The Gospel According to the Son

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The Gospel According to the Son
The Gospel According to the Son.jpg
Cover of the first edition
Author Norman Mailer
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Random House
Publication date
1997
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages242
ISBN 0-679-45783-6
OCLC 104948587

The Gospel According to the Son is a 1997 novel by Norman Mailer. It purports to be the story of Jesus Christ, told autobiographically. [1]

Norman Mailer American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and liberal political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early and wide renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. His best-known work is widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In over six decades of work, Mailer had eleven best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II—more than any other post-war American writer.

Contents

Plot summary

The novel employs first person story-telling from the perspective of Jesus. It stays nearly entirely true to the text of the four canonical gospels. Jesus tells his own story, from his birth to a teen-aged virgin named Mary to his execution by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. Just as in the gospels, he is resurrected from the dead, and ascends to heaven.

A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a narrator relays events from their own point of view using the first person i.e. "I" or "we", etc. It may be narrated by a first person protagonist, first person re-teller, first person witness, or first person peripheral. A classic example of a first person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), in which the title character is also the narrator telling her own story, "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me".

Crucifixion Method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden beam and left to hang until eventual death

Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden beam and left to hang, perhaps for several days, until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation.

Critical reception

Critical response to Mailer's novel was mixed. Jack Miles, writing for Commonweal , found the book "a quiet, sweet, almost wan little book, a kindly offering from a New York Jew to his wife's Bible Belt family." He noted that there was "something undeniably impressive about the restraint" of the style that Mailer undertook in composing the novel. He concluded that the novel was neither one of Mailer's best works, nor would it stand out amongst the bibliography of books inspired by the life of Christ, but that it had received unfairly harsh reviews from other critics. [2]

<i>Commonweal</i> (magazine) magazine

Commonweal is a liberal American Catholic journal of opinion, edited and managed by lay Catholics, headquartered in The Interchurch Center in New York City. It is the oldest independent Roman Catholic journal of opinion in the United States.

Critics such as Reynolds Price, writing for The New York Times , pointed to a "lack of inventiveness", based upon the fact that Mailer took so few liberties with the biblical text.[ citation needed ]

Reynolds Price American writer

Edward Reynolds Price was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in Biblical scholarship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

<i>The New York Times</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper based in New York City

The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 127 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S.

David Gelernter, writing for the National Review , cited the "sheer arrogance" of the very premise of Mailer's book. Yet he went on to agree with Miles that much of the criticism of the book had been "unfair." Gelernter called the book "strikingly orthodox" in its basic view of the character of Christ. [3]

David Gelernter American painter and computer scientist

David Hillel Gelernter is an American artist, writer, and professor of computer science at Yale University. He is a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center, and sat on the National Endowment for the Arts. He publishes widely; his work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and elsewhere. His paintings have been exhibited in New Haven and Manhattan.

<i>National Review</i> American conservative editorial magazine

National Review is an American semi-monthly editorial magazine focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. It is currently edited by Rich Lowry.

Mailer had largely anticipated some of the savage reviews he would receive for the book. He noted in an interview with Bruce Weber of The New York Times, "The book will get a fair share of bad reviews, but that I take for granted. I call a fair share between 65 percent and 75 percent bad reviews." [4]

Sales history

On May 11, 1997, The Gospel According to the Son entered the New York Times Best Seller List at #13. [5] It peaked at #7 on May 25 of that year, and spent six weeks in the top 16. [6]

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References

  1. ↑ Mailer, Norman (1997). The Gospel According to the Son . New York: Random House. ISBN   0-679-45783-6.
  2. ↑ "The Gospel According to the Son-Review", by Jack Miles, for Commonweal, 18 July 1997.
  3. ↑ "The Gospel According to the Son" a review by David Gelernter, for National Review, 28 July 1997.
  4. ↑ "Yes, His New Book Is Biblical, but Don't Call Him God ", by Bruce Weber, for The New York Times, 24 April 1997.
  5. ↑ New York Times Best Seller List, from Hawes.com, 11 May 1997.
  6. ↑ New York Times Best Seller List, from Hawes.com, 15 June 1997.
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