God is Dead is Ron Currie Jr.'s literary debut. In it, he poses a rather interesting question: how would the world change if there was irrefutable proof that God didn't exist? In order to explore this he begins by literally killing God, who came to Earth in the body of a young Dinka woman but is soon killed by the Janjaweed in the Sudan. The news quickly gets out that God is dead and the world reacts: priests commit suicide, people begin to find new things to worship such as their children and the feral dogs who ate God's corpse, and wars are waged over philosophical camps rather than religious affiliations.
I had been warned that this book - which is really more of a collection of short stories rather than a novel - would be depressing, however I didn't really find it to be such. Instead, it was a very darkly humorous satire, with Currie clearly finding inspiration in Kurt Vonnegut. In fact, there were several moments that made me laugh out loud, such as when Colin Powell, who's suffering from a crisis of conscience, begins to verbalize his disgust with President Bush, calling him a "silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker." But between these moments of dark humor, Currie continues to keep his subject serious - how would we react if we knew that there was no God, thus no consequences, no purpose and nothing to believe in? In the chapter titled "Interview With the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God's Corpse," the dog puts it more eloquently than I ever could:
Up Next: Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell
I had been warned that this book - which is really more of a collection of short stories rather than a novel - would be depressing, however I didn't really find it to be such. Instead, it was a very darkly humorous satire, with Currie clearly finding inspiration in Kurt Vonnegut. In fact, there were several moments that made me laugh out loud, such as when Colin Powell, who's suffering from a crisis of conscience, begins to verbalize his disgust with President Bush, calling him a "silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker." But between these moments of dark humor, Currie continues to keep his subject serious - how would we react if we knew that there was no God, thus no consequences, no purpose and nothing to believe in? In the chapter titled "Interview With the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God's Corpse," the dog puts it more eloquently than I ever could:
"I am not your God. Or if I am, I'm no God you can seek out for deliverance or explanation. I'm the kind of God who would eat you without compunction if I were hungry. You're as naked and alone in the this world as you were before finding me. And so now the question becomes: Can you abide by this knowledge? Or will it destroy you, empty you out, make you a husk among husks?"And seeing how events unfold in the book, let's all hope that's a question that never needs answering.
Up Next: Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell
Labels: authors A-E, books, fiction, philosophical fiction, satire, short stories
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