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BLASPHEMY

VERBAL OFFENSE AGAINST THE SACRED, FROM MOSES TO SALMAN RUSHDIE

In an eloquent, monumental study that retraces some of the ground covered in his Treason Against God (1981), Levy (Humanities/Claremont Graduate School; Original Intent and the Framers' Constitution, 1988) recounts the often shameful history in the West of ``the suppression of freedom of expression in the field of religious belief and experience.'' Although Levy focuses on the development of the concept, plus the common law, of blasphemy in the Anglo-American tradition, he covers the evolution of the offense everywhere in Judeo-Christian thought through the Reformation (Christian thinkers, he says, expanded the technical ancient Jewish understanding of blasphemy to encompass idolatry, heresy, sacrilege, and related offenses of nonconformist thinking). Both the ancient Church and, later, Protestantism gave birth to fluid, heterodox religious cultures in which politically powerful factions established standards of religious orthodoxy and punished nonconformists as heretics and blasphemers. Showing how flexible the offense of blasphemy became, Levy recounts 17th-century English persecutions of nonconformist Christians (leading to a 1676 holding that ``Christian religion is part of the law itself''); persecutions of Protestant sects in Colonial America; and 18th-century prosecutions for obscenity. The author surveys the gradually dwindling number of prosecutions in 19th- and 20th-century England and America, culminating in the 1976 Gay News case in which a British court held as blasphemous a homosexual poem about Jesus, and in the confused reaction of the British legal establishment to The Satanic Verses (unquestionably blasphemous under Islamic law). Levy concludes that ``the feculent odor of persecution for the cause of conscience, which is the basic principle upon which blasphemy laws rest, has not yet dissipated.'' While the criminal law of blasphemy may appear to be ``in a persistent vegetative state,'' Levy does a service in pointing out that prosecutions of people on religious grounds aren't unthinkable—and indeed sometimes still occur.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-679-40236-5

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

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

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THE BOOK OF GENESIS ILLUSTRATED

An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.

The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.

R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.

An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009

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