10 Years After

Tomorrow Never Knows

Finished reading Joseph Heller's God Knows and absolutely loved it. Here are two things from towards the end that I thought I'd include:

Boy, did we have laws - laws thirteen commandments, which I found a rather remarkably large number for a society witha language that had no written vowels and a total vocabularly of only eighty-eight words, of which seventeen can be defined as synonyms for God.
I was skeptical but not altogether surprised when Nathan showed up to denounce me for having incited the Lord's displeasure and to acquaint me witht he schedule of punishments in store. I had disappointed Him bitterly. It was nothing to the God shortly was going to disappoint me.
"How did he find out?" I wanted to know.
"He has His ways."
"He didn't know where Abel was after Cain killed him, or where Adam hid after they ate the apple."
"Those were trick questions."
"In what language," I asked, "did God address you?" This was a trick question of my own."
"In Yiddish, of course," said Nathan. "In what other language would a Jewish God speak?"
Had Nathan said Latin, I would have known he was fabricating.

This second excerpt I chose based on the dialogue aboutt he snake in the Garden f Eden. However, I added a bit more of the earlier text because I think it presents the sort of richness, wit, and sorrow that I found throughout the book:

I have really not felt much of anything since my wife Abigail died and my son Absalom betrayed me and was killed. I still do not know which of these two facts about Absalom has been more unhappy for me. I know I didn't feel like a victor when I started back from Mahanaim after that distressing triumph. I felt instead like a fugitive, and I feel like one now, a fugitive long persued by invisible demons that can longer be held at bay. In my intervals of broken sleep I feel like exhausted prey at the end of of a fatal chase. As the days draw nigh when I am going to die, I remember with envy Barzillai the Gileadite. I do not have that serene sense of natural completion that he enjoyed as his end came near and his days were fulfilled. I call for Abishag when I desire her close, and she comes each time. But I get no heat from her, and I am just as desolate when she is gone as I was before. Yet I know I love her. I have a monkey on my back that I cannot shake off, and now I know who that monkey is: His name is God. I have seen His face and lived: he wears thich eyeglasses and leads us not only into temptation but into many mistakes. Conquering the land of Canaan He had promised to Abraham was not my biggest victory. Not was delivering the people of Israel out of the hand of their enemies, either, although I may have thought so at the time. No. defeating my son in battle was much more important to me, for that kind of victory is a loss, and I feel it still. God knows what I mean, I feel nearer to God when I am deepest in anguish. That's when I know He is closing in again, and I yearn to call out to him now that I have longed to say to to him before, to address my Almighty God with those word of Ahab to Elijah in the vineyard of Naboth, "Hast though found me, O mine enemy?"
But Ahab built altars to Baal and slew true believers of Jehovah, and he and Jezebel were hated by God for these and the multitude of other evils performed by himself and his wife. All I did was fuck another woman.
"And send her husband to his death," I can hear God correcting me if we were on speaking terms again as we have been in the past.
"The Devil made me do it," I would remind Him in my defense.
"There's no such thing," He would argue in reply.
"The Garden of Eden?"
And he'd say unto me, "That was a snake. You can look it up."
The fault, I know, was not in my stars but in myself. I've learned so many things that have not been much use to me. The human brain has a mind of its own

Oh, and the very last line reminds me a lot of Vonnegut's Galapagos.