Leda and the New Testament?: new in bookstores

The Virgin Mother's been called some unusual things: I've heard her likened to the Egyptian goddess Isis. I've read comparisons of her to the Greek maiden Leda (both, the comparison goes, conceived after a divine encounter). I suppose I expected something just as startling or subversive in a new short book by Colm Toibin, "The Testament of Mary," published by Scribner this month.

In a way, this is just what happened - although not in the way that I expected.

Toibin gives us a portrait of the mother of Jesus in her heartbroken old age: living in Ephesus, visited (and harassed) by the Gospel writers who want her to corroborate the story of Jesus that they're writing. One of them scowls at her "when the story I tell him does not stretch to whatever limits he has ordained."

What does she think of her son's disciples?

They're nothing but "a group of misfits, who were only children like himself, or men without fathers, or men who could not look a woman in the eye."

This book started as a dramatic monologue performed before Dublin audiences, and all I could think was: Well, I wonder what people in the world's most Catholic nation think of this!

After all, Mary's not the figure of the Pieta, holding the body of her son after he is taken off the cross: She flees, terrified for her life.  There are many more provocative revelations -- but I won't spoil them -- all rendered in Toibin's characteristically beautiful, lyrical prose.

In the end, Toibin gives us a Mary who isn't Isis, or Leda. She's not a figure surrounded by stained-glass or stretching across the ceiling of countless church domes. Toibin's testament presents us with someone far more powerful and easier to understand: A mother. Toibin's Mary is human, all too human.

Related articles

Battle of the Buddhas: new in bookstores

Standing in a retail line on this infamous day, Black Friday, I heard someone (couldn't help hearing) on their cellphone behind me.

"It's crazy, but I'm good. I've done a lot of shopping," the person said. "I'm just trying to be Zen about it."

That's a great goal for dealing with the shopping madness, but what does it mean to be Zen?

Ask Donald S. Lopez Jr., and he'll probably tell you that most of us really have no idea what it means.

His new book, "The Scientific Buddha: His Short and Happy Life" (Yale University Press), is all about how a scientific version of the Buddha has belly-bumped the authentic, ancient one into a corner.

"The Scientific Buddha is a pale reflection of the Buddha born in Asia," the author writes as he explores the Buddha's original teachings and how they've been misunderstood in the West. The real Buddha, he adds, "entered our world in order to destroy it."

Instead, he's the one who's getting destroyed:

  • by the self-help movement
  • by the gospel of mindfulness - a term found on the tips of tongues everywhere
  • by discussions of mindful eating, mindful children, mindful coffee breaks .... on and on.

The tone of Lopez' book isn't judgmental -- with his academic bonafides, he certainly could preach if he wanted to -- it's measured and careful. A chapter on Buddhist meditation is stunning: Lopez guides us through the meanings of bhavana, a word usually translated as "meditation" that Lopez says means so much more: "cultivating, producing, manifesting, imagining, suffusing, and reflecting."All of this, he points out, gets lost in translation.

That's Lopez' argument, and we should all listen to him because he's a big deal in the world of Buddhism scholarship. His book (very brief: about 130 pages) is fascinating, powerful, enlightening, necessary ... and a little irritating.

Fine, the person behind me in line may not know anything about why Siddhartha Gautama sat down under the bodhi tree -- or maybe he does, how can I assume? -- but the important thing is that he was trying to stay calm and civilized while I was impatiently biting on my fingernails. I admire that.

Can't simple steps lead to deeper insights? Anyone trying to "be Zen" in the checkout line at the department store may one day get much closer to understanding the insights in Lopez' excellent book.

For now, at least, they're coping with Black Friday much better than I did.

Related articles

Making Dante go Bang: new in bookstores

Does Dante Alighieri look  mad in this picture?  Well, if he is, it's not because he just finished reading a new "translation" of "Inferno" (Graywolf Press) by poet Mary Jo Bang. On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the reason behind his surly expression.

Bang's new translation of "Inferno" either impresses or irritates -- there is nothing in between. No Limbo. No Purgatory. You have no choice: It's either Heaven or Hell.

