Back on March 8, I posted on the Anne Rice novel, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. I had been inspired to read the book by the review of its sequel, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, posted by Tom of Disputations on February 23 (scroll down).
I have now, finally, this week, been able to get my hands on The Road to Cana, which I finished reading this morning. Since we already have Tom’s fine review, I will make only a couple of small observations about the book. Both come near the end of the novel, at the Wedding in Cana, after Christ has chosen the first of His disciples. First, a passage that particularly struck me as instructive. Here, Jesus is at the wedding feast, listening to the rhythm of the drums, and pondering the nature of time:
Time beat on, and in time, as I’d told the Tempter, yes, as he’d tempted me to stop Time forever – in time, there were things yet unborn. It struck a deep dark shiver in me, a great cold. But it was only the shiver and fear known to any man born.
I did not come to stop it, I did not come to leave it at such a moment of mysterious joy. I came to live it, to surrender to it, to endure it, to discover in it what it was I must do, and whatever it was, well, it had only begun.
It strikes me that Anne Rice has said something profound here about our calling to pick up our own crosses, each of us, and to follow Him.
Finally, there is a character in the novel whom Anne Rice has imagined, named Silent Hannah. As the name suggests, she is a deaf-mute. Rice portrays her as a dear, loving young woman, isolated by her disability, but devoted throughout her life to Avigail, whose wedding is being celebrated at Cana. There are several occasions throughout the plotting of the novel at which the reader wonders—why does Jesus not restore Silent Hannah’s ability to hear and to speak?
Finally, on the second to last page of the book, after Jesus has changed the water to wine, and has wandered a ways from the celebration, come these lines:
Beyond them and far to the left, on the farthest margin of the garden away from us, amid a small grove of shining trees, there stood a tiny robed figure with her back to us, rocking from side to side, her veiled head bowed.
Tiny and alone, this dancer, seemingly watching the rising sun.
Tiny dancer, I thought? Is Anne Rice giving a hat-tip to Elton John here, or what? But, no, of course not. What Anne Rice has done is save the healing of Silent Hannah to the very last page of the book. Is this overly sentimental? Is it a chick-lit move on Rice’s part?:
I placed my hand gently on her throat.
She struggled, eyes wide, and then she whispered it:
“Yeshua!” She was pale with shock. Yeshua, Yeshua, Yeshua.
“Listen to me,” I said as I put my hand on her ear and then on my heart – the old gestures. “ ‘Hear O Israel,’ “ I said, “ ‘the Lord Our God is One.’ “
...I repeated it once more and then the third time she spoke the words with me.
Hear O Israel. The Lord Our God is One.
I held her in my arms.
And then I turned to join the others.
And we started for the road.
I wept. (Well...let's just say I got a little misty.)
Showing posts with label The Road to Cana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Road to Cana. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Readings: on Out of Egypt
On February 23, 2008, Tom, the Keeper of the Keys at Disputations, posted a review of the recently-released novel about Jesus by that renowned retailer of vampire sagas, Anne Rice. The novel, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, is the second offering in what is sure to be at least a trilogy, and perhaps more. I had seen the first novel, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, on the new book shelf at the public library when it came out. I picked it up and riffled the pages briefly, then put it down. As Tom phrased it in his review of the sequel, “Writing in the voice of the Son of God seemed like a case of trying too hard, and I gave Out of Egypt a miss.” My thoughts were akin to his. Jesus at age seven just didn’t engage my imagination enough to devote the requisite time to it. Then I read Tom’s brief review of The Road to Cana.
Knowing Tom to be a ruthless critic with the highest conceivable standards, I began reading, fully expecting the review to be a hatchet job to make the ghost of Carrie Nation moan with envy. I was very much surprised to be completely wrong. You should read Tom’s piece for yourself (you’ll have to scroll down to it, as I can’t figure out how to link to specific posts on Disputations), but his bottom line is: “The Road to Cana is easily the best -- the best written, the most Catholic -- of the handful of novelizations of Jesus's life that I've read.” No shit, sez I. This dictated the necessity of reading The Road to Cana. But since we’ve obviously got a boxed set building here, and I’m more than a little anal about completeness, I knew that I’d have to read Out of Egypt first. And so I am.
As of this writing I’m not even half-way into the novel. But you must understand that I’m not publishing a cyber-mag here; I try to make Rodak Riffs a true “weblog”—that is, a log of what I’m doing. As I tool down the road, I stop for hitch-hikers; if you want to grab a copy of Out of Egypt and read along, please do so. My opinion of the novel so far is positive.
As the novel opens, Jesus is seven years-old. Joseph has had a premonition that Herod is about to die, and has resolved to return to Nazareth, after stopping at Jerusalem for the Passover. The family is living and working in Alexandria. The whole, extended Holy Family is there, working in the family business; Uncle Cleopas, the several Marys, the cousins of Jesus, his half-brother, James, some other uncles, etc. For Protestants, such as myself, who have been skeptical of the prominence given the Holy Family, and particularly Joseph, by Catholics, Anne Rice here provides a very convincing portrait of Joseph as the patriarchal head of the clan. His word is law.
Tom says of the Jesus of The Road to Cana, “…as he waits for whatever it is that he's waiting for, he's regularly pecked at by those around him who are getting on with their lives.” This is already going on in Out of Egypt. But it is more that Jesus is trying to figure out why he’s treated as so special by all the others—particularly his uncanny cousin, John.
