Summary
"I awoke in my own bed under a blanket of sweat and tears. It took a while to realize I was back in the confines of my home. But was I safe? Prophets: Krsna, Abraham, and a naked man. My back was aching, but it was not sore muscles or bed cramps. Blood-stained sheets lay under me. The blood was dried in lines from my back. In the mirror by the bed, I could see the fresh scratches had coagulated. Was it from the rocks Jahbb dragged me over, aiding escape from the Neanderthal? Could I have done that? Nothing physical has ever come back from the dreams. All I knew was that it hurt like hell and was sure to scar. Was it last night? How long was I out? The dreams had taken my life away and I had just found they came from God, and if true, He had damn sure better have an explanation waiting."
Jahbb, an African Bushman; Jophus, a woman of Moses’s time; and Jesus. In this book, God has given the fourth J. Transported through time in a series of vivid dreams, the narrator--a modern prophet--meets the three previous J who introduce him to the history of human faith. The true messiah, J is born in an apartment on Perry Street in New York City to be raised far from the public eye. The Vatican sends three representatives to raise the assumed Child, Bob Daffy, born down the hall. He and his family are rushed into a life of luxury and coddled by the Catholic Church. A female TV news reporter and a priest commit themselves to fitting the pieces of the puzzle together. Told in four parts, the story observes the decline of the world, the raising of the true Child, and the meaning of life.
About the Author
After fleeing home at the age of twelve due to fears of Middle America, Peter Burstin sauntered about the planet, ending up in New York City. Shortly after arriving in New York, at the age of seventeen, his first poems were published in a book put together by Luc Cannon titled, Art and Poetry Sans Frontieres, published in the US by Free Illinois Press. Peter has not stopped writing since. Having written a few plays for the theatre, he turned to film. Confronted with artistic morons in that medium, he was left befuddled and sat alone behind his Mac, typing away.
Review
MaddHatter's Review
“We say the naysayers. We do the undoing. We solve for the unsolved. We live as the unlived. We feel for the unfelt. For the unaware, We make aware,” states Jahbb in the opening page. If the acute reader perceives a misspelling bad-grammar moment upon reading and dissecting the final phrase of the sentence ending with “We make aware,”
that reader will be in for a shock to find that contrary to popular grammarian thinking, the post-comma capitalized “We” is intended. No, not a fancy-dancy artsy “oh I’m so nifty” moment, a purposeful moment as the words and tale that unfold make clear. Yes, dear reader, if the diction and grammar produce an oddly solar plexus centered discomfort, and the oddly familiar Messianic sentences that proceed are naggingly apparent, give in to the urge and understand that this is a novel about the big G, the big J, the God of all gods and his son, Jesus.
“I awoke in my own bed under a blanket of sweat and tears. It took a while to realize I was back in the confines of my home. But was I safe? Prophets: Krsna, Abraham, and a naked man. My back was aching, but it was not sore muscles or bed cramps. Blood-stained sheets lay under me. The blood was dried in lines from my back. In the mirror by the bed, I could see the fresh scratches had coagulated. Was it from the rocks Jahbb dragged me over, aiding escape from the Neanderthal? Could I have done that? Nothing physical has ever come back from the dreams. All I knew was that it hurt like hell and was sure to scar. Was it last night? How long was I out? The dreams had taken my life away and I had just found they came from God, and if true, He had damn sure better have an explanation waiting.”
Sure to shock and offend the religious and political right, The J Affect paints a scenario of what will happen to our civilization if war, environmental neglect, avarice, deceit, and hypocrisy remain unchecked. And before you go running away at this realization screaming, “Oh no, not another messianic militant christen gutter splat book,” stop and read on, you will not be disappointed. Why? Because Peter Burstin has succeeded where religious zealots and leaders have failed millennia upon millennia; painting a consistent portrait of the god of all life as the loving, caring, and giving being God so truly is, instead of the unbalanced, vengeful, recklessly jealous, and homicidal god that persists in the dogmatic domain.
But a being that operates from a place of absolute power with its concurrent command of caring and love is a god that all fell in love with eons ago, is it not? And when Jesus instructs in Matthew, 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” it seems unlikely that Jesus was asking us to give all of our person to an execrable uncontrollable monster. Since Jesus failed to return sometime in the period of 1 A.D. as he promised in Matthew 16: 27-28, “…. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom,” it is clear that as all those he spoke to at the time are long since dead, the second coming did not occur, at least not in the way the church has conveniently taught since then, focusing not on God’s love, but God’s unerring vengeance, relying instead on passages from the book of Revelations, despite the fact that the relevance and authenticity of this particular book still remains the most hotly contested book in the collection.
So what does this force feeding of the same old scriptural passages have to do with The J Affect? What is has to do with it is set the back-story for the premise of the book and its elegant reinterpretation of the same old same old. On this account, the book is a pleasure to read. Gone is the outlandish rhetorical dogma that fills the minds and pulpits of the religious institutions of today, but consistent is one message: God of love, forgiveness, and caring.
If you have traveled the road as many before and after yourself surely have, a refreshing moment escalating into a thunderous cascade of refreshing moments bordering on rapturous joy are possible and freely given by the one true God. Otherwise, life is no more than trip down The Death Road as the one in Bolivia, where each metre is one removed from probable death as one misjudgment in steering can occasion a 1,000-foot plunge down the sheer mountainside.
In short on the topic of Christianity, if you have said to yourself the very words of the narrator of The J Affect, “Wherever I was, I wanted no part of it,” then grab a copy of this book. And if you find yourself embarking upon this reading adventure like no other and find your fingers magnetically drawn to flip page after page not stopping until the entire novel has been read, call it the J effect. And if you choose to believe it is God, who guides your hand, you could be right, but then again, this review is about the book. What you choose to believe is entirely inconsequential.
|
