Et Tu, Buddha? Beautiful Blasphemies, Heartfelt Heresies
by Read Mercer Schuchardt
Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible
by Peter Manseau & Jeff Sharlet
Free Press, January 2004
ISBN: 0743232763 (hardcover)
304 pages“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
f 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.
