BOOKS

The miracle of survival

Jane Gardam

THE POCKET CANONS Canongate, each, or .£14.99 for a boxed set of 12 Now that there is no such thing as a family Bible and carpenters like Adam Bede play their transistors instead of dis- cussing theology among the woodshavings, our image of the Good Book is probably the immaculate stout volume that lies in the bedside drawer of hotels, left by the kind, mysterious Gideons. But on 1 Octo- ber Canongate is hoping to publish six books from the Old Testament and six from the New in an edition six inches by four, cheaper than a greetings card, smartly dressed in black-and-white jackets and photographs that float images like amoebas in the depths of the sea for Genesis, and an exploding atomic bomb, like the negative for a malign oak tree, for Revelation. There are to be ten more, all intended to 'encom- pass categories of the Bible as diverse as History, Philosophy, Poetry and Law' and to have introductions by 'an impressive range of writers' who will 'provide a per- sonal interpretation of the text' and explain contemporary relevance.

Their sole distributor, however (Paul Slennett of CBS Books), has resigned on reading the introductions and circulated a letter to all Christian bookshops urging them to boycott the publications on the grounds of blasphemy, especially in Will Self's Revelation and Louis de Bernieres' account of God in the Book of Job. Canon- gate can't but be pleased with the publicity, and deny blasphemy. They say they chose the writers not because of any hostility to Christianity (one is a bishop) but according to their degree of passionate response.

The last successful prosecution for blas- phemy was in the Seventies — I under- stand that the blasphemy law has gone now — when Mary Whitehouse took Gay News to court over the homo-erotic poem about Christ on the Cross. I did find that poem shocking, but I do not find anything that could be thought blasphemous in the Canongate Canons, and all of it, I'd say, has been printed or said before. The charge that the Old Testament books are too sacred to be put into categories since they are quoted by Christ himself comes a long time after The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature which was a set school book long ago — though we thought it a pretty weird title.

A bit near the wind for Canongate maybe is the introduction to Genesis by Steve Rose, the geneticist author of The Chemistry of Life and Lifelines, who says that he asked the editors if they realised he is an ex-orthodox Jew, an atheist and a scientist and they replied, 'Yes. That's why we asked you.' This might have been better put, but it hardly adds up to an invitation to blaspheme, and Rose has produced an account of his first-ever reading of King James's Genesis, finding it 'a miracle of story-telling'. He is surprised that

its claims as to who we are and our complex relationship to nature underlie many of the presuppositions of our post-religious, ratio- nalist and reductionist modern science, how- ever forcefully we dismiss the Bible version of Creation.

Rose describes himself as a convinced atheist at the age of eight when armed with Origin of the Species and a chemistry set he preached to other little boys in the shul of the synagogue that 'there was no need to pay any attention to the bible story', a belief that has 'remained with me for half a century'. So now he's moving on. It is a pity, though — he is a wordy man — that he hasn't noticed the poetry.

He is very interesting on the Judaeo- Christian tradition and so is David Gross- man on Exodus. Grossman writes about the Desert Generation and the continuing influence of the Wilderness Years in Israel to this day. As a novelist he sees the mas- tery of the fairytale element of Exodus the bulrushes and Potiphar's wife and so on — mingling with the history and politics, the bondage and oppression. After reading Grossman I went to the text and read it as if for the first time. I found him better than Professor Charles Johnson on Proverbs. Johnson is a Buddhist, ex-African/Ameri- can Episcopal Church, who said he was at first wary of the book but 'after opening himself to its spiritual core' rediscovered what it has offered mankind for centuries: `a map for the pilgrim'.

No hint of evangelical background and certainly no blasphemy in A. S. Byatt on The Song of Solomon, but a beautiful bal- ance of academic and sensuous response to a poem of human love which is yet a 'para- dox', full of 'fleshy' metaphor for divine longing. She draws on the thesis she never finished on `the sensuous metaphor in the spiritual' where 'the Song of Songs was everywhere'. This piece is richest of all in allusion and cross-reference, full of learn- ing and delight.

