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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Testament of Mary: brilliant or basically bollocks?
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
This is, of course, the book by Colm Toibin which was critically praised and on an initial Booker list. It is short (always something I prefer) and undoubtedly Toibin can produce excellent prose.
But the whole premise seems somewhere between pointless and plain silly, and I wonder if it's just me. I don't lightly diss accepted Great Writers so have I got it wrong?
Basically it's about an embittered Mary, who to the end of her life thinks her son had basically just gone a bit loopy and surrounded himself with a group of misfit muppets which got him crucified. Others, who founded the Church are trying to get her to endorse The Message and if they can't do that, at least make sure she is kept away effectively under house arrest so she can do no harm.
And yet miracles are portrayed as events that took place, including the raising of Lazarus, but not, of course a word about the Resurrection.
I wonder why anyone wants to explore this? I mean you could do this to anyone by just making it up. Maybe the Buddha kept a harem and died of excessive sex. But what's the point - unless it's just for a laugh.
If nobody else has read the book, this will fall like a stone. But feel free to mount a stout defence of the book and prove that the only bollocks is in this post.
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
I haven't read it, but have read some reviews. My initial instinct as a more theologically conservative Christian is to call it 'bollocks', but I feel hesitant to say that. It is an understandable reaction to focus on the earthy humanity of Mary, given the piety that has grown around her. I am sure much of the adulation - bordering on worship - of Mary does her a great disservice, and distorts our perception of her. The gospels, after all, hint at her doubts (see Mark 3:20-35).
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Galilit
Shipmate
# 16470
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Posted
First off, it is a gorgeous object.
But I was really disappointed in it. It seemed to me to radiate a sense of male or adolescent "rebellion" and desire to shock. He obviously thought he was making a very important contribution to... something. Literature? Religion? Faith? Righting some wrong or other?
Can't even say I'm glad I read it.
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She who does Her Son's will in all things can rely on me to do Hers.
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hanginginthere
Shipmate
# 17541
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Posted
I couldn't work out who the intended audience was. The book clearly presupposes familiarity with the gospel story, which is something you just can't take for granted in a general readership. My daughter's book group read it recently and most of them had no idea who most of the characters referred to (but mostly not named) were.
Also, you need to know a lot about the world in which the story is set, for instance that Ephesus was the centre for the worship of Artemis, a fertility goddess.
And why was the Cana story placed near the end of the public life?
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'Safe?' said Mr Beaver. 'Who said anything about safe? But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
The gospels, after all, hint at her doubts (see Mark 3:20-35).
Well, not really. "Those coming from him," perhaps his family or associates seemed fixing to make an intervention. Maybe Mom was in the thick of it. Or maybe, upon hearing that "those coming from him" were fixing to butt in, Mom decided this was an instance where her presence would be helpful (to Jesus against the buttinskis).
In any event, this drive-by proof-texting is thrown up to provide cover for the partisan flag-waving of your preceding sentences.
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
It's interesting that I actually found it quite offensive, and in it's way seems to want to offend as did Rushdie's book, for instance making Mary a secret devotee of Artemis.
I can understand someone who rejects Christianity being interested in how it got off the ground, but there is no attempt at this. As someone else pointed out very few people are named, and there are rather sinister figures, like her "minders".
Ho hum, maybe I was hoping for some alternative way of reading it. If, as it seems, most people think as I do that it is a waste of some undoubtedly beautiful text, then this thread will get very boring very quickly, and gently fade away
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I too was disappointed. It is a really dull book, told in a dull way. It could have been so much better.
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Silent Acolyte
In any event, this drive-by proof-texting is thrown up to provide cover for the partisan flag-waving of your preceding sentences.
And this jargon laden comment has been concocted to avoid responding to the point I made in the penultimate and antepenultimate sentences of my previous post.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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GCabot
Shipmate
# 18074
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Posted
It reminds me of something out of the pen of Dan Brown. It is just plausible enough and tangentially related to the truth to interest readers, yet is ultimately nothing more than a figment of the author's imagination.
