CASSANDRA MISREADS THE BOOK OF SAMUEL

Though witty and erudite, these tales could have been left “untold.”

In a new collection that springs from his participation in the esteemed Gotham Writers Workshop, Rothstein takes stories from the Hebrew Bible and tells them from new perspectives in modern language. The author hopes to provide a fresh context for oft-told biblical tales, infusing them with life by allowing readers to see the material with new eyes. He succeeds to a certain extent. His retellings are detailed and scholarly, as they should be given the author’s doctorate in Jewish History from Harvard. The problem, however, is the same one that bogs down most attempts to elaborate upon the Biblical text, including those of Joseph Heller, Zora Neale Hurston and, more recently, Anita Diamant. Literary critic Erich Auerbach identified the greatness of the Bible in its sparseness, famously describing the text as “fraught with background.” It is as notable for what it does not say as for what it does. Efforts to fill in the Bible’s narrative gaps–no matter how well intentioned–disseminate the sublime sense of mystery. Thus Cassandra was doomed from the start, but the book is also flawed. Rothstein’s efforts to modernize the Bible often come off as flip–too superficial for such a foundational text. One first senses the encroaching campiness when a young Israelite, fresh out of Egypt and wandering the wilderness after the Passover, asks his mother, “Oh, and could you pass more manna, please?” By the time readers come upon the story of the minor prophet Hosea from the mouth of a literary agent, they may have had enough.

A clever but unnecessary project.