Bang has turned the Florentine maestro's epic into a poem for our time, replete with cultural references to our world, notes and news headlines. It's an exhilarating tour de force that takes the reader by surprise. The opening lines, for instance, in which Bang gives us her own version of Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura are:

Stopped mid-motion in the middle

of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky--

That opening seems fairly tame. The reader -- this reader, I mean -- easily assumes that Bang's translation will be mostly an interesting exercise in basic modernizing of an old story.

Soon enough, the reader realizes it is hardly that. Bang is up to far more than providing a translation to join those by Sinclair, Singleton, Mandelbaum, Musa, the Hollanders, etc.

In the eighth circle, for instance, where the sin of fraud is punished, Bang's Dante-pilgrim encounters ... get ready for this .... Colonel Qaddafi as well as a former U.S. Secretary of Defense referred to as "Crazy Rummy":

I knew all their names by now,

Having heard them once when they were selected

And again on the ridge when they called to each other.

***

"Work those talons, Crazy Rummy,"

The whole disgusting group was cheering.

"Rip every last ounce of flesh off his back!"

***

Does this poem succeed?  Mark Ford doesn't think so, in the pages of BookForum. Its success, I think, all depends on expectation and point of view.   The main issue I have is with the title on the cover of the book -- there's the word "translation."   Why call it that when "An Interpretation" or "After Dante" would more accurately describe what Bang does?    If you're going to give an old poem a fresh new update, you're not exactly translating anymore, are you?  That's no criticism against the author: This book shows Bang at her most provocative and startling. But if you're expecting to find Dante, you should really look elsewhere.
 

Ancient H2O: new in bookstores

Realms like Westeros, in George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire," or Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast are imaginary landscapes -- places that exist only in the reader's mind. Until about 80 or 90 years ago, you could have added my Southern California to the list of imaginary topographies.  More than 22 million people consider my region their home today, but that number would have stunned scientists in the early 20th century. This land lacked a single element to support such an enormous population: Water.

But sunny SoCal is hardly the first region to ever grapple with natural resources: Steven Mithen's "Thirst: Water and Power in the Ancient World" (Harvard University Press) supplies a marvelous tour of long ago civilizations whose fates rested on water and making it available to their populations.Request Feedback

That marvelous face on the cover says it all, doesn't it?

Sumerians, Nabataeans ("masters of the desert," says Mithen), Minoans, Mayans, the Hohokam--Mithen's book is a fascinating survey of the many civilizations affected by a resource that we take for granted.

Find a comfortable chair, pour yourself a tall glass of water if you're thirsty, and spend a few hours reading about ancient efforts at hydraulics and irrigation described with evocative, often personalized prose. Then, once you're finished, take a sip and remember how lucky you are.

 

Related articles

Relic, relique, reliquus: Part 2

Besides having a great name, Ransom Riggs is a good fellow (we once sat on a panel together at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books) who's in the habit of making relics. Sort of.

As I was thinking about Umberto Eco and my personal artifacts in a previous post, Riggs came to mind. The plot of his novel "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" was influenced by all the unusual black-and-white vintage photographs scattered throughout the book. The pics don't belong to his family history, they're not self-generated: No, he acquired them at flea markets. They were context-less when he found them: no captions, nothing to explain them.

That left him free to invent his own stories (reminds me a little of what Chris Van Allsburg does in his children's book "The Chronicles of Harris Burdick"). Riggs also does the same in a new book, "Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past" (It Books).

I wish I had the energy to rove like him through flea markets for interesting old spars of knowledge, dim wares of price (E.P.). That doesn't mean I'm without my own relics, though. A few are:

icon of St. Nicholas (previously mentioned)

rocks and shells (from many places)

a tarnished ruble (from Kiev)

Shiva Nataraja figurine (from a departed close friend)

Drawings by my sons (obvious)

My father's chunky $5 ring (obvious too)

A daruma doll

Movie ticket (first date with my wife)

So, now that I've shared some of mine, turn to your own shelves and desk drawers. You must have relics.

What are yours?