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The child that is born unto us is more than a prophet; for this is he of whom the Savior saith: "Among them that are born of woman, there hath not risen one greater than John the Baptist."
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GCabot:
It reminds me of something out of the pen of Dan Brown. It is just plausible enough and tangentially related to the truth to interest readers, yet is ultimately nothing more than a figment of the author's imagination.
I haven't read it, but I believe from reviews there are two crucial differences. The first is that the author knows it's a figment of his imagination and intends that the reader know that too; and secondly that by all accounts Toibin can actually string sentences together and come up with something that makes sense.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
I suppose one of the - surely un intended - crumbs that a believer could drag from the book, is the cynicism that would be necessary on the part of those who started the gospels, to the extent of virtually keeping Mary under house arrest in case she exposed their fabrication.
I read an article by Toibin in which he said he was influenced by the work of Geza Vermes. He doesn't seem to have learned much, since Vermes' views, whilst clearly at odds with orthodox Christianity, are cogent and quite interesting. I don't agree with them but don't dismiss them either.
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
We read it as the December book for the Ship Book Club. Although it's a short book, I found it a slow read because the prose is so dense. Most people who read it hated the depiction of Mary. There was a bit of a spin off here
The Cana story wasn't that late in the telling of the book - and traditionally the Easter week liturgy includes things like the scourging of the temple, which are earlier in different books.
I found some of the ideas fascinating - how the Gospels were written, what happened to Lazarus, what it must have been like to live with Jesus - and it brought home to me how little we really do know about Mary and Jesus from the Gospels.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
I too read the reviews and decided that the book wasn't for me.
The play based on the book is currently on at the Barbican, with Fiona Shaw as Mary. I know two people who have seen it - one thought it was absolutely brilliant, the other thought it was complete crap. Both are Christians. So I guess you pay yer money and take yer choice. I'm not planning to see it.
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
I didn't find it offensive, certainly not any moreso than other secular presentations of Jesus - JC Superstar etc.
I just found it boring. Dull dull dull. A short book that felt like a really long book.
My one point of interest was that it struck me as what you might have thought Jesus was like this if you only ever read John's Gospel - sort of ethereal. And I think all the incidents were from John. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend it; and if you must read it borrow don't buy.
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I'm with Leprechaun. There are better novels that deal with similar material. Good gosh, BEN-HUR is better -- at least you get some good chariot races for your money.
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
I'm someone else who found it dull and struggled to finish it, short though it is. However, it was given to me by a friend whose husband had committed suicide. She thought it was an accurate and moving account of a mother's bereavement, and wanted to give it to her mother-in-law.
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I'm with Leprechaun. There are better novels that deal with similar material. Good gosh, BEN-HUR is better -- at least you get some good chariot races for your money.
Not to mention a lovely Stephen Boyd all oiled-up in the bath house ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
We read it as the December book for the Ship Book Club. Although it's a short book, I found it a slow read because the prose is so dense. Most people who read it hated the depiction of Mary. There was a bit of a spin off here
*snip*
I found some of the ideas fascinating - how the Gospels were written, what happened to Lazarus, what it must have been like to live with Jesus - and it brought home to me how little we really do know about Mary and Jesus from the Gospels.
There is, of course, Richard Beard's book, "Lazarus is Dead," which I have wanted to read, thinking that being resurrected must complicate one's social interactions greatly (and, as a former bureaucrat, I can only begin to imagine what this does to one's legal status).
Discussing the Toibin book yesterday at a reception, I found that one of my interlocutors sincerely believed that it was a recently-discovered biblical text and accordingly likely to bring down the Roman Catholic Church (but not the others??). She was astonished, then angry, when I pointed out it was a novel.
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Augustine, don't ever let your friend get onto the Internet. Even email would be perilous for her, all those Nigerians who want to share their lotto winnings...
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
I think its very much rooted in Toibin's context as an Irish author of a particular generation. The older generation of Irish liberal intellectuals (which includes most artists and authors) still think there's something edgy and radical about questioning traditional Catholicism, which really isn't the case in Ireland or anywhere else in the 21st century. So 'The Testament of Mary' is an incredibly obvious book for an Irish author of Toibin's generation to write.
