God Knows

by Joseph Heller

[jamiereadthis]

I was the kid in Sunday school the poor teachers must’ve hated: peeking behind the curtain, pulling the strings on our tidy little Bible lessons to go wide-eyed and watch the real, wild Bible go up in flames. I guess it’s a habit I never outgrew. So there you have me, ever the rebel kid still, relishing the secret that behind all those prettily bow-tied morals are wild kings and bloodbaths and blasphemous sacrilege that no one’s paying any mind.

And here you have Joseph Heller. Since Catch-22 I’ve never wanted to read another of his novels, as one of the two highest compliments possible. I definitely didn’t want to read the sequel to Yossarian in Closing Time (how could I, when the first is so perfect?), and wouldn’t the others just be shadows of that beloved one too? Like that favorite song on an album where the rest can never live up. All because I had no idea Heller took on King David. As soon as I saw this book on the library shelf I jumped on the premise as ecstatic as Joab on that fifth rib.

Ohh-h, did I love this book. Through and through, wrestling Catch-22 like Samson with a hand tied behind his back. The old Sunday-school feeling of getting deep over my head in trouble, of “Oh-h I am gonna get it for this,” only made the pleasure that much sweeter. I don’t think there’s much middle ground for it, either. I think you have to love it or you have to hate it with a fiery, book-burning passion.

Which should be just as much fun.

Leave it to Heller to read the same Bible I have. The Bible that isn’t tidy, that doesn’t make sense, that isn’t abstract saints in stained glass. It’s full of people who are complex and tainted and do belligerent and insensible things. Who are as brave and scared shitless as any of us, who are bursting with love and hate and cruelty and the most dangerous kind of humanity and passion. They laugh. They live. They royally screw up and get royally screwed. And I can’t help but think, this is the David those old stories are trying to tell. Not the serene shepherd, the psalmist, the stalwart king. No: the scrappy, stubborn, cocky, off his rocker, wild, maddening, bitter, beloved kid, utterly sincere and utterly full of shit, heels over head for Bathsheba, burning the kingdom down in flames. The chosen king of this nonsensical God, a God of cryptic riddles, burning bushes and incomprehensible demands. We’re the ones that tried to tame it into sainthood. We’re the ones that do the story in all of its human absurdity the injustice.

Heller’s just someone putting a little flesh and blood back onto the bones: deftly, hilariously, reverently irreverent, with that turn of the knife in your heart all along.

I’m just the one over here, loving every word of it.