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Down in the Valley
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18931 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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2 / 1991 |
2,447 Words |
| Author
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James W. Tuttleton
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AND THE ASS SAW THE ANGEL
Nick Cave
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990
251 pp., $18.95
The uses of the Bible are of course manifold. Aside from its central value, for many readers, as the inspired word of God, serving to guide conduct and belief for Christians and Jews, it has recently become a special object of scrutiny by literature professors and academic critics. Northrop Frye, Robert Alter, and Frank Kermode--only the most well known among English and Comp Lit profs--have recently published various critical books acclaiming the literary values of the Good Book. And recently Harold Bloom, in The Book of J (this month's Featured Book), has told us that the author of much of the Pentateuch was a woman for whom Yahweh was a troublesome meddler.
We may doubt much of what these litterateurs have to say: exacting scholarship in biblical studies requires such a command of the ancient world--not, so to speak, of a precise knowledge of old Hebrew, Koine Greek, Aramaic, and so forth, that a healthy skepticism about their conclusions seems warranted. What seems unarguable, however, is the tendency, in modern criticism, to turn the Bible into merely one more text for aesthetic analysis or, worse, deconstruction.
But the principal use of the Bible has always been as a repository of analogues, images, and allusions for creative writers. In this case, however, believers have reason to feel dismay at what the creative personality may do with their guide to faith and practice. For the creative writer's imitation or transposition of it may have the effect of reducing the Bible merely to just another narrative, thereby robbing it of the special inspiration believers claim it to have. The seventeenth-century poet Andrew Marvell expressed this objection long ago, in relation to Paradise Lost: he said that he feared Milton "would ruin (for I saw him strong) / The sacred Truths to Fable and Old Song."
These reflections have been provoked by the use of the Bible in a new first novel by the Australian writer Rick Cave. Cave is said to be known Down Under as the vocalist of the punk-rock band called the Birthday Party and as the founder of his own band called the Bad Seeds. (He has also composed the soundtrack of the film Ghosts of the Civil Dead and acted in the movie Wings of Desire.) About these accomplishments I can say nothing, but about his Bible-haunted
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