THE GOD I WANT

by James- Ed. Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 1967

Creating God has always been one of mankind's favorite pastimes. The difference, of course, between the gods created yesterday and those created today is, that, for the first time, man is willing to admit that he has turned the tables quite nicely on the Creator. The God I Want is a book which admits that; it could easily be entitled, Gods I Have Made, or Gods That I Would Make, If Only ... The nine contributors each sketch out the personality (tri-personality, in the case of the more conventional) of the God whom he or she regards as corresponding to one's ideal divinity. As may be expected, these blueprints range from the skeptical to the ironic, from the naive to the supersophisticated, from the silly to the sublime. Novelist- critic Anthony Burgess' description is probably the most satisfactory and tantalizing of the lot, starting from the premise that the traditional Christian God was one ""wholly dedicated to doing me harm"" and then, via negotionis, constructing a replacement which, if God were alive today, He would find vaguely familiar. The other contributors, both Protestant and Catholic--none of whose names are familiar to the American reader--create along more or less competently, with widely varying degrees of success. The book is an interesting exercise of the imagination, but a bit too much the result of haphazard collecting to be of much interest to the general reader.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION