“As Paul spoke on and on, a young man named Eutychus, sitting on the windowsill, became very drowsy. Finally, he fell sound asleep and dropped three stories to his death below.”
—Acts 20:9
Ron Currie Jr’s novel didn’t put me to sleep or kill me. But this book was like if you took the lunacy, silliness, and fun out of a Vonnegut novel, added some watered-down Cormac McCarthy, and poured it into a glass marked ‘unremarkable’. His mishmash of short narratives of a world after God dies are simply scattered, incomplete, field notes of an aftermath, sewn together with society as a vague central character. This is not a happy world, but one plunged into loss, desperate for meaning. The following are my thoughts that arose after I finished each story.
God is Dead
If God was real, he probably should become human, suffer, apologize, and permanently die. Hypothetically speaking.
The Bridge
The past can be an anchor keeping us gasping for air, once freed, relics of the before times in ways become useless. Easily cast off, sometimes flinging themselves into oblivion. Allowing one to forge a new path.
Indian Summer
Apocalypse via a rumor that God existed and now is dead is a tough pill to swallow. Once taken, however, it’s not difficult to believe lost and damaged kids under the wing of insanity can give up as easy as one, two, THREE.
False Idols
Religion is a virus. Absurdity begets absurdity. The falseness of faith and the harm it bestows. Are we doomed to continue the pattern forevermore? In absence of a god will we create our own? Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable, natural world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths, and made-up things to revel in. Cannot we fathom a life simply in the here and now?
Grace
Without those who would help without reward, society would crumble. Those who help and give credit to others crumble their own reward.
Interview with the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God’s Corpse
In desperation for answers, to quench fear, and quiet despair we will huddle around any lie that soothes if we wish to believe. Perhaps to lie for comfort is a hallmark of humanity, similar to a dog’s purity of affection. It makes one wonder why the flesh of God made a human go insane and left a dog an enlightened being who eventually lies to comfort. In the end, however, an all-knowing being, as a dog or not, is no God. And “You are left as naked and alone as you were before. Will this destroy you, empty you out, make you a husk among husks?”
The Helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit
Parents just don’t understand. For they lived different lives, with different cultural norms, different programming. There is no escaping this, save in sharing ourselves. Painting a picture of ‘what’ and ‘why’ to create the ‘who’. What is a parent, if not one to prepare us for life, to share their understanding, their programming? For if they do not, there are a plethora of others greedily willing to exploit their misstep.
Life has always been a battle for belief. And unchecked, unbalanced beliefs can mutate into dangerous ideologies. They will quickly fill the minds of those who have not been prepared. When strong enough in numbers, with enough programming, the mind begins to narrow and close. Eventually, they hold the belief even above themselves and are willing to kill and even die for it.
My Brother the Murderer
Genetics divided, we are predisposed to our own path, programming is simply a torch held by others that we follow. “If something is repeated often enough, with enough conviction, it doesn’t seem to matter whether it is true. It becomes the truth.”
Retreat
Is it surprising that a side that believes in and fights for “no one paradigm is superior to others” loses a war to a different paradigm? That crazy finds solace in wartime and dream of returning to normal once home? That, in a town, where the only person who is not ‘cracked’, who has memories of history, who does not hold adulation of TV and consumerism, is the only survivor? Or the tragedy that one cannot simply take a pill and forget, that they will always hold on to unprocessed sadness and trauma?
“Losing people should be sudden. Having to drag it on and on is just unreasonable.” This is true of many things we lose. Currie’s entire book is about slowly losing the idea of God, faith, and belief. How it might destroy individuals, families, societies, and humanity. Losing ideologies will happen, and change is never without its victims.
6/10