The IBIC Guide to Books By James Morrow

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Remarks from the IBIC Editor's Journal

September 5, 1994

On the back jacket of TOWING JEHOVAH by James Morrow (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994) there is a blurb by Michael Bishop which reads:

"About a hundred pages in, I understood that TOWING JEHOVAH bulks as gigantic among the SF fields' schools of pale commodity novels as Moby Dick would among a tide-buffeted flood of krill."
I only needed to read about ten pages to reach the same conclusion.

The story line is that the two-mile-long corpse of God falls into the Atlantic and is towed to an Arctic haven by a tormented supertanker captain. Sounds hard to sustain, but Morrow manages it wonderfully The only quibble I have with the plot is that it's hard to believe that the spy satellites and navies of the world would never notice such an unusual oceanic disturbance. This book about the death of God would have benefitted from a little techno-thriller input (!)

As I read, I was puzzled: "this is a wonderful book, but what the heck is it about?" The ultimate answer is beautiful, satisfying, and very human.


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Editor's Recommendations, Summer 1996

In this inaugural edition of IBIC's Featured Books, I'd like to draw your attention to several titles which have helped to shape my life and thinking.

  • When I was around fifteen, I came across Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's science fiction novel, INFERNO. This '70s remake of Dante's classic describes science fiction writer Allen Carpentier's descent into Hell. It's still a very fresh, accessible take on the classic. What a great movie it would make!
  • The Niven/Pournelle INFERNO immediately inspired me to read the original Divine Comedy. I've read a number of translations over the years, but my favorite is the one by Dorothy Sayers (INFERNO; PURGATORY; PARADISE). The notes are excellent, and Sayers had such a knowledgeable and witty mind that reading her prose is a pleasure in itself. (For those interested in a more contemporary translation, I should mention that Robert Pinsky received excellent notices for his 1995 THE INFERNO OF DANTE : A NEW VERSE TRANSLATION; it's a very handsome book.)
  • I also want to tell you about the late Henry Fairlie's THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS TODAY, which probably did more than any other single book to galvanize me into a lifetime interest in Christianity that led me, eventually, to faith. Ironic, because Fairlie was a self-proclaimed agnostic socialist! But reading between the lines of this insightful and deeply feeling book, one realizes that the love of God cannot have been far from Fairlie's heart.
  • Finally, I should draw to your attention a more recent acquisition, the very handsome NIV STUDY BIBLE (10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) from Zondervan, indexed and bonded in leather in IBIC's theme color, burgundy (black and brown are also available). The notes to this Bible are amazing. They appear to provide you with a very substantial portion of what you need to know to have an intelligent layman's appreciation of the linguistic and historical issues involved in understanding Scripture.

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