God Is Dead

Here's the debut novel from Ron Currie, Jr., whose Everything Matters! was one of my favorite reads of 2014. It's technically a collection of short stories, but they're of the "linked" variety, best read sequentially. And the collection definitely works better as a whole than as the sum of its parts.

In the first story, God decides to go to war-torn Darfur in the guise of a young Sudanese woman. He's killed by the Sudanese government in a raid on a refugee camp and that's that; God is dead! The rest of the stories deal with the aftermath of God's death and explore a very specific vision of a world without God. How is it different? And how is it alarmingly similar? It's far more speculative than theological in nature.

The nine stories, with some brief descriptions and reactions, are:

"God Is Dead"

This one isn't even really about God's death; it's told from the perspective of Colin Powell on a foreign relations mission to Sudan. Powell remembers an incident from his youth - and this is God's doing - in which a white cop beat his black friend to death right in front of him. This book came out in 2007, so this was well before the Obama Era, and Powell was at the time the most powerful black man in the world. At any rate, Powell snaps and - understandably, feeling suddenly like nothing more than "the world's most powerful house n-----," throws his forty-year political career down the drain by refusing to leave Sudan.

"The Bridge"

A successful high school graduate without a care in the world decides to leave for college the day after graduation. On her way out of town, she witnesses a priest jumping to his death from a bridge. This one's short and sweet and well-written, but most of its impact - for me, at least - comes from what follows. We never see or hear about this young woman again, but we do see what happens to the world around her, and it makes this story feel all the more like a tragedy in hindsight.

"Indian Summer"

The world has unraveled into chaos pretty immediately, and before too long neighbors are killing each other for gasoline. After a summer of partying without jobs or parents, and without any colleges to return to in the fall, ten young men make a suicide pact. This was probably my favorite story in the set, taking that youthful fantasy of an endless summer and turning it into a depressing nihilism where these kids would rather be dead than bored and hopeless. The ending is also a bit of a gut punch, as the lone survivor reveals that - of course - society figured itself out before too long and ultimately things turned out to be pretty similar to how they were before God was dead. The whole thing felt like Stephen King at his rarest and best.

"False Idols"

Here's another favorite. Once people have stopped worshipping God, they begin to worship their own children, each assuming their own children are the most sacred and special of all. (It really isn't a far cry from the way most parents are today, right?) The narrator in this one is a psychiatrist who spends his days reminding people that their children are stupid, lazy, ugly, and any other number of types of "unremarkable." Naturally, he's the most hated man in town. All of this is great and a number of his sessions are hilarious, but the story turns touching when the psychiatrist's own background is explored. How would he feel about having his own kids?

"Grace"

This one was only a few pages long and, if I'm being honest, totally forgettable. I remember it involving a father-son landscaping team encountering a dead or dying man on the side of the road. I'm sure it was better and more meaningful than I can give it credit for being.

"Interview with the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God's Corpse"

Exactly as it sounds, and easily another highlight. This is where Currie comes closest to being Vonnegut. The feral dogs who ate God's corpse have gained both a greater sentience and also a means of communicating with people. But this dog doesn't really like people, now that he understands them. (What dog would?) He's also gained some of God's powers, but these seem limited to omniscience rather than having any actual control over physics or nature. (Is that all God was capable of in the first place? He did, you know, die.) The dog also reminded me of Gulliver toward the end of Gulliver's Travels. He's just seen enough, and frankly, he's sick of this shit, happier to wander around as a recluse than to deal with other people.

"The Helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit"

Here's another take on religion not being the root of all conflict. We're another generation or two into the future now and there's a worldwide war being waged between the postmodern anthropologists and the evolutionary psychologists over which philosophical schools of thought should govern mankind. It's an unoriginal concept - hell, South Park made hay out of nonreligious futuristic warfare in a two-part episode almost a decade ago - but I loved this particular flavor of it and I loved Currie's specific slants. At any rate, a teenager in this one - Arnold - grapples over whether or not to join the army and the war, which breaks his mother's heart.

"My Brother the Murderer"

Not so funny, and really pretty sad - though with a title like that one, is that a surprise? The titular brother's murders are never explained in any detail or given any context; we just know they're horrific enough that the narrator himself becomes untrustworthy and avoided simply by association. It's one of the vaguer stories in the collection, but in keeping with the "God is dead" theme, the brother is found not guilty because he's clearly insane as he still believes in God.

"Retreat"

The final story in the book is also the only one that directly relates to another one; here, we rejoin Arnold from two stories ago, now eight years older and a decorated member of the military, holding out with his unit in a last stand in Mexico. Deeming his situation hopeless, he flees with another soldier in a tank toward America to warn the nation of the impending invasion. When he arrives at the border he finds a sign that says, essentially, "Hey there. We regret the role we played in escalating this tension and, as such, we've all had our memories altered in order to forget that this conflict even exists. Please don't kill us. Thanks!" Sure enough, on the other side of the Rio Grande all Arnold can find are blissfully ignorant civilians unaware of their own impending doom from a conflict they themselves created. The story and the collection end on that note, which cuts pretty deeply and poignantly.

Anyway, I loved the whole thing - not quite as much as Everything Matters!, but plenty all the same.