David Maine’s retelling of the Biblical story of Noah (Noe, in this telling) and his ark, The Preservationist, is earthy, near-lyric and as tangible as the dung of countless pairs of beasts befouling the lower decks of a floating menagerie, the sharp sour-sweet taste of the first honey-fortified postdiluvian wine, the fervent and frequent shipboard copulation of six people whose loins must eventually repopulate a new-scrubbed creation.
The eye of Maine’s prose does not look away from the undignified parts of the story of the flood (urination, sex in close quarters), the improbable ones (where do they get all those animals or the wood for the ark?), nor does it flinch from asking the most difficult questions about the flood (what kind of creator could seem to care so little for his creation?).
The story is told from the points of view of Noe’s wife, his three sons and their wives. All represent types. The sons, for example, include the callow youth, the unimaginative but devoted servant and the disrespectful but gifted rebel. But all also transcend type to become as genuine as people as are the utterly solid land, the rising sea, the ark, the beasts that Maine’s sparse but effective language conjures.
The women, especially, pop as living, breathing people, and it is their often dry, often lancing observations of their husbands and father-in-law that do the most to challenge the notion that the Yahweh worshipped by Noe could be worth that veneration considering his willingness to wipe out innocent men, women and children (children!) along with the guilty. But it is this very probing that makes the God of this novel all the more real, and the puzzle he presents these survivors all the more agonizingly relevant.
Each chapter is devoted to the first person voice of a character, with the exception of Noe, whose chapters are presented in a third-person omniscient point of view.
Article comments
1 - Georgio
The story of Noah is one of the reasons I came to the conclusion that the bible was not authored by God and if it was than this God is not someone I would follow..In short ..either the bible is full of shit or this God is rotten because anyone who would kill innocent ppl and then begin a new creation through incest is not some God to honor..
2 - Ernesto
Of course the flood in the story of Noah doesn't have to be understood as God killing innocent people, any more than a natural disaster or a car accident does. The real question, both in the Noah story and in Job, is "why does God allow this?" The answer God gives in Job is basically, "the answer is beyond you." The "problem of evil" exists whether one has regard for Biblical authority or not, and stories like Job and Noah's may provide some clues to how we can understand it.
Regarding the incest comment, in Maine's book, and the original story, Noe's sons were not married to their sisters, and Maine has Noe ensure that their offspring will marry cousins, not siblings. This still won't be likely to mollify someone with so visceral a reaction to the story, but I add it for the sake of clarification...
Best Regards
3 - Georgio
Of course the flood in the story of Noah doesn't have to be understood as God killing innocent people, any more than a natural disaster or a car accident does.....
What kind of comparison is this?..A natural disaster is through nature...what God did was intentional and even he admits it was something he would not do again..this makes him out to be either stupid or an EVIL God..if you do not see incest in this story than look at the bible ..it is full of incest and you know it..I actually believed most of Scripture and what the Church preached until I researched the bible and saw that it was full of evil incest and murder..anyone who would follow the God thats in the bible is afraid of the truth..which is ..there is no truth..
saying the answer is beyond you is pure bullshit ...the answer is...you will find out only after you die..fundamentalists believe in God and the bible only because it gives them a sense of security not because they know truth..truth scares the shit out of them.
4 - Ernesto
I'd rather not get into an expletive-laced argument over this ... nor am I trying to change your opinion. I'm not sure why, however, you insist on such literalist readings of Old Testament stories that, by the very nature of the genre they were written in, were clearly often intended to express true things in non-literal ways including allegory and poetic language (especially since you say you disregard the Bible entirely anyhow)...
Also, isn't insisting that "there is no truth," a paradox? Can we say true things if there's no truth?
5 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Ernesto, i enjoyed this review a lot, and i must say you handled that comments-discussion incredibly well.
i'm one of the Old Testament-as-fables crowd, myself. i find it very difficult to accept that people take these tales literally. but then again, there are people who assume Bring It On to be something other than the obvious work of a divine being, so who knows?
anyway, great review, written wonderfully.
6 - DrPat
I'm not sure we aren't meant to regard Bring It On as a fable, as well, oh, Duke - your well-known Dunstolatry aside, of course.
7 - Victor Plenty
Bring It On works on so many levels.
8 - Victor Plenty
It's a legitimate sports film.
9 - Ernesto
Maybe in order to fully realize what parts of Bring It On should be treated as literal and what parts should be treated as fable, one must harmonize it with Bring It On Again.
10 - Temple Stark
An Editors' pick of the week from the section editor. Thank you.
Go HERE for a button you can put on your blog and to look at the other picks.
11 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Ernesto, i refuse to speak the name of Br**g It O* Aga**
A Kirstenless charade, is all it is