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
Yerevan is, I think, right in this. Criticizing Xty and Catholicism was daring when I was in Ireland in the 1970s but I suspect would have less traction now-- it would continue to be a preoccupation for Toibin's generation.
As a sidenote, my Gospel-of-Mary friend studiously ignored me at my local coffeehouse yesterday. I will file this under the social consequences of querying apocryphal gospels.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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Jack the Lass
Ship's airhead
# 3415
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
But the whole premise seems somewhere between pointless and plain silly, and I wonder if it's just me. I don't lightly diss accepted Great Writers so have I got it wrong?
Basically it's about an embittered Mary, who to the end of her life thinks her son had basically just gone a bit loopy and surrounded himself with a group of misfit muppets which got him crucified. Others, who founded the Church are trying to get her to endorse The Message and if they can't do that, at least make sure she is kept away effectively under house arrest so she can do no harm.
And yet miracles are portrayed as events that took place, including the raising of Lazarus, but not, of course a word about the Resurrection.
Bumping this thread up as I've just finished the book. I don't think the idea of it is pointless - as others have pointed out, speculating on what isn't written about Biblical characters is nothing new, and I think potentially useful - the name for the technique escapes me, but isn't meditating on the scriptures and imagining oneself a witness to/participant in the actual events considered a legitimate spiritual practice? Of course, having read the book I'm not suggesting that this is what Toibin was doing, but it did remind me of meditative exercises I have done in the past.
I thought the book was pretty cynical, but I didn't dislike it - just disagreed with where it was going. I also was struck by the description of Lazarus, who in this interpretation was much more god-like than Jesus. In that sense it kind of reminded me of Jesus Christ, Superstar - where Jesus comes across as the unhinged one, whilst Judas is far more sympathetic and rational.
Re the final point quoted above from the OP, I thought the Resurrection was talked about - but as far as I could tell it was presented as the shared dream between Mary and Mary, which was seized upon by the 'minder' who heard it all before they thought to stay quiet, and wrote it down as what had actually happened.
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"My body is a temple - it's big and doesn't move." (Jo Brand)
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
Jack the Lass:
I realise I might be keeping this thread on life support when it should be allowed to pass quietly . . but I think there are some interesting questions about authorial intent, which are relevant not just to lit crit (which I am not that well up on) but also understanding the Bible.
Trouble is the question in my mind is hard to frame, but let me try.
If you start by saying Toibin doesn't have to have any "goal" or "point to make" then I think it makes his book trivial. Like a book on Nelson Mandela being obsessed with getting it off with white inmates at Robbin Island. That's a pretty sick idea and for an author just to say I'm not intending anything but just to write prose that you may like to read, is in IMO a cop-out. Nor am I aware that Toibin has said that.
But nor has he said clearly what he had in mind. He states in one interview that he had read Geza Vermes a lot, but like I said earlier, he hasn't learned much from him. All the miracle stories which he seems to write of as factual are taken from John which is generally held to be the least reliable. He has Christ explicitly claiming to be the Son of God, which is something he is generally not though to have done. Even more odd: In the miracle stories, where Christ speaks it is in old (KJV) English, thees thous and that.
Which makes me think he is not aiming at suggesting these things occurred, and since I believe he is no sort of believer, it would be odd for him to do so. But if he is just taking them as stories, the book becomes really odd, since no stories are likely to have circulated during Mary's lifetime.
An interesting comparison is with Gabriel Garcia Marques' book "100 years of solitude" where he does sort of explain that he is deliberately seeing life through the mind of a simple peasant from Antioquia (sort of the backjungle). So priests do levitate, there are showers of butterflies, but the government inspired train massacre never happened because the story was suppressed.
So I really wonder what he is getting at.
Honest, I will not keep this thread alive if no one else does. But it is a long while since I read a book from someone who I respect as a writer as much as Colm Toibin, but which I honestly thought was beautifully crafted bullshit. So it sort of bugs me. As you may have noticed.
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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