Old stories ineffectively told. Now, monotheism vs. monotheism: therein hangs a tale. . . .
An unsatisfying survey of dogmatic doings in the ancient world by a popularizer of matters biblical.
L.A. Times book critic and novelist Kirsch (Moses, 1998, etc.) takes a resolutely gods-for-clods tack here, opening with an instantly off-putting advertisement: “On September 11, 2001, we were reminded once again of the real meaning of the 3000-year-old conflict between monotheism and polytheism”—the putative subject here. Were the Twin Towers staffed by druids and animists? Atta and company, after all, were definitively monotheistic. Never mind the answer, for Kirsch has already galloped off to a merry disquisition on the violence that awaits readers of the Bible, where holy war and martyrdom are commonplace and the deserts of the Holy Land flow with rivers of blood. Kirsch settles down for a long treatment of the misunderstandings and unpleasantries that governed interactions among the polytheistic Greeks and Romans and the famously “stiff-necked” Jews, the former wanting “to make sure that they did not forfeit the blessing of the right god by offering worshipping to all gods,” the latter certain that their celestial ruler was the one, true, and incontestable deity. The second view was, of course, inherited by the Christians, who had their own unhappy dealings with the Romans for a few centuries until Julian the Apostate met a Persian (or, Kirsch conjectures, perhaps Christian) spear on a dusty Iranian battlefield and in farewell, gasped, “Thou hast conquered, Galilean!” All well and good, but Kirsch is working well-plowed ground. His analysis, at once sensationalized (“When the Taliban dynamited the Buddhist statuary of Afghanistan, they were heeding the call of the Hebrew Bible”) and incomplete, shades into insignificance next to recent work such as Elaine Pagels’s Beyond Belief and Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities (both 2003).
Old stories ineffectively told. Now, monotheism vs. monotheism: therein hangs a tale. . . .Pub Date: March 8, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03286-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
