We just can't help wanting to put things into orderly categories but some novels thoroughly defy the notion. What often happens, alas, is that these authors get compared to others with a similar issue and then dismissed from the 'canon' as being, sure, yeah, realists about some things but so off the wall about the rest, that what can a scholar do but ignore such chaos? Whittemore belongs firmly in this category. You know that from page 1 with the description of Plantagenet Strongbow, born around 1840 and heir to the Dukedom of Dorset. No, actually, you know it from the second you read his name. You also know you are in the hands of a genuine storyteller. I am not going to describe the plot or even the characters as that would take all day and night, but summarize by saying, the last book I read that actually helped me understand the turmoil that is the Middle East was David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace (1870's). This is the second. (There have been others, but not like these two.) Sinai Tapestry is the first of four novels that make up a quartet--the purpose of which, I think, is to lift out and pinpoint specific currents, happenings and obsessions that emerge from the epicenter of the Middle East, the Sinai and Jerusalem. All of these are historically 'true' occurences. Then there is the other piece of the story, literally 'the story' but not historical because how can it be? Whittemore's aim here is to capture the essence of the matter: positing an original Bible, a chaotic document 'suggesting infinity' written by a blind man and an imbecile, replaced by a religious fanatic who decided that the real Bible was too chaotic so he carefully forged a better one (this in the 1800's) destroying himself with the effort. Other dreams and obsessions exist too: of creating a peaceful land where the three monotheistic religions can live side by side. This theme, this thread has also been present for over a century, albeit lesser as being the most fantastical idea of all. I spent a lot of time reading, looking things up (Asa Jennings! Who knew?) and a certain amount of time staring out the window. The portrait of Jerusalem is also quite wonderful, so affectionate and so uncompromising. This first of the four ends in 1922 and I think the next one starts right then. Sometimes fiction does a better job at revealing truths than just the facts, m'am.
***** ( )

A stunning opening shot in what might be one of my favorite quartets of all time. ( )

My reaction to reading this novel in 2004.

"Edward Whittemore (1933-1995)", Tom Wallace -- Wallace, a former Yale classmate of Whittemore, provides a biographical essay on the author. Wallace was Whittemore's early editor and, eventually, agent. Wallace speculates that Whittemore may have been a CIA agent longer than the official ten years he was with the agency. Wallace also mentions that Whittemore's Jerusalem Quartet is a worthy combining of his great-grandparents, one who was a minister and his wife, a popular author of the time of works for "shop girls".

"Edward Whittemore's Sinai Tapestry: An Introduction", Jay Neugeboren -- A brief description and criticism of the Jerusalem Quartet with particular emphasis on this novel. I got a little impatient at hearing how great the book was and just wanted to get to reading it. Does publisher Old Earth Books feel the need to have this extended advertisement because they're reprinting a series that did terrible, in terms of sales, when it was first published?

Sinai Tapestry, Edward Whittemore -- This is a picturesque novel with nothing much at the core. I enjoyed the characters quite a bit. There's the Richard Burton like Plantagenet Strongbow who, amongst many other things, writes a huge history 33 volume work called Levantine Sex which is suppressed by the British Government. (It is described as "preposterous and true and totally unacceptable". It proposes man is a beast who, in his thinking, will never be content with simple animal pleasures and that there is no order to the universe.) There's the millennia old Haj Harun who thinks he was appointed by King Melchizedek to be Jerusalem's protector. There is Stern, Strongbow's son, who wants, in Palestine a homeland for all adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There's Skanderberg Wallenstein who finds a bizarre Bible, the oldest ever discovered, which contradicts, in its bizarre melange, the beliefs of all three of those faiths, a Bible composed of tales told by a blind man to travelers around an oasis, tales written down by an idiot who added his own touches, a Bible hidden by Wallenstein but not destroyed -- instead he spends years in a cave forging another Bible to be found in its place. But despite all these touches and more, the novel presents a murky message and has nothing at its core. The Bible Wallenstein discovers is unexplained: do all three religions spring from it?, did it somehow anticipate them prophetically?, did its creators tap some Jungian space of archetypes? Whittemore, by the way, never really mentions any of these possibilities. But the stories of the three religions, the effects they had on the world, can't be written off as superstition. Even an atheist denying the supernatural has to believe that, at least in the case of Christianity and Islam, something dynamic and abrupt happened that shaped men's minds and became a force documented in secular history. This whole confusion of time as exemplified in the confusion of stories and figures. Whittemore does seem to know something about early versions of the Bible and their discovery and some of the parts of Wallenstein's Bible remind me of medieval tales mixing Alexander the Great ahistorically with all sorts of other figures. That confusion is mirrored, amusingly, in the occasional confusion of Harun's mind about what time he's living in. It also allows Whittemore, who spent a lot of time in Jerusalem, to drop in a lot of odd historical bits about the city. But nothing much comes of all the picturesque wonderings, via Wallenstein's Bible and Harun as well as the other characters with more traditional life histories. Stern dies in Cairo in 1942, his dream unrealized. I got the sense that a lot of the structure of the book was Whittemore leading up to what he thought would be the shocking atrocities committed by Turkish troops in Smyrna in 1922. While that part of the book was interesting in that I hadn't heard of the event before, it wasn't particularly shocking and didn't seem an adequate climax to the plot. Still, despite the plot weakness, the bizarre details and characters may keep me reading this series.

"An Editorial Relationship", Judy Karasik -- Karasik, one time lover and one time editor of Whittemore, talks about their relationship and Whittemore's last days as he died of cancer. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1501027.html

It's a rather pale reflection of Illuminatus! and Midnight's Children, set in and around the Holy Land (the original, not the district in South Belfast) in the early 20th century. Extra coloration of various characters' background is brought in from Cambridge University, Albania and Ireland, none of it very convincing in detail (bad luck I suppose that I know all three of those locations reasonably well). The main strand of a confused plot concerns an ancient Biblical manuscript which supposedly disproves everything in both Old and New Testaments. (*rolls eyes*) The writing is not as funny as the author obviously thinks it is. It filled out the spaces for me while travelling and that is the best I can say for it. ( )

1st book in the Jerusalem quartet. Great boo. Great characters whose lives intertwine with each other weaving a fine tapestry. ( )