The Preservationist

David Maine has given us two novels, both renditions of bible stories. Renditions, but not revisions. The author (whose unconventional mug graces the right-hand side of this review) takes his theology and biblical history rather seriously – which is as odd as it is refreshing. His two books to date are titled The Preservationist and Fallen and treat, respectively, the stories of Noah and the Fall. Enthusiasts will note that The Book of Samson is also due out this fall. The reviews I read on Fallen indicated that his first book was better, so I picked up Maine’s account of the flood and dove in.

Anyone who has ever read the Old Testament knows that many of its stories leave the reader wanting more information: personal, relational, historical, etc. The story of Noah, his family, and the ark is no different. Maine had before him the structural outline of the story; his task was to fill in the blanks. The surprise is that he manages to do so while avoiding the double pitfall of either a) pontificating from a fundamentalist soapbox or b) revising the account into a “love contains all the answers to our religious differences” mushpot. He provides plausible character backgrounds and extra-biblical settings while taking the Genesis account, with its legendary characteristics, at face value (who indeed is the "preservationist," Noah or Maine?). At the same time, a large amount of humor has been injected, which makes the book a very quick and entertaining read.

Maine tells his tale through the voices of each character involved, including Noah, his wife, their sons, and their sons’ wives. This effective technique allows us to get inside the heads of these people as they struggle to obey what seems like a ridiculous divine command. The reader is not privy to any more information than the characters receive, so the story becomes a journey of obedience, growth, and right living in the face of limited knowledge. But the fact that Maine sticks close to orthodox Judeo-Christian ideas about God does not prevent him from asking the hard questions: why were some people chosen rather than others? how can a righteous man like Noah rejoice when unbelievers are punished? why would God create the earth, only to destroy it shortly after? These and other piercing questions remind the reader of Job, who also questions the will of God. And like Job, the answer that is given is no answer at all. In other words, God is God and does what he wants. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

A few final notes. The book is rather earthy. By this I mean that Maine is especially occupied with the physical aspects of life in the early biblical period. Things like urination and coition, or “rutting.” Rutting actually takes a prominent role in the book: rutting in the sleeping room, rutting on the ark, next to the animals, rutting in front of the parents. If nothing else, it highlights the difference between modern modesty and ancient pragmatism regarding procreation. Or maybe it slyly comments on the modern slide into indecency? Finally, the author is charitable with characters written off by many – particularly Ham. The end result is a nuanced, loamy, fairly theologically-sound, often simply beautiful story of the flood that is sure to delight many readers.

- Roger Dixon

Middlesex

Jake's recent prodigious review production belies any notion that his inspiration for reading and writing had ceased prematurely - a notion that we at TKR were beginning to fear was the case, after a preternaturally long dry spell. Well, it hasn't, and we were wrong, which is a very good thing, considering the current paucity of gifted writers contributing to this space (yes, consider that a challenge). Herewith, a review of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex. - RD

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a story, nay an epic, that escapes the feeble words of this humble reviewer. Its title, at first glance, suggests the well-known storyline of a young hermaphrodite who started life a female, yet finished as a male. But this is not so. Instead, as even the most casual reader will notice, it refers to the family estate just outside Detroit. But why name the house or the book Middlesex?

This vexing question, unfortunately, is not made altogether clear throughout the novel. Instead, it floats throughout the text, sometimes dramatically, beckoning its reader to empyrean musings. My mundane thought, however, is that Middlesex is an icon that exists at the liminal recesses of society. Consider the following. The house is a cross between Suburban utopianism and an F. Lloyd Wright nightmare. Middlesex’s Greek residents were consigned to this monstrosity because they were neither WASPs nor inner city thugs, but were merely trying to escape to a casern from the war-tattered remains of Detroit. Grandma bedrid herself - a linctus waiting to be swallowed by the netherworld as she wallowed through to the end of her life. Most importantly, it is in Middlesex that the protagonist becomes attracted to the female sex, first as a child and later as a teenager, before running away to a brief stint at a freak show burlesque in the Tenderloin district. Middlesex is thus an icon of existence between two worlds and the realization that such cannot be done.

This type of liminal survival, often cast in historical anecdotes concerning the research of Dr. Such-and-Such is interesting when compared to T. Wolfe’s recent satire, I Am Charlotte Simmons. There, Wolfe shows that even the most unconventional students, Adam and Charlotte, eventually succumb to peer pressure by divining the ideals of Dupont. In contrast to this pattern of learned “more mimicking,” sexual identity is deeper – and no matter how long one lives as a sex, there is no mistaking the fact that nurture does not always beat nature. Thus, sexual identity cannot be changed, even within the courtyard at Dupont.

Ensconced within this key theme is an epic vision. The story begins with the protagonist’s grandparents and their amorous introduction as brother and sister before continuing onto the next generation—cousin and cousin—on through the once chalybeate—but now decrepit—streets of Detroit. Throughout the pages, however, the story wafts along at the mercy of random events that in the end suggest kismet: the Turks savagely burn the Greek insurgents alive, impervious to the screams of children and their smoldering flesh; grandpa loses his job at the Ford factory and becomes a bootlegger; the great uncle fakes his death, but resurrects himself as a huckster selling Nation of Islam tripe to despondent and uneducated inner-city black folk; and brother (older) drops out of the University of Michigan, Ann Harbor, at the behest of his obnoxious Marxist girlfriend. These stories and others occur with nimiety, a quality serving to backdrop a larger-than-life epic that encapsulates not only a character, but a family and a nation, all with which we can identify.

- Jake McCarty

Felines and Facades

Cooperating with our push to branch out beyond the mere "book" review, Jake sends in a few notes on a recent Newsweek article. - RD

In the most recent issue of Newsweek (July 17, 2006), a brief article summarizes the burgeoning of MySpace.com-type websites for dogs (Dogster.com), cats (Catser.com), hamsters (Hamsterster.com), and “less conventional” pets (pester.com). It is one of the most banal and uninteresting articles to grace the pages of Newsweek in recent memory (p. 12).

The article reports that these websites are other ways for owners to talk vicariously through their pets, with users admitting that they “discuss human topics… but through cats.” For example, two fellow Catsters (Susan Bailey of Buckinghamshire, England and another unnamed person) met at the Bruce Springsteen concert in New York. But why mention the fact that this website is becoming a place for people to “hook-up,” mimicking the all-too-frequent self-advertisement of Myspace.com, which itself is scarlet laced with loneliness, without really commenting on this phenomenon? The author, Malak Hamwi, could have created an ironic and bemused satire on the fin de siècle of our culture, as we hide behind screens and buttons. But he didn’t. Now that we’ve trained ourselves to shelter beneath our most flattering internet pictures and our carefully crafted cleverisms, we can take it a step further and befriend that female mongoose owner named Shirley with our pet Schlange Jo-Jo, (noting, of course, a few interesting tidbits about its owner). And if you were wondering, the owner of a lovely tan American Cocker Spaniel puppy and a curious tabby kitten, is married. I guess he won’t make many friends…

- Jake McCarty