Not so de Bernieres' Job. (Apparently almost everyone invited by Canongate asked to have Job). De Bernieres seems to hate the book, hate the figure of God por- trayed in it, hate all the characters except the Devil whom he finds quite a fellow, and Job himself whom he commends for con- tinuing to tell God he is unjust. He is quite funny about the dreary Comforters and makes a trio with God and the Devil, God's pal, in finding most of the cast idiots; but he grows a bit tiresome and less than ade- quate on God's great speech from the whirlwind, and doesn't seem to have got far with the problems of suffering and redemp- tion. But then, who has?

How different the humility of Doris Lessing before the desolate and lovely poetry of Ecclesiastes. She again sent me straight back to the text, and to see beyond the refrain 'All is vanity' to 'All rivers run to the sea, and yet the sea is not full'. Wonderful.

The New Testatment canons are the four gospels, Corinthians and Revelation. Espe- cially moving is Mark, chosen by Nick Cave, the Australian blues musician who hadn't read it until he was grown up and had long rejected God. An Anglican clergyman told him to read Mark 'because it's short'. 'It just swept me away.' A. N. Wilson intro- ducing Matthew is terrific. 'You are holding in your hands a book that has changed more human lives than the Communist Manifesto or Freud's Interpretation of Dreams.' Forget whether or not you can believe the virgin births or resurrections from the dead, or miracles, he says, just read it.

The Bishop of Edinburgh has chosen Luke for the stories found nowhere else, especially the repentant Peter at cock-crow. Blake Morrison writes with touching sim- plicity about John and his own 'sensuous' delight in the Anglican Church as a deter- mined choirboy (he 'just wanted to be with his friends') though the son of an atheist and a Roman Catholic. Despite being no longer a church-goer (he doesn't say why), he takes any newcomer to this gospel by the hand through the wonder and love of a poet's life of Christ.

Fay Weldon predictably chose St Paul, whom, predictably, she says 'it is hard to like'. She understands why the authorities called him a 'pestilent fellow'. Well, so do we all. But feminist Fay Weldon is full of surprises. She does not inveigh against him as a misogynist but rather dottily reflects on whether the road to Damascus was just his decision to change sides, to cross the floor because he was after power. His views on marriage she finds 'civilised'. His injunc- tion about couples being benevolent to each other she likes better than what is being preached today. She ends by saying that because we now don't much like Paul it does not mean that God was not speak- ing to him and 'the magic of the language of Corinthians must be our evidence as to the actuality or otherwise of revelation'.

Would that Will Self had had a con- frontation with Paul before his account of Revelation which he finds a 'sick text, a pre- tentious horror film that I never wish to see again'. God is 'a mad, bloodthirsty and capricious despot'. He blames the book for the disintegration of his psychotic and drug-addicted friend who died at 28 bran- dishing a pocket Bible and interpreting the world through the 'dark glass' of the Apoc- alypse. He makes his introduction a requiem for the friend, signing off with an embarrassing In Memoriam. There is little account of the text or its history, its reluc- tant and late admission to the Bible canon, the belief that it is in Christian code, that John, exiled on Patmos, was writing incog- nito to Christians about to be martyred under Domitian for refusing to worship the Emperor as a god. Self seems to confirm Luther. 'Everyone thinks of the book what- ever his spirit imparts' and it seems hard to believe that one book can result in psy- chosis. Obsession strikes where it will, and `sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines'. Auden said, 'We are not free to choose by what we shall be enchanted.' I read in the press the other day that sur- geons prowling about in the brain have dis- covered an area labelled 'religious mania' and if so thank God, for it is a terrible affliction and let's hope it can be excised. Self says, 'To think this text has survived to be the very stuff of psychotic nightmare.' It has also survived to say that 'God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death.'

And the miracle is that it has survived at all. The survival of texts, of books 'that will have no end', is as mysterious as the Reve- lation. One wonders which if any contem- poray texts — or writers — will be thought too sacred for comment or command such `passionate reponse' in another 2,000 years.

Jane Gardam's latest book The Green Man, illustrated by Mar), Fedden, will be published this month by The Windrush Press at £9.99.