James Morrow
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
Author: James Morrow
Genre: Fantasy (Humorous)
Plot Summary:
Julie Katz, God's daughter, is miraculously born of a Jewish virgin, Murray Katz, on the first of September, 1974, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. As she grows up, her eccentric father insists she live a normal life and avoid using her powers to perform miracles. But young Julie is not match for Andrew Wyvern, a.k.a. the Devil, who convinces her to cure the blind son of a local evangelist. That evangelist, the Reverend Billy Milk, later Grandpastor and Chief Inquisitor of the Revelationist Church, takes the miracle as a sign from God that he has been chosen to destroy wicked Atlantic City and establish the Believers' Republic of New Jersey, just as Satan had intended. Julie, fed up with godhood and humanity, accepts the Devil's invitation to a life of luxury in hell. There, she meets her half-brother Jesus, who inspires her to return to the world to try to make things right, or at least better. The Devil drives a hard bargain though, and Julie can only be incarnated again if she gives up her powers. SPOILER: Julie is only able to survive anti-crucifixion, defeat the Devil, and start over in normal human life with the help of her long absent mother, God, an Atlantic sea-sponge.
Geographical Setting: Atlantic City, New Jersey and Hell
Time Period: Between 1973 and 2012
Appeal Characteristics:
This iconoclastic religious satire is wildly humorous, with plenty of fantastic action and interesting characters. The tone is fairly light and the fascinating plot unfolds quickly with lots of surprises. The light tone to some degree contrasts with the serious and thought-provoking underlying themes of the novel. What is religion's place in the world and in the human heart? Why does God seem absent in the face of terrible suffering? This book will appeal to readers who enjoy a playful, even whimsical examination of important religious issues, without too much overt religion-bashing.
Read-alikes: Fans of the humor in Only Begotten Daughter will enjoy another of James Morrow's books, Towing Jehovah (1994) which also won the World Fantasy Award. In this novel a washed-up tanker captain is hired by the Vatican to tow the dead body of God north to the Arctic to keep it from decaying. Christopher Moore's Lamb (2002)tells the story of Christ's childhood through the eyes of his friend, Biff. Readers who enjoy the religious theme of Morrow's book might also enjoy the much darker American Gods (2001) by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman musters the various old gods of America's immigrants in battle against modern fads and fashion. Kurt Vonnegut deals with the evolution of humans over a million years in his darkly humorous novel, Galapagos (1985). Finally, in a less serious but equally amusing novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1980) Douglas Adams details the misadventures of Arthur Dent, sole survivor of the earth's destruction and galactic traveler.
Red Flags: Sex, profanity and content very likely to be offensive to Christians
Towing Jehovah (1994)
Author: James Morrow
Genre: Fantasy (Humorous/Urban)
Plot Summary:
On his fiftieth birthday, Anthony Van Horne, former captain of the ill-fated Carpco Valparaiso (which ran aground at Bolivar Reef in Matagorda Bay, spilling eleven million gallons of oil and creating an economic and ecological nightmare, costing Van Horne both his reputation and his license), is greeted by the archangel Raphael with a most unusual proposition: God is dead, his two mile long body afloat somewhere near Sao Tome Island in the Gulf of Guinea, and Van Horne is charged with locating the body and towing it north across the Atlantic Ocean to be entombed in a glacial vault in the Arctic. Simultaneously, Father Thomas Wickliff Ockham, Society of Jesus, is summoned from his Fordham University post to the Vatican, wherein he meets the archangel Gabriel with a similar proposal -- to oversee Van Horne's expedition and ensure the Corpus Dei's transport to its icy grave. While the Holy See arranges for the Valparaiso's resurrection (and grants Van Horne a new captain's license from Brazil), Father Ockham assembles a sea worthy crew for the oil tanker's voyage. Despite Van Horne's reluctance to join this mission, the archangel Raphael has