The Gospel According to the Son

There was a cloud of tepid foreshadowing hanging over me as I went into this Mailer novel. It was decried as a soft and near lifeless work, a dedication of sorts from the secular Jewish Mailer to his then wife of and from America's Bible Belt.

But it was more than that. After reading Mailer for the last few years and hearing (in an interview with Charlie Rose I believe) that he willfully altered his style with every novel, I found myself more and enamored with his authorial ethos. Unlike, say, a Hemingway or a Faulkner, or a Pynchon, all of whom never seem to stray too far beyond their respective aesthetic spheres (and in some cases become almost slavish to them) Mailer ostensibly broke and re-broke his teeth with each new written show more endeavor.

And he was damn good at it too. Read Ancient Evenings and then The Gospel According to the Son and ask yourself how these two disparate works could have possibly been written by the same author. The former work wallowed in the excess and atavistic ritual of Ancient Egypt where the latter is almost monkish in its humanizing restraint in portraying Jesus Christ. And that Mailer was so able to characterize the Christian Messiah so believably as ideological rebel and conflicted man, as well as more than a bit vulnerable to the weaknesses of his partial humanity, while remaining mostly loyal to the gospels (save some genuinely funny and insightful editorial moments of Jesus's post death depictions in the hands of many who had never even met him) is a hell of a writerly feat in and of itself.

I read this in a day, I'm not saying you'll be carried by it as much as I was if only because at this point I'm probably far past the point of critical Stockholm syndrome concerning Mailer, but give it a shot to see a meditative, contemplative and, just as important, believable portrayal of the carpenter who, for many, divided history. show less

Definitely not Mailer at his best — largely a cut-and-paste of excerpts from the four canonical gospels interlaced with Mailer's own commentary as put into the voice of Jesus as first-person narrator.

You can watch Mailer talking about reading the NT for the first time in a Charlie Rose interview on Youtube. He comes to it late in life and as an outsider (coming from a jewish heritage).

There's nothing transformative in this book, no radical new take or even divergence from the Biblical narrative (as with The Last Temptation for instance). Instead it's almost predictably a take on Jesus as a jewish man of his time, with some uncertainty and trepidation but overall following the beats as laid out in a harmonizing view of the gospels. This is like reading Mailer's own attempt to understand the story of the NT and that's the biggest failing. There's nothing wrong with it, the prose is nice enough, there's just nothing enticing there, no show more insight or revelation to uncover. It's exactly what you'd expect. show less

This is the gospel according to Jesus's own perspective. It was interesting and I found it uplifting, even though I am not a religious person. I found the perspective attributed to Jesus was credible.

While I enjoyed reading this, it left me wanting more. It was sparsely written and didn't go into Jesus's feelings in much depth.

Gospel retellings from Jesus' point of view have already been done, and done better than this. I was really disappointed with The Gospel According to the Son, because it doesn't deviate *enough* from its source; Mailer never does anything interesting with all of its possibilities. There are even places, both in the dialogue and prose, where the novel follows the gospel story word for word. Bad form, Norman Mailer. A bad book and a disappointment that I really wanted to like.

Very interesting fictional memoir of Jesus of Nazareth. The narrator's voice is highly believable as he undertakes a mission he's not sure he's up to.

Considering this was written by such a “name” author I was really underwhelmed. With a few small exceptions it didn’t seem substantially different than a blending of the more familiar gospels.