Lost in the Flood

I recently read -- and enjoyed -- The Preservationist by David Maine. It's a novel that recounts the Biblical tale of the arc and the flood from the perspective of Noah (or, as the book has it, Noe) and his family. Chapters switch viewpoints ala As I Lay Dying, with most of the family members' chapters in 1st person and Noe's chapters in a limited 3rd.

While I'm not well schooled in the Bible -- I know the Sunday School storybook versions (and the Unitarian Sunday School versions, at that) -- I have an affinity for almost every Contemporary Lit re-telling I've come accross. Like my favoritest "This American Life" episode ever, in which Jonathan Goldstein recounts the story of Cain and Abel, Maine's book takes something familiar and makes it new. There's a lot of room in old stories -- they are sketches or blueprints, really, so you can hang a lot on them.

At the same time, you're considering a time over two thousand years ago, which means these characters lived different lives, toiled at different tasks, and thought different things, which offers a lot of room for invention. Where Steven King can define a charater by his brand of cigarettes or Jay McInerney can define another by her purse, that's harder to do when everybody wears muslin and homemade sandals.

So ultimately, because of their familiarity and their foriegn-ness, Bible re-tellings (good ones) have qualities similar to Magical Realism. What's more magic than Christianity, anyway? (Garrison Keiller defined Unitarians as people who believe that there is, at most, one God.) But Maine's book brushes magic with logic, or vise versa: where do all these animals come from, two by two? How do they all fit on the boat? How do you keep the boars from eating the snakes, and the wrens from eating the dragonflies? And how can people look so different from each other if the flood killed everyone but Noe and family?

At the turn of the millenium (or whatever), there was an issue of Time that included a snippet of a gospel of Jesus by Reynolds Price. In one of the final sections, Judas is trying to hang himself from a banyan tree when the newly risen spirit of Christ comes upon him. They talk, and Jesus -- while forgiving Judas -- helps him to affix the noose. Cold, creepy, and somehow more real.

The Preservationist uses the term "rut" in place of "f*ck" in an interesting way. Animals rut each other, people are described as rutters, etc. Fun!

Also, please: ITMFA.