User:Sherrilledwards/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Today, the relationship between religion and modernity is more nuanced than in the naturalistic Nineteenth Century. We recognize a wide spectrum from faith through doubt to atheism. But at the risk of simplification, there seem to be two main approaches. For conservative Christianity and Judaism, religious commitment may be expressed as a ''rejection'' of modernity, using an either/or approach to truth. For those with liberal perspectives on Christianity and Judaism, religious commitment may be regarded as ''complementary'' to modernity, utilizing a both/and approach to truth. That complementary perspective may remind us of wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics. This is not simply a literary trope.{{efn| Planck, Einstein, and Heisenberg revealed the inescapable reality of indeterminacy in our world.}} In both humanities and physical sciences, there will be no return to rigid determinism.

=== God-Language in Hemingway: "Scared Stiff Looking at It" ===

''Harlot’s Ghost''{{sfn|Mailer|1991}} has myriad themes: betrayals ideological and sexual, haunting of sons by fathers, the “compartmentalization of the heart.”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=13}} Using the CIA as a ''synecdoche'' for a world of modernity, Mailer shows the boundary between fiction and non-fiction to be extraordinarily indeterminate. That indeterminacy applies to language but also to the ''realpolitic'' world of intelligence. But perhaps the most fascinating example of God-language appears in the last few pages of ''Harlot’s Ghost.'' It comes from Hugh Montague, codename “Harlot”—a mysterious protagonist loosely based on a real person, the enigmatic onetime poet and chief of CIA Counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton (1917–1987).{{efn|There is no consensus on Angleton. Was he the greatest practitioner of counter-intelligence, or, like Kim Philby in British Intelligence, was he a Russian mole? Mailer describes him as “a most complex and convoluted gentleman."{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1132}}}} Harlot speculates that the whole cosmos revealed in modernity fossils, evolution, solar system—to be God’s “‘majestic cover story,’”{{sfn|Mailer|1991|p=1280}} an exercise in ''disinformation'' and misdirection from the Lord of Spies, Jehovah.

Mailer presents an astonishing degree of humor, irony, and ambiguity, worthy of Nabokov. Can we take Harlot’s speculation seriously? Mailer provides a complex play of ''metaphor, metonymy,'' and ''metaphysics'' in three arenas—character and plot in the modern novel; theology and cosmology in the universe; and the quest for meaning among the contingencies of life.

Mailer’s ''The Gospel According to the Son''{{sfn|Mailer|1997}} is an intriguing work. Rewriting the gospel in first person, he retells the story of Jesus, ''focalizing'' the inner thoughts of the Son of God. To call this narrative bold is an understatement, but the book is more successful than many critics allow. Here, implicitly comparing gospel and story, Jesus compares his account with the canonical gospels:

=== Notes ===

{{Refbegin}}

* {{cite journal |last=Auden |first=W.H. |title=September 1, 1939. |journal=Selected Poems |date=1972 | location=Ed. Edward Mendelson. Expanded ed. New York |publisher=Princeton University Press |pages=95-97|ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Berger |first=Peter L.  |date=1969 |title=A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural |location=Garden City |publisher= Doubleday |ref=harv }}

* {{cite journal |last=Bernstein |first=Mashey |title=Jewish Values in the Fiction of Norman Mailer |journal=The Mailer Review |volume=2.1 |date=2008 |pages=376-384 |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Brown |first=Colin |date=1969 |title=Philosophy and the Christian Faith |location=London |publisher=Tyndale Press |ref=harv }}

* {{cite journal |last=Buske |first=Morris |title=Hemingway Faces God |journal=The Hemingway Review |volume=22.1 |issue= |date=2002 |pages=72-87 |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Chadwick |first=Owen |date=1975 |title=The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century|location=Cambridge |publisher= Cambridge University Press |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Conrad |first=Joseph |date=2008 |title=Heart of Darkness and Other Tales |location=Ed. Cedric Watts. Oxford |publisher= Oxford University Press |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Donne |first=John |date=2003 |title=John Donne's Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels |location=Ed. Evelyn M. Simpson. Berkeley |publisher= University of California Press |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Gellner |first=Ernest |date=1975 |title=Legitimation of Belief |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |ref=harv }}

* {{cite journal |last=Hassan |first=Ihab |date=1987 |title=Hemingway: Valor against the Void |journal=American Fiction 1915-1945 |location=Ed. Harold Bloom. New York |publisher= Chelsea House |pages=285-299 |ref=harv }}

* {{cite journal |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest  |date=1991 |title=A Clean, Well-Lighted Place |journal=The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories |location=New York |publisher= Scribner |pages=29-33 |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |author-mask=1|date=1929 |title=A Farewell to Arms|location=New York |publisher= Scribner, 2003  |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |author-mask=1|date=1986 |title=The Garden of Eden|location=New York |publisher= Scribner  |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Ernest |author-mask=1|date=2009 |title=A Moveable Feast|location=Ed. Sean Hemingway. Restored ed. New York |publisher=Scribner  |ref=harv }}

* {{cite journal |last=Kroupi |first=Agori |title=The Religious Implications of Fishing and Bullfighting in Hemingway's Work |journal=The Hemingway Review |volume=28.1 |date=2008 |pages=107-121 |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Küng |first=Hans |date=1980 |title=Does God Exist: An Answer for Today |location=Garden City |publisher=Doubleday |ref=harv }}

* {{cite journal |last=Lewis |first=Pericles |title=Churchgoing in the Modern Novel |journal=Modernisn/mondernity |volume=11.4 |date=2004 |pages=669-694 |access-date= |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1|date=1991 |title=Harlot's Ghost: A Novel |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |author-mask=1|date=1948 |title=The Naked and the Dead |location=New York |publisher=Rinehart and Co. |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman and Michael Lennon |date=2007 |title=On God: An Uncommon Conversation |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv }}

* {{cite book |last=Yancey |first=Philip |date=2002 |title=What's So Amazing About Grace? |location= Grand Rapids|publisher=Zondervan |ref=harv }}

{{Refend}}