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BOOK WORLD
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WEDNESDAY,MAY 5, 2010
LITERARY CALENDAR
THURSDAY | Dave Barry discusses his new book, “I’ll Mature When I’m Dead: Dave Barry’s Amazing Tales of Adulthood,” at 12:30 p.m. at Borders Books-Downtown, 18th and L streets NW, 202-466-4999. He will also speak at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 4801 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, 301-986-1761.
FOR YOUNG READERS
THE DREAMER
By Pam Muñoz Ryan Illustrated by Peter Sís
Scholastic. $17.99, ages 9-14
A mysterious gift, an injured swan and a secret name loom
large in this luminous novel based on the childhood of one of the 20th century’s greatest poets. On his way to becoming Chilean Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, Neftalí Reyes encounters obstacles aplenty: a cruel father, a school bully and his own debilitating shyness. Despite (or perhaps because of) his harsh father, the boy develops close bonds with his kind stepmother, siblings and journalist uncle, whose strong voice for the oppressed helps shape the poet’s later advocacy. As a teenager, Neftalí takes his now-famous nom de plume to hide his published work from his father. Author Pam Muñoz Ryan not only hits the highlights of the poet’s young life but, through her careful research, exquisite writing and whimsical poems, brings readers into Neruda’s curious, sound-enthralled mind. How delightful to see the future writer of odes to bicycles, socks and other ordinary things first ponder the rain’s “piano of wet notes” and the “ghostly hands” of lost mittens. How intriguing to come across the
occasional koanlike questions (“Where is the heaven of lost
stories?”), reminiscent of Neruda’s “The Book of Questions.” The book is beautifully designed, too, with thick, creamy pages printed in green (Neruda’s ink color of choice) and graced by Peter Sís’s delicate, pointillist drawings. It’s a marvelous object to touch and hold, an apt tribute to a poet enamored of things.
— Mary Quattlebaum
ALAMY/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE WASHINGTON POST
Meet the second Son of God
book world from C1
book, ignore it; don’t make it the subject of a thousand breathless stories about censorship.) So what does Pullman do with the greatest story ever told? Es- sentially, he condenses the four Gospels, following the basic out- line they provide of Jesus’s life. Indeed, some of the text here — such as his simple, beautifully rendered Sermon on the Mount — will strike Christians as very familiar. Again and again, he dis- plays a marvelous sense of the el- emental power of Jesus’s instruc- tions and parables. Even when he transforms the canonical stories to match his atheist perspective, he emphasizes the basic Chris- tian theme of universal love. To a certain extent, he’s drama- tizing a view of the Gospels pro- moted by the Jesus Seminar, a group of liberal theologians and scholars who attracted consider- able attention (and controversy) in the 1990s by stripping away
what they considered layers of su- perstition and dogma to reveal “the historical Jesus.” For in- stance, in Pullman’s retelling of the story of the loaves and fishes, Jesus doesn’t miraculously multi- ply the available food; instead, he inspires the multitude to over- come their avarice and share
that Pullman also takes some ob- noxious liberties with the foun- dational story of Christian faith and relentlessly flogs the church. Trouble starts right off with the Annunciation, when Mary learns she’s going to conceive a child. Like the late feminist scholar Mary Daly, Pullman recasts this
Choosing a vocal atheist and best-selling fantasy writer to retell the story of Jesus is an answer to a publicist’s prayer.
what they’ve squirreled away. In a similar manner, Pullman reworks the parable of the wise and foolish virgins to make it sound, frankly, a whole lot more Christian than the unforgiving parable we find in the Book of Matthew. Before we throw down the palm leaves, though, let’s admit
Spoken from the Heart
as She signs copies of
LAURA
BUSH
Note: This is a ticketed event and space is limited. Please see the membership counter at the Pentagon City Costco for details or call (703) 413-2324.
