XVIII - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

I am loathe to be 'on the pulse' of anything, but flicking through some disposable literature the other day while waiting for my personal shopper to fetch me my Prada slippers I noticed that Vice magazine seems to have published an article/interview with the author of The Final Testament James Frey. Bearing in mind his latest book has only 10,000 existing copies, and mine is signed (I should mention it is pre-signed, I never met the guy) then this blog post could be a yellow brick road that leads all the way to yours truly getting some kind of wizardy sum on ebay for this in a few months time.

That being said, it will probably go for less than I paid for it. James Frey seems to have that kind of effect on people. His first book A Million Little Pieces (or something like that, I haven't read it) was widely hailed as a deep and touching memoir of drug addiction and other such troubles, then in almost as quick a period was widely loathed and reviled for being 'mostly' made up. Oprah Winfrey even had Frey go on her programme to apologise to the people of America. Then last year he got poo pooed by everyone for wanting to set up a fiction venture where he paid post grads to write commercially appealing books for him (even though the likes of James Patterson have done this for YEARS). His latest book, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible however is all his, and seemingly looked set to cause an international stir fry (thus far a rather quiet storm - perhaps clergymen are having difficulty in picking up a copy?)

Anyway, enough snidish witticisms from me, as this book is actually rather enjoyable, certainly much more so than I expected it to be. The book follows the life of a young New Yorker by the name of Ben Zion who miraculously survives a horrific accident and goes on to be seen as the Messiah by a variety of resident New Yorkers (Judith can suck it though).

It begins:

He wasn't nothing special. Just a white boy. An ordinary white boy. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium height and medium weight. Just like ten or twenty or thirty million other white boys in America. Nothing special at all.

First time I saw him he was coming down the hallway. There was an apartment across the hall from where I lived that'd been empty for a year. Usually apartments in our project go quick. Government supports them so they're cheap, for people who aint got shit in this world, even though they always telling us different, know we ain't ever gonna have shit. There's lists for them. Long and getting longer. But nobody would live in that one. It had a reputation. The man who lived there before had gone crazy. He'd been normal. Sold souvenirs outside Yankee Stadium and had a wife and two little boys, real cute little boys. Then he started hearing voices and shit, started ranting about devils and demons and how he was the last man standing before us and at the end. He lost his job and starting wearing all white and trying to touch everybody on their head. He got his ass whooped a few times and his church told him to stop coming. He screamed at his family and played organ music all night. Cursed the demons and pleaded to the Lord. Howled like some kind of dog. He didn't ever let his family leave. We stopped hearing the music and it started smelling and Momma called the cops and they found him hanging from the shower. Wearing a white robe like a monk. Tied up with an electrical cord. They found his wife and boys with electrical tape around their ankles and wrists and plastic bags over their heads. There was a note that said we have gone to a better place. Maybe the Devil got him or the demons got him or the Lord left him. Or maybe he just got tired. And maybe they did go to a better place. I don't know, and won't probably ever know, not believing what I believe. And it didn't matter anyway. Everybody heard about it and nobody would live there. Until Ben. He came down the hall with a backpack and an old suitcase and he moved right in. He either didn't know or didn't care about what had happened before. Moved right the fuck in.

Annoying, Palanhuick-esque punctuation aside, the book really did draw me in from the start, establishing very quickly an entirely human charicature of a modern day messiah living in New York city, told through the accounts of his 'disciples'. Ben Zion is certainly an iconoclaust of the Holy Son, drinking, puking, hanging out with gun toting tramps in the New York city subways, bisexual, fornicating with pretty much anything that moves, and pretty darn critical of organised religion. People turn to him for Godly advice and time and again he replies with a simple ajunct: 'there is nothing after your time here, heaven and hell exist here on earth, so love each other'. Simple as that, and to be honest it's a philosophy that you really don't need this book to adopt. In fact, the few chapters where Frey further explores the 'love-in manifesto' are pretty much the only turgid and tiresome pages in the whole thing. In fact, skip the Judith chapter entirely because I found it a little too much, and either side of that you've got a well-paced, involving and ultimately heart breaking story. In much the same way that people see the life of Jesus as a thrilling human story and nothing more, you can see The Final Testament in much the same way.

I'm not sure Frey is going to attract much ire in response to The Final Testament, at least not in Europe and the UK. He is after all treading the same ground that Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al have been pursuing tediously for what seems like years now. Controversy aside, it's a pretty unique retelling of the Bible story, and sits well in contemporary society inasmuch as he's pitched it as plausibly as a retelling of the Christ story can be. The ending is definately a gut-punch, and in its way far more cruel and contemporary a punishment than crucifixion. I suppose an easy parrallel to draw would be with The Good Man Jesus and Scoundrel Christ (see Bookclub III), I would say in balance that Pullman's version is more eloquent but Frey's perhaps more involving and empathic. The Final Testament strips away the dogma and rigid certainties of the New Testament, and replaces them with ambiguity and questions. The ambiguity of The Final Testament is refeshing. Ben never admits to being the son of God, his revelations always come in the aftermath of severe epileptic seizures, his 'miracles' could be hustles just as easily, and rather than bringing Lazarus back to life he commits an act of euthanasia instead. It's this perhaps that's the most radical aspect of the book inasmuch as it goes against so many religious teachings, yet at the same time suggests such a simple alternative in order to lead a 'good life'. Don't be a dick, basically.

You look up there...
He motioned towards the altar, towards the crucifix hanging above it.
And you look at that piece of dead wood, beautifully carved, and beautifully painted, but still a piece of dead wood, and you think it represents someone, and you think that someone is me.
Yes.
I'm not him.
You are.
I am not.
Is this a test?
No.
I know that God tests our faith every day, that being tested is part of faith.
God does no such thing.
And I believe this is exactly the type of test I would expect from him.
He laughed at me.
And I want to pass the test. I want to prove myself worthy of whatever God has in store for me.
God doesn't know you exist, and doesn't care about you.
I don't believe you.
So be it, but it's true.
How do you know?
Because God speaks to me.
Literally speaks to you?
Not with some silly voice, as it happens in the Bible.
Then how?
How doesn't matter. What does.
And what is that?
That this is all a fraud. This church, every church. That the world's religions are bankrupt and meaningless. That the world itself is bankrupt. That it's all going to end.
As has been foretold.
I know every word of every holy book every written. None of them foretell what is coming.
Revelations does.
Revelations is a stone age science fiction story.
If that's so, who are you?
Who do you think I am?
Despite what you say, I believe you are Christ reborn.
I'm a final chance.
You're here to redeem and forgive us.
There will be no redemption, and no forgiveness.
You're here to resurrect the dead, redeem the living.
I'm here to ward humanity that it is going to destroy itself in the name of greed and religion. That there is no God to save any of us. There is no Devil to take us to Hell. That man's only enemy is himself, and only chance is himself.