This is already getting longer than I had intended for it to be. Therefore, briefly, some things that I like about the novel:
1) It stresses the historical fact that Jesus was born and raised in a Greek-speaking civilization. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all of the other characters speak fluent Greek, as well as Aramaic. Rice actually has Jesus beginning his formal education under the tutelage of Philo. One of the reasons for Joseph removing the family back to rural Nazareth, despite their material success in Alexandria, is that he wants Jesus to be educated where they read the Scriptures in Hebrew, rather than in Greek.
2) Rice stresses the violence of the world in which Jesus lived and delivered his message. It is so easy for us to imagine Jesus strolling through a tranquil countryside, delivering his speeches to a care-free people. The first thing that happens when the clan arrives in Jerusalem is a massacre, conducted by the palace guard of Archelaus, successor to Herod, of the Jewish pilgrims arriving at the temple to celebrate the Passover. Once the clan has fled from Jerusalem, staying with relatives in the vicinity of Jericho, their temporary dwelling is invaded by Jewish insurgents who are intent on looting their possessions in order to carry on the fight against the Roman occupiers. The family puts up no resistance, behaving as cowering and penniless peasants, and are not harmed by the rebel band. After the bandits have left, Joseph instructs his family thusly: “Remember this, “ he said. He looked from James to me and to Little Joses, and to my cousins who stared up at him, and to John who stood beside his mother. “Remember. Never lift your hand to defend yourself or to strike. Be patient. If you must speak, be simple.” The pacifist in me likes that touch.
3) At the point in the novel where I have stopped reading in order to write this, Elizabeth has just announced that she will soon die, and that John will be sent to live with the Essenes, in the desert. This clearly opens up room for some very interesting speculation about an interesting group, and I look forward to seeing how Rice develops this theme.
Enough. Get it. Read it, as I shall now go and do.
Knowing Tom to be a ruthless critic with the highest conceivable standards, I began reading, fully expecting the review to be a hatchet job to make the ghost of Carrie Nation moan with envy. I was very much surprised to be completely wrong. You should read Tom’s piece for yourself (you’ll have to scroll down to it, as I can’t figure out how to link to specific posts on Disputations), but his bottom line is: “The Road to Cana is easily the best -- the best written, the most Catholic -- of the handful of novelizations of Jesus's life that I've read.” No shit, sez I. This dictated the necessity of reading The Road to Cana. But since we’ve obviously got a boxed set building here, and I’m more than a little anal about completeness, I knew that I’d have to read Out of Egypt first. And so I am.
As of this writing I’m not even half-way into the novel. But you must understand that I’m not publishing a cyber-mag here; I try to make Rodak Riffs a true “weblog”—that is, a log of what I’m doing. As I tool down the road, I stop for hitch-hikers; if you want to grab a copy of Out of Egypt and read along, please do so. My opinion of the novel so far is positive.
As the novel opens, Jesus is seven years-old. Joseph has had a premonition that Herod is about to die, and has resolved to return to Nazareth, after stopping at Jerusalem for the Passover. The family is living and working in Alexandria. The whole, extended Holy Family is there, working in the family business; Uncle Cleopas, the several Marys, the cousins of Jesus, his half-brother, James, some other uncles, etc. For Protestants, such as myself, who have been skeptical of the prominence given the Holy Family, and particularly Joseph, by Catholics, Anne Rice here provides a very convincing portrait of Joseph as the patriarchal head of the clan. His word is law.
Tom says of the Jesus of The Road to Cana, “…as he waits for whatever it is that he's waiting for, he's regularly pecked at by those around him who are getting on with their lives.” This is already going on in Out of Egypt. But it is more that Jesus is trying to figure out why he’s treated as so special by all the others—particularly his uncanny cousin, John.
This is already getting longer than I had intended for it to be. Therefore, briefly, some things that I like about the novel:
1) It stresses the historical fact that Jesus was born and raised in a Greek-speaking civilization. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all of the other characters speak fluent Greek, as well as Aramaic. Rice actually has Jesus beginning his formal education under the tutelage of Philo. One of the reasons for Joseph removing the family back to rural Nazareth, despite their material success in Alexandria, is that he wants Jesus to be educated where they read the Scriptures in Hebrew, rather than in Greek.
2) Rice stresses the violence of the world in which Jesus lived and delivered his message. It is so easy for us to imagine Jesus strolling through a tranquil countryside, delivering his speeches to a care-free people. The first thing that happens when the clan arrives in Jerusalem is a massacre, conducted by the palace guard of Archelaus, successor to Herod, of the Jewish pilgrims arriving at the temple to celebrate the Passover. Once the clan has fled from Jerusalem, staying with relatives in the vicinity of Jericho, their temporary dwelling is invaded by Jewish insurgents who are intent on looting their possessions in order to carry on the fight against the Roman occupiers. The family puts up no resistance, behaving as cowering and penniless peasants, and are not harmed by the rebel band. After the bandits have left, Joseph instructs his family thusly: “Remember this, “ he said. He looked from James to me and to Little Joses, and to my cousins who stared up at him, and to John who stood beside his mother. “Remember. Never lift your hand to defend yourself or to strike. Be patient. If you must speak, be simple.” The pacifist in me likes that touch.
3) At the point in the novel where I have stopped reading in order to write this, Elizabeth has just announced that she will soon die, and that John will be sent to live with the Essenes, in the desert. This clearly opens up room for some very interesting speculation about an interesting group, and I look forward to seeing how Rice develops this theme.
Enough. Get it. Read it, as I shall now go and do.
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