Thursday, May 6
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Pentagon City Costco
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FOR COSTCO MEMBERS ONLY
moment as a kind of date rape. And it won’t come as a revelation to hear that he pours cold water on the Resurrection, too. (But, heck, dozens of vicars in Britain don’t believe in that climax ei- ther.) His most radical alteration, though, begins in the Bethlehem manger: His Mary gives birth to twins, Jesus and Christ. A dis- tinction between the human and the divine nature of Jesus is not alien to some branches of Chris- tian thought, but Pullman has imagined something entirely his own: two wholly human boys, bound together in a tragedy of historic proportions. Jesus is a charismatic (not miraculous) teacher, who preaches boundless compassion, lashes out at reli- gious hypocrisy and awaits the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. Meanwhile, his devoted brother, Christ (who isn’t really a “scoundrel”), is shy and intellec- tual, constantly worried about his brother’s safety and deter- mined to promote his message. It’s that desire to institutional-
ize Jesus’s word that Pullman sees as the snake in the garden. Ac- cording to the Gospels, Jesus wrote only once — in the dust — but in Pullman’s version, Christ is a writer, a careful, thoughtful scribe, who wants “to let the truth irradiate the history.” And he re- peats that phrase a couple of times in case, having ears, ye hear not. What’s more, Christ is pe- riodically encouraged by a mys- terious, vaguely satanic stranger who explains that Jesus’s state- ments “need to be edited, the meanings clarified, the complex- ities unraveled for the simple-of- understanding.” Like a preacher who wants to
make sure everybody gets the
point — even in the last pew —
Pullman hammers away on how Jesus’s message of radical com- passion is obscured and perverted beneath a thicket of theology, reg- ulations and miracles. In one of several dramatically recast scenes, Christ is the tempter who comes to Jesus during his fast in the wilderness: “Think of the ad-
vantages if there were a body of believers,” Christ argues, “a struc- ture, an organization already in place. I can see it so clearly, Jesus! I can see the whole world united in this Kingdom of the faithful — think of that! Groups of families worshipping together with a priest in every village and town, an association of local groups un- der the direction and guidance of a wise elder in the region, the re- gional leaders all answering to the authority of one supreme director, a kind of regent of God on earth! And there would be councils of learned men to discuss and agree on the details of ritual and wor- ship, and even more importantly, to rule on the intricacies of faith, to declare what was to be believed and what was to be shunned.” For all its clunky satire, this is not a particularly original objec- tion to the corrosive effects of ec- clesiastical organization. (See: Reformation.) After all, even Pull- man’s arch villain, Saint Paul, warned that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” And our own Thomas Jefferson carefully re- made his New Testament by cut- ting away all the miracles and spontaneous healings. Like Pull- man, the Founding Father called them “superstitions” and “fabrica- tions” added by people who had “an interest in sophisticating & perverting the simple doctrines [Jesus] taught by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into sub- tleties & obscuring them with jar- gon.” Fortunately, not all of “Good
Man Jesus” is consumed with this strident anti-ecclesiastical argu- ment. Pullman is at least as inter- ested in the moral value of the Gospels. Without any of the snuff- film eroticism that enlivened Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” the action moves toward a con- clusion that’s inevitable but still startling and moving. Yes, some Christians will be offended by this book — “No one has the right to spend their life without being of- fended,” Pullman recently told an audience in Oxford — but any honest reader will find here a brisk and bracing story of pro- found implications. And it’s bound to send some readers back to the Bible, looking more closely at Jesus’s words and especially at all those other words crowded around Him.
charlesr@washpost.com
Charles is the fiction editor of Book World. You can follow him on Twitter
at
www.twitter.com/roncharles.
On Faith
IF STONES COULD SPEAK
Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge
By Marc Aronson
National Geographic. $17.95, ages 10 and up
Like last year’s “Written in Bone,” Marc Aronson’s new book
presents archaeology not as an ancient, dusty endeavor but as a vibrant, down-in-the-dirt scientific pursuit — groundbreaking in both senses. Here Aronson collaborates with Mike Parker Pearson, one of the archaeologists engaged in Stonehenge fieldwork, and he explains recent discoveries, including insights gained in the last year. It’s been shown that the ancient stones on England’s Salisbury Plain were erected around 2500 B.C. (2,000 years before the Druids) and that it had been a burial ground long before that. Even more fascinating, it was part of a much bigger site, including another circle for the living, that may turn out to be the largest Neolithic settlement yet found in Europe. The book’s wonderful graphics and clear explanations give young readers a sense of the theories about Stonehenge through the centuries. One of Aronson’s main points is that fresh perspectives are as important as the scientific instruments that can help date certain artifacts to within decades. He wants readers to question all assumptions and, as he wonders why the settlement suddenly, perhaps deliberately, closed down, he leaves readers with some intriguing questions to dig into.
— Abby McGanney Nolan
BRIDGET’S BERET
By Tom Lichtenheld Henry Holt.
$16.99, ages 4-8
SHARK VS. TRAIN
By Chris Barton Illustrated by
In this ode to art, artists and — improbably — artist’s blocks, Tom Lichtenheld conjures up a young lass who liked “to draw as much as other kids liked ice cream.” But when her ohso-arty beret is swept away by a gust of wind, she finds that more than her hat has disappeared. A “Missing Beret Report” gets no results, and a variety of hats — from cowboy to coonskin and pith to propeller — fail to inspire her. So she does “what any self-respecting artist would do”: cries, pouts, sulks and feels sorry for herself. How she powers through her angst and reaches new artistic heights form the story’s unexpectedly clever denouement and the perfect link to the final double-page spread: a series of miniature Old Masters paired with “Bridget- approved ideas for inspiring yourself, based on techniques used by many famous beret-wearing artists.” Also not to be missed is Lichtenheld’s visually clever take on the power of play in Chris Barton’s “Shark vs. Train.” Two lively young lads excavate the toy box. One grabs a shark (“GRRRRR”), the other a train (“CHUGRRR-CHUG”), and each instantly disappears into his chosen persona. Who wins the ensuing battles depends entirely on who chooses the game. Riding in a hot air balloon? Train’s weight sends him plunging earthward (“AAAiieee!”). Roasting marshmallows? Shark’s drippy fins put out the fire (“drat!”). And if detente and lunch are synonymous, well, that’s what kids (and happy endings) are all about.
Tom Lichtenheld Little Brown. $16.99, ages 4-8
—Kristi Jemtegaard
For more on religion, visit On Faith at www.
washingtonpost.com/onfaith.
Political Bookworm
Terrorists speak in violence but author Carl Medearis sees virtue in sitting down and talking face to face. Read his view on
Political Bookworm at
voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm.
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