on the scene.
… the only reason why that same Goliath did not become a basketball player is because he was born before his time
Maybe this narrator is deliberately unstable, unpindownable. That would be a nice copout for Jose. Yes, it doesn’t make too much sense, but that’s all calculated. Why? Er, I dunno.
THIS NOVEL MIGHT BE A TONGUE-IN-CHEEK ATHEIST SATIRE ON RELIGION
Because the concept of God as dished out by the old-fart narrator is ridiculously primitive. It appears that in this world God has to negotiate his turf with other gods, and also, in this world, if you are ill it is because you have sinned. Both these ideas can be found in the Bible of course, but at least by the time of Jesus Jewish thought had evolved to the point where they believed that there were no other Gods except the one God. Here’s a few things the narrator says about God :
For in truth, there are things God himself does not understand, even though he created them.
As God warned Eve after she sinned, I will greatly multiply your suffering and your conception, in sorrow you will bring forth children, and after centuries of sorrow and suffering, God is not yet appeased and the agony goes on.
At that time life was hard for the poor and God could not be expected to provide for everyone.
Jesus interrogates Him at one point :
Being God, You must know everything.
Up to a certain point, only up to a certain point.
What point is that?
The point where it starts to become interesting to pretend that I know nothing.
So sometimes it’s like this is all clearly a cheeky satire on religion, and sometimes the intractable concepts of God, salvation, sin and so on are presented as hard painful fact.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOSE SARAMAGO
(Note sort of spoilers follow)
The version of the story of Jesus we get here is a whole different thing from the actual gospels. The single event which dominates the first half of the book is something which is mentioned in only one Gospel (Matthew) and dismissed in three verses, the Massacre of the Innocents (When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old or under ). Joseph discovers Herod’s intention, rescues Mary and his own infant son Jesus, and after they make it back to Nazareth he is consumed by terrible remorse – why did he not warn the families of Bethlehem when he could? Why did he selfishly only rescue his own child? When Jesus learns about this he believes he takes on his father’s guilt, and he becomes obsessed. He leaves his family (aged 13) and joins up with a shepherd, then later with some fishermen where he discovers he has magical powers over fish (yes! I am not making this up, Saramago is, basing it on one of the gospel miracles. But in this book, Jesus makes his living for four years by controlling the fish in the Sea of Galilee!).
Then Jesus meets Mary Magdalene, a prostitute, and they fall in love and start travelling round together as man and wife. He encounters God a couple of times and finally gets God to tell him that he is God’s one and only Son, and that God has a task for him, which is to die a martyr’s death so that his followers can spread the word. And what is the point of it all?
To help me become God of more people says God.
I thought Blindness was a stone 5 star classic, in which the difficult narration perfectly mirrored the desperate difficult plight of the characters, but this Gospel just struck me as very loopy and probably not worth the amount of concentration required to plough through all the unrelenting density.
This is a very peculiar novel. I’m not quite sure what the hell it is. Some of it reads like deleted scenes from Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Now be off with you, said God, for I have work to do and can’t stay here chatting all day
Or
Mary : Is there any proof that it was the Lord’s seed which engendered my first-born?
Angel : Well, it’s a delicate matter, and what you’re demanding is nothing less than a paternity test.
The rest of it is a whole lot of mumbling, bumbling, fumbling, irritating, rambling, moaning, groaning, huffing and puffing by a narrator who appears to be some ancient old codger who is a shoo-in for the world finals of the Most Boring Man in the World contest.
AUTHOR VERSUS READER – DING DING, ROUND ONE
Is there any need for this or are we in the land of pretentious literary wankery? Jose Saramago serves us up massive slabs of undifferentiated prose, page after page – he ends a paragraph with extreme reluctance, it’s like pulling teeth with Jose, it’s like asking John Lee Hooker to change chords. Every paragraph is one or two pages long. As for indicators of dialogue, forget it, pal, you’re on your own. The dialogue is run into the giant paragraphs as part of the ongoing flow, and the lines of dialogue are not separated by anything helpful like he said or she said, and not even by full stops, only commas, maybe there was a full stop shortage in Portugal in the late 1980s. I never heard about that, you might think it would have made the news. (“Crates of full stops are still being held up at Lisbon airport as the dispute enters its 9th week”). Anyway, these stylistic choices make the reading a whole lot more annoying and turgid than it might be.
AUTHOR VERSUS READER – DING DING, ROUND TWO
As well as being an old fart, the narrator is a misogynist –
Joseph wondered if he should ask Mary if the pains were still there, but in the end said nothing, for we must not forget that this whole process is unclean from the moment of impregnation until the moment of birth, that horrific female organ, vortex and abyss, the seat of all the world’s evils, an inner labyrinth, blood, sweat, discharges, gushing waters, revolting afterbirth, dear God, how can you permit Your beloved children to be born from such impurity.
