by Kelly Pickerill
I recently read The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman, and when I was finished, because I read books from cover to cover (reading the acknowledgments, the “note about the font,” and even glancing at the Library of Congress info) (I know, I’m a nerd), I saw at the end that it’s the latest book in The Myths series.
“Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives,” the last page of the book reads, “they explore our desires, our fears, our longings and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human. The Myths series brings together some of the world’s finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way.”
Books in the series include Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Alexander McCall Smith’s Dream Angus, and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight. There are 14 books in all, and I’d like to collect all of them, so I started the other day by picking up Atwood’s and Winterson’s books at Lemuria.
Atwood’s novel, The Penelopiad, is essentially The Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view. In the book you witness first-hand the raucous events that went on at Odysseus’s house while he was away, and if you think the end of the Odyssey, with Odysseus saving the day disguised as a beggar and doling out a gruesome end for those smarmy suitors, is exciting, you may be interested in getting into Penelope’s head as she’s waiting, weaving, and plotting, and finding out what she really thinks of Odysseus’s triumphant return.
I am almost done with Winterson’s book, Weight, about Atlas and Heracles. Atlas has to hold up the world as punishment, Heracles has to do the god’s bidding as punishment, and when they decide to swap punishments, they find out some interesting things about themselves.
As I was reading The Good Man Jesus, I thought about what Pullman was trying to say about Jesus’s message. He is an atheist, and in the introduction he says that above all, his novel is a story about how stories become stories. The Jesus in his novel says a lot of the same things that are recorded in the Bible, but some of his words are twisted by his brother, Christ, to be prophetic of a kingdom of God on earth. In the chapter where Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane, he asks God where he is, admitting that he’s never heard his voice or seen his hand in anything he’s done, though evidence of God’s existence is all around him in the beauty of the world. He wonders aloud whether his brother, Christ, was right, that it would be good to start a church to usher in the kingdom, then ruminates on all the things that can go wrong when a body of men who believe they are doing the will of God have the power of God behind them. He finishes his prayer by asking God one thing above all: “That any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.”
One of the great things about The Myths series is that, at the outset, each author is asked simply to rewrite a myth. They are able to choose the myth and the approach, whether to modernize the themes, and whether to inject their own philosophies into the story. Check them out. When I get ahold of some of the others, I’ll let you know.
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