As a fan of Bible retellings–songs, novels, poems, films, etc that reimagine Bible stories in some way–I was heartened by something I heard on This American Life this weekend: Jonathan Goldstein, a tAL producer and contributor and the author of Lenny Bruce is Dead, is about to release a Bible rewrite called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! No word on whether Goldstein’s purview includes the New Testament as well as the Old, but Goldstein is a real wit, and I hope he’s up to something good.
I can’t find any more information about it online, but while searching for it, I did learn that James Frey–he of A Million Little Pieces–is writing what he calls “the third book [sic] of the Bible.” I’m less heartened by this one. By some accounts, Frey’s last novel acquitted him nicely, but this interview in The Guardian doesn’t inspire much confidence in his ability to handle the Bible. First of all, he says he’s writing the third “book” of the Bible, which, by my count, means he’s writing Leviticus. He’s also not describing it very imaginatively: Frey’s Judas is “a selfish man” who values “money more than love,” and his Jesus is apparently a man of ill repute who lives with a prostitute.
Maybe James Frey is a literalist.
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