seemingly painted a path toward his redemption: if he tows the Corpus Dei to its Arctic tomb, Anthony's father (himself a life-long sailor) will acknowledge his great deed and forgive his catastrophic accident in Matagorda Bay, allowing Anthony the ability to move beyond his daily nightmares and migraines. Adding to the whirlwind is an element of expediency. The Vatican supercomputer OMNIVAC has calculated that while God is technically without a pulse, it is determined that he is not yet brain dead, thereby making both the urgency and expediency of this mission of utmost importance -- get the Corpus Dei on ice before the brain's neurons cease functioning. In an effort to disguise the magnitude of the mission, the Holy See has launched an effective cover, informing the ship's crew that the Vatican is financing a voyage to clean up an oil spill off the coast of Africa. As the Valparaiso makes its way toward Sao Tome, the ship's crew discovers Cassie Fowler, who is stranded on Saint Paul's Rocks and, in an ironic twist, is the only known survivor of the now sunk Beagle II, an exact replica of Darwin's Beagle on a re-creation of its famous voyage. Cassie, a member of the Central Park West Enlightenment League and devout atheist/rationalist, now on board and soon privy to the eventual discovery of God's floating body, surreptitiously contacts her boyfriend, Oliver Shostak, in New York in an attempt to sabotage the mission at hand (and destroy the theistic patriarchy plaguing Earth's society). As the Corpus Dei is discovered and secured to the Valparaiso by tow hooks anchored within God's ear canals, strange occurrences begin to plague the Valparaiso, threatening its urgent mission and running it aground on a suddenly appeared uncharted island. SPOILER: The realization that God is indeed dead and the grounding of the Valparaiso on an uncharted island have had profound impacts on the ship's crew, creating a new world where actions have no consequences, void of morality. Slowly, the crew's behavior becomes decidedly unfavorable and, in direct reflection to the discovery that the uncharted island (seemingly having risen from beneath the ocean expressly to ground the Valparaiso) is that of some lost Pagan civilization, several crew members stage a mutiny, looting the ship of food and other items and staging an impromptu bacchanal that would have impressed even Caligula. Meanwhile, Cassie Fowler's boyfriend, and fellow atheist, Oliver has arranged a counter-attack: he has enlisted Pembroke and Flume's World War II Reenactment Society to restage the Battle of Midway, creating an air strike sufficient to send God's body to rest at the bottom of Mohns Trench. As Van Horne manages to regain his mutinous crew (the orgy ran out of food, and in a feast or famine moment, the captain decides that the Corpus Dei would provide them with all of the food they would need to survive, despite Father Ockham's protestations and with the ship's cook's deft culinary skills), the Valparaiso manages to become afloat once more, breaking free of the Pagan island and heading north toward its final destination. Way behind schedule, as per the Vatican's computer, the Holy See has decided, instead, that the Corpus Dei should be incinerated rather than entombed, contrary to the archangels' plan. As Van Horne will have nothing to do with such tactics (insisting on completing the mission as originally planned), the Vatican enlists Anthony's retired father, Christopher Van Horne, who captains the Carpco Maracaibo in an effort to prevent the Valparaiso from delivering its load. The book's climax centers on a farcical naval battle staged by Pembroke and Flume, dropping countless bombs on God's floating body, but to little avail. Anthony Van Horne and crew manage to, ultimately, deliver God's body to its promised tomb. The book ends with Father Ockham determining that God has killed himself, seemingly willing himself non-existent, in an effort to remove the philosophical constraints that man has placed with his continued belief in God (i.e., allowing man to grow up, per se). Despite Father Ockham's new revelation, one that now desires disinterring God's buried body and parading it around the globe, the Corpus Dei remains lodged within the Arctic iceberg and the crew members return to land (Anthony and Cassie becoming romantically linked, birthing and parenting a son).
