A fine gag gift for Southerners or Christians with a sense of humor.
The Passion of the Christ meets The Dukes of Hazzard in this interpretation of the Gospel of John written in a slangy, Southern dialect.
Not much is sacred in this sacred text, which stumbles down the line separating good-natured yuks and what some straitlaced Yanks might consider blasphemy. The Hillbilly Bible introduces John the Baptist and Jesus, and then chronicles the Savior’s ministry, miracles, Last Supper, arrest, crucifixion, resurrection and appearance before his disciples. However, it’s not your mother’s King James Bible. Jesus is accused of being a snake-oil salesman. Judas Iscariot is referred to as a booger. And anything that Jesus says that might come across as mysterious is quickly dumbed down and explained away in blunt Southern laymen’s terms. Still, Rey keeps to the message that those who believe in Jesus will attain everlasting life. A self-proclaimed “writer, humorist and rock star wannabe” from Memphis, Rey did his homework for this project, reading four versions of the Book of John before channeling it into Good Ol’ Boy argot. The Book of John is kind of the redheaded stepchild of the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with its content differing from that of the first three–referred to as the synoptic Gospels. Unlike the others, the Book of John recounts Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It is more explicit in its explanation of the Trinity: God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It also has a more evangelical tone–a good pick for Rey, who encourages readers to spread the good news like peanut butter.
A fine gag gift for Southerners or Christians with a sense of humor.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-6151-7925-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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