In a word, this
book is ''weird''. Gore Vidal''s
Live from Golgotha is an irreverent and audacious take on one of the most interesting and controversial periods in history. It seems that you have to be of a certain distinguished caliber of writer to tackle the holiest of holies: the life and times of Christ and the early Christian church. Vidal paints it as an unstable epoch replete with Zionist fanaticism and countless so-called messiahs “charging about the countryside”. In spite of the tongue in cheek tone of Vidal''s attempt, it is infinitely more entertaining than the staid and forgettable offering from Norman Mailer entitled
The Gospel According to the Son, which is entirely on the opposite end of the literary spectrum.
The crux of the
story revolves around the central character, Timothy, an archbishop of the early Christian church and a contemporary of St. Paul, about sixty years after the Crucifixion.
Timothy is more than just a contemporary to St. Paul – he is boy wonder assistant for the evangelical and also his bedmate, given his “golden hyacinthine curls” and “cornflower-blue eyes”. Timothy is so devoted to St. Paul, or Saint as he is referred to that the opening chapter of the book has Timothy writhing in pain during his circumcision.
Vidal wastes no
time throwing punches into the fat of Christian lore. He has Timothy claim that “The Jesus story was never much of anything until Saint cooked up the vision-on-the-road-to-Damascus number and then pulled the whole story together”. St. Paul is portrayed as a raving thespian and a persistent sodomizer. We are constantly reminded, to the point of overkill, that Timothy was a victim of incessant sexual harassment from Saint.
The time line and chronological continuity in the book is a mess and it is difficult to follow the story in a logical manner. Vidal perhaps recognizes the problem when even Timothy gets bogged down in a confusion of tenses. Essentially, the story involves a Hacker on the brink of the twenty-first century who has somehow managed to go back in time and fundamentally alter the beloved Gospels in the way they were written that promote a Judaic version of Armageddon and a humiliating image of Christ. When a well meaning executive from NBC, Chet, catches wind of the conspiracy and discovers a way to transport himself back to the past and to the time of Christ and the early church, he does so by visiting Timothy and imploring him to write a gospel that survives the reach of the Hacker who has pretty much reached anyone else associated with the Greatest Story Ever Told. Chet also wants to send a film crew back through time to Golgotha to film the Crucifixion on a prime time
Live feed transmitted back to the future. In exchange for writing the Gospel, Chet promises to arrange it so that Timothy will anchor the event. To whet Timothy''s appetite, he leaves behind a Sony television set that broadcasts late twentieth century programming. There is no explanation as to how the set works in an era that has no electricity but it works and timothy and his wife watch it for hours on end, enthralled with visions of the future
Indeed, a significant portion of the novel is simply too absurdist to take seriously or even semi-seriously. Gore Vidal is not subtle about his penchant for absurdism, particularly when it comes to injecting modern colloquial terms into an ancient vernacular. For instance, when Timothy recounts his time in Rome, he mentions how “you couldn''t get insurance in downtown Rome unless you paid an impossibly high premium”. Rome eventually burns down due to “inadequate building codes and the unscrupulous builders and contractors, not to mention the conscienceless slum landlords”. Vidal writes further that Pontius Pilate ended up crucifying “the first low-interest rate monetarist that the Jews hadnce Jesus''s ancestor King David, also an easy-money freak.” (This reference stems not only from Jesus banishing the moneychangers from the temple but also its effect in lowering the prime rate which sent the economy into a tailspin). Hence, the Crucifixion had more to do with a conflict in monetary policy than it did with animosity toward a messiah. Indeed, nothing stands a chance against Vidal''s wit: Christmas, James (the brother of Jesus), Judas (an easy target)...even television shows from the early nineties take a hit.
The book is further befuddled with all these characters arising from the future through dreams, visions, mediumship or holograms. Timothy refers to them as kibitzers - annoying audience members witnessing important epochs in history. Shirley MacLaine, and the Christian Scientist Mary Baker Eddy are among the time-bending tourists.
The book starts to come together toward the end as the pieces start fitting into a bizarre multi-temporal puzzle. If the reader can plod through the illogical haze of the first three quarters of the book, he or she may feel the reward is worth it, especially when the colossal scandal of the Crucifixion is revealed in its entirety. This is, however, certainly not a book for those who take offense to blasphemy. Without giving too much away, the reader will be surprised to discover the identity of the Hacker, and what could have been in store for modern believers of the Christian faith.
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