Geographical Setting: Atlantic Ocean; Arctic Ocean; New York City metropolitan area
Time Period: 1992-1999
Series: Godhead Trilogy (Book 1)
Appeal Characteristics:
To be sure, Towing Jehovah, while sharing elements of many other literary genres, is at its core a fantasy novel. While not overtly magical as the genre may often be perceived, there is without doubt a sense (and feeling) of otherness and enchantment throughout the story. Its underlying premise, that of God's corporeal death, is suggestive of a bleak, perhaps dark tone. However, Morrow deftly blends copious amounts of humor and satire to prevent this from occurring, instead using laugh-out-loud moments and improbably farcical situations to underscore philosophical discussions of religion, morality, and life on a decidedly non-secular Earth. The ship's cook Follingsbee's origami-like culinary creations with God's flesh are as hysterical as they are bizarre (using moles as though they were mushrooms, re-creating such fast food delights as cheeseburgers and Filets-o-Fish with nothing more than chunks of God's chest and some kitchen ingenuity). Morrow has framed Towing Jehovah in an edgy, evocative manner, providing equal satire to both fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist atheism. Written in a breakneck pace, the reader senses Van Horne's urgency, both to complete his mission and to seek redemption. Morrow has the uncanny ability to provide a particular level of depth in both story line and characterization, without sacrificing an engrossingly fast pace. Characters are detailed enough to be believable (despite the absolute farce of a situation in which they find themselves), yet not overly so. Central characters are given the most depth, as would be expected, and through Anthony Van Horne's journal entries written in a Popeye the Sailor notebook (interspersed with the third person narrative), we learn much about the ship's captain's own philosophical quandaries and reasons for engaging in such a monumental task. Similarly, Cassie Fowler and Father Ockham are provided with much introspection, allowing the reader many vantage points from which to explore Morrow's treatise on religion and the fall (and rise) of man. Secondary characters (of which there are many, and most of which are decidedly eccentric), are given equally proportioned detail. Able Bodied Seaman Neil Weisinger is both vivid and well developed, giving the reader yet another religious viewpoint (Judaism) to ponder the story's premise. Further characters provide discussions of feminism, nostalgia, and other theological diversions as the story arc unfolds. While at its root, the story line is a blend of character centered ruminations and issue oriented philosophical debates, Towing Jehovah is very much an action oriented novel. Much of its multi-layered plot lies in the voyage and the reader feels both the urgency that the characters experience (many in their own ways -- Van Horne's is a search for redemption; Ockham's is an almost reverential quest to save mankind; Fowler's is a desire to end religious patriarchy) as well as Morrow's own philosophical wordplay (using nautical imagery as metaphor). At times profane, occasionally sexually explicit, and frequently evocative, the novel ends at once resolved (God is entombed) while being open-ended (where do we go from here?). Written in a mostly conversational style, Morrow has the ability to create complex, colorful situations with an almost restrained, unembellished pen. Certainly, Towing Jehovah is written in a near poetic, extravagant prose, but Morrow is able to convey this in an almost casual way, providing frank yet dramatic passages in a graceful and direct manner.
Read-alikes: Without question, readers who enjoyed Morrow's deft blend of humor and satire, philosophical underpinnings, and rich character development, would likely enjoy other titles in his Godhead Trilogy. The second in the series, Blameless in Abaddon, finds God alive (yet comatose) and resting in Florida as a circus-like attraction at Orlando's Celestial City USA, where Martin Candle proposes that he be brought to the World Court in The Hague to answer for historical injustices brought upon mankind. The third in the series, The Eternal Footman, finds that God's body has self-destructed and his skull is now orbiting Times Square, causing the US to resemble 14th century plague-ridden Europe. Those readers who enjoyed Morrow's extravagant, satirical prose, laugh-out-loud situations, and character-driven philosophical quandaries, would likely devour Joseph Heller's seminal classic, Catch-22. Yossarian and other members of the 256th Bombing Squadron stationed on a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea during WWII, face a strange, almost nightmarish, life, beset with bureaucratic policies and thoughtless inhumanity, all told in comic fashion. For readers who enjoyed not only the humor and satire of Towing Jehovah, but also Morrow's use of improbable situations, rambling, poetic writing style, and frequent stabs at the human condition, Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, would prove both an entertaining and thought-provoking read. The son of Vonnegut's seminal character, Kilgore Trout, is a ghost (and Vietnam vet) who observes, over the course of one million years, the descendants of survivors of an ill-fated cruise to the Galapagos Islands and their Darwinian path to evolution. Readers who savored the more biting aspects of Morrow's satire, the overall breakneck pacing, and fully developed characterizations, would likely enjoy Jack Womack's Ambient. Set in 21st century New York, a city run by corporate (Dryco) overlords, Womack's novel follows a Dryco inspired assassination attempt gone wrong. Those readers who relished the laugh-out-loud situations, biting satire, and hysterical, though philosophical, parody of Towing Jehovah, would certainly find Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a worthy pursuit. Arthur Dent finds himself snatched from Earth by his friend Ford Prefect just as Earth is demolished to make room for a galactic freeway, and the two soon find themselves traveling through the galaxy, seeking answers to life's most uncertain questions. For readers who found engaging Morrow's rich character development, acerbic satire, and rapidly paced, though meandering, prose, would likely find Tom Robbins's Villa Incognito both challenging and engaging. Intertwining stories of Tanuki, a mythical Japanese raccoon dog who falls to Earth and impregnates a young girl, and American MIAs who choose to remain missing after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, create an oddly woven absurdist jab at contemporary mores.
Red Flags: Frequent use of profanity, occasional sex, graphic violence, satiric observations of organized religion
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