WORLD’S MOST BORING MAN – A FEW EXAMPLES
In the first place, there are Samaritans and Samaritans, which means that even at that time one swallow was not enough to make a summer, one needed two, that is to say, two swallows rather than summers, provided there is a fertile male and female and they have offspring.
Suddenly a beggar appeared at the yard gate, a somewhat rare occurrence in this village where people were poor, a fact unlikely to have escaped the begging fraternity which had a nose for places where there were rich pickings for the asking, and this was certainly not the case here.
As for possessions, the only thing Joseph and Job had in common was the number of sons. Job had seven sons and three daughters, while Joseph had seven sons and two daughters, giving the carpenter the advantage of having put one woman less into the world. And there’s no denying that it is one thing to feed two mouths, then a third, even if only indirectly during the first year, and quite another to find oneself saddled with a houseful of children who demand more and more food once they start growing.
This narrator even knows perfectly well how dull he is!
Four years hence, Jesus will meet God. This unexpected revelation, which is probably premature according to the rules of effective narration mentioned earlier, is simply intended to prepare the reader for some everyday scenes from pastoral life which will add little of substance to the main thread of our story, thus excusing any reader who might be tempted to jump ahead.
WAIT – COULD IT BE THAT THIS NARRATOR IS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE A VILLAGE ELDER FROM THE PERIOD? THAT WOULD EXPLAIN ALL THE BORING RAMBLING
But no, this logical explanation is wrecked by comments like the following
It may seem wholly inappropriate to put the complex theories of modern thinkers into the head of a Palestinian who lived so many years before Freud, Jung, Groddeck and Lacan appeared on the scene.
… the only reason why that same Goliath did not become a basketball player is because he was born before his time
Maybe this narrator is deliberately unstable, unpindownable. That would be a nice copout for Jose. Yes, it doesn’t make too much sense, but that’s all calculated. Why? Er, I dunno.
THIS NOVEL MIGHT BE A TONGUE-IN-CHEEK ATHEIST SATIRE ON RELIGION
Because the concept of God as dished out by the old-fart narrator is ridiculously primitive. It appears that in this world God has to negotiate his turf with other gods, and also, in this world, if you are ill it is because you have sinned. Both these ideas can be found in the Bible of course, but at least by the time of Jesus Jewish thought had evolved to the point where they believed that there were no other Gods except the one God. Here’s a few things the narrator says about God :
For in truth, there are things God himself does not understand, even though he created them.
As God warned Eve after she sinned, I will greatly multiply your suffering and your conception, in sorrow you will bring forth children, and after centuries of sorrow and suffering, God is not yet appeased and the agony goes on.
At that time life was hard for the poor and God could not be expected to provide for everyone.
Jesus interrogates Him at one point :
Being God, You must know everything.
Up to a certain point, only up to a certain point.
What point is that?
The point where it starts to become interesting to pretend that I know nothing.
So sometimes it’s like this is all clearly a cheeky satire on religion, and sometimes the intractable concepts of God, salvation, sin and so on are presented as hard painful fact.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOSE SARAMAGO
(Note sort of spoilers follow)
The version of the story of Jesus we get here is a whole different thing from the actual gospels. The single event which dominates the first half of the book is something which is mentioned in only one Gospel (Matthew) and dismissed in three verses, the Massacre of the Innocents (When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old or under ). Joseph discovers Herod’s intention, rescues Mary and his own infant son Jesus, and after they make it back to Nazareth he is consumed by terrible remorse – why did he not warn the families of Bethlehem when he could? Why did he selfishly only rescue his own child? When Jesus learns about this he believes he takes on his father’s guilt, and he becomes obsessed. He leaves his family (aged 13) and joins up with a shepherd, then later with some fishermen where he discovers he has magical powers over fish (yes! I am not making this up, Saramago is, basing it on one of the gospel miracles. But in this book, Jesus makes his living for four years by controlling the fish in the Sea of Galilee!).
Then Jesus meets Mary Magdalene, a prostitute, and they fall in love and start travelling round together as man and wife. He encounters God a couple of times and finally gets God to tell him that he is God’s one and only Son, and that God has a task for him, which is to die a martyr’s death so that his followers can spread the word. And what is the point of it all?
To help me become God of more people says God.
I thought Blindness was a stone 5 star classic, in which the difficult narration perfectly mirrored the desperate difficult plight of the characters, but this Gospel just struck me as very loopy and probably not worth the amount of concentration required to plough through all the unrelenting density.
