Et Tu, Buddha? Beautiful Blasphemies, Heartfelt Heresies
Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau's, Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible, reviewedby Read Mercer Schuchardt
“Walking in the pouring rain
Walking with Jesus and Jane
Jane was in a turtleneck
I was much happier then.”
- Lloyd Cole, “Brand New Friend”
“No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion!”
- Vladimir Nabokov (as “John Ray, Jr. Ph.D.”), introduction to Lolita
“And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household.”
- Matthew 10:36
If you ever get a chance to meet Jeff Sharlet, give him a good swift kick in the balls. You’ll notice it’s your foot that’s hurting: the guy has nuts of titanium. Here’s a man who’s willing, possibly even eager, to deceive his fellow human into thinking he shares a belief system with them just to get the inside scoop of what really goes on inside their head, inside
their meetings, inside their prayer life, their personal confessions of weakness, and all the other ugly things that come out where real human trust is taken to be inviolable. Sharlet, whose name is now synonymous with charlatan
thanks to his authorship of the infamous “Jesus Plus Nothing” article in Harper’s magazine back in March 2003, has now come out with a book based on his website that he and his editorial partner Peter Manseau co-created.
Sharlet’s Harper’s piece was infamous because it did two things simultaneously, which were completely at odds with each other: a.) it brilliantly exposed the inside mentality and daily life of the Ivanwald “family” while b.) only doing so as a result of a completely unethical act. Sharlet must have imagined himself as some sort of contemporary martyr, pulling a stunt that was the equivalent of Gloria Steinem’s glory days, who was famous for dressing and acting the part of the Playboy bunny in order to get a job at one of their clubs so as to better document the–surprise!–sexism that inhered in the Playboy system. Sharlet was shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover what everyone else pretty much took for granted–that these people (“America’s secret theocrats”–sshhhh!!!) actually believed what they were saying, actually were trying to practice what they preached. Can you imagine the horror? Is there any cultural sin more gross and heretical than taking the truth claims of
Christianity at face value?
Sharlet’s deliciously suggestive writing was loaded with not-so-veiled allusions to secret cabals, conspiracies and the Nazis–and, of course, that old chestnut himself, Adolf Hitler–the standby of choice when symbolizing just how
ultimately evil your enemies are. Currently, Sharlet edits The Revealer at NYU with funding from the Pew Charitable Trust.
But really. This is supposed to be a book review. And with his industrial strength cojones, none of this groin-kicking is going to hurt him a bit.
Because here’s my confession: I love the way this guy writes. I love the way he puts his sentences together. I love the way he makes you almost melt over the lyrical immediacy and thrumming intensity of the passion his writing evokes. How could you not like sentences like these, plucked from his post-9/11 rapture at the beginning of the book called New York New York:
“How many times can the world end? How many
times can it begin again? As often as you survive. As often as you tell the
story. The apocalypse is always now, but so is the creation.”
The thing is, it’s a weeping beauty of a book. The tragedy is that most of its writers can only express the pain of loss, the bittersweet sorrow of their former days (or imaginary futures) of actual belief. In these doubtful times, they are strangely comforting essays, many utterly original, many others interesting and highly original interpretations of 13 books from the Bible. Additionally, you get 13 essays by Sharlet and Manseau based loosely around the theme of a spiritual roadtrip across America. Peter Trachtenberg’s adaptation of Job is especially relevant to our cinema-obsessed culture, and this reviewer.
And yet. And yet … When substance is lacking, it’s amazing just how far the book takes you on style alone. Sharlet, Manseau, and their contributors all write in a language that is fairly sparkling with energy and glistening with the suggestion of meaning. The problem is just that: instead of a rock on which to stand, the entire book is more like a collection of swimmers showing off their strokes. The irony is that they believe they are swimming against the tide, when in fact it is precisely the tide of contemporary culture that keeps their heads above water and makes the swimming so easy. Is there any more marketable buzzword than the word “irreverent”? Is there any stronger gospel than the one that declares the absoluteness of relativity, the rigid and ridiculous demand of absolute objectivity in a post-Heisenberg universe? What Sharlet has mistaken for heresy is, in fact, electronic culture’s orthodoxy.
It’s a book with no title on the cover. Just a big red X over the clouds in the blue sky, a kind of reversal of the Passover symbolism, in which the creation tells the Creator whether we will let Him exist or not. It is what C.S. Lewis meant when said that in the modern world it was God that was in the dock. It is what the ancients called hubris.
Sharlet’s essential mistake is that he feels that the truth claims of any religion are only relevant, and therefore only potentially true, for those who believe in them. It’s the old magic feather trick that everyone from William James (The Will To Believe) to Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces) put into high rotation and constant replay since roughly the time that Nietzsche said that God was dead. Unfortunately, the depressingly simple yet elegant rules of logic require that either a thing be true or false, and that if true, no amount of wishing the opposite has any bearing on it, – and vice versa.
And Christianity, Sharlet’s secret obsessive compulsion, has a profound willingness to acknowledge its own possibility for error: St. Paul puts all his cards on the table in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19:
12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
You can’t get much more brutally honest than that.
You take the highest and last refuge of meaning that a culture has and you give it to kids like these, and they will guarantee you a fast and fun ride to the bottom. And the ride really is fun. Until it’s over. The last page flips over with such a desperate existential cry that you can almost taste the ashes. Not only is scripture not revealed and God doesn’t exist, but now there’s nothing left to either do or believe now that we’ve finished our mockery. You’re reminded of the Roman soldiers torturing Christ–how much fun it must have been, not to kill the Buddha, but to kill the Christ, and how great must the despair have been once that fun was over. Even Publisher’s Weekly, who should be in the business of promoting the book, call Sharlet and Manseau “two religiously flippant intellectuals.”
But really, what did you expect? Being hip is getting harder to actually achieve in these post-ironic days, the way an erection is harder to achieve in a post-pornographic mediascape. Sharlet’s book is spiritual Viagra–it works, but only for a while, and watch out for the side effects. Like any drug, the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly. The book is subtitled A Heretic’s Bible. On the website that the book is based on, the truth is right there in the advertising:
“Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be. Killing the Buddha is it.”
Does that not sound great? Appealing? Exotic and alluring and, let’s be honest, sexy as hell? Now imagine the above paragraph with the word soccer instead of the word religion. (And if you doubt how much sport is a religious experience these days, try a British soccer match for fanaticism and violence) Imagine what kind of website it might spawn:
“Killing Pele is a soccer magazine for people made anxious by stadiums, people embarrassed to be caught in the sports section of a
bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of athletics. It is for people who somehow want to play soccer, who want to know what it means to score
a goal, but for good reasons can not and do not. If the athletes have come to
own the soccer discourse it is because they alone have had places where sports
language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the
supposedly non-athletic to think and talk about what soccer is, is not, and
might be. Killing Pele is it.”
Sure there are escalating levels of commitment and belief, but come on: if you don’t want to play, why do you want to be on the team? If you don’t want to be on the team, why do you want to be in the stands? If you don’t want to be in the stands, why don’t you want to read the magazines or watch the shows? And if you don’t want to do any of the above, except stand completely outside it and make potshots from behind the stadium, why do you think you have any right whatsoever to comment on the goings on of what it means, and if that if you do, that anyone should care? Answer: because we’re smart, cocky, and we’re really good writers.
Copyright 2004-2005 :: The New Pantagruel 1.2.
