City of God

Dear Kurt,

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That reader read me right--I think, ultimately, that I found this book more disappointing than you did. I guess I'm just too secular. In principle, I agree that Doctorow deserves applause for choosing such rich philosophical and ethical ground and exploring it in such a serious way. But I often find myself impatient with discussions of God, which I consider a dispensable concept/personage. No one has come up with an argument that satisfies me proving that there is such a being--all the arguments have something circular in them. True, I can't prove there isn't a God, but I can't prove there isn't a pink rabbit sitting on the other side of Alpha Centauri, either. Sometimes I'd like to believe there is one (God, not a pink rabbit), but I just don't.

And even if there were a God, why this particular one? Why should your hypothetical squishy Christian who has trouble believing Jesus was the son of God stop at Judaism? Why not reject the whole kit & caboodle? The Christians don't have a monopoly on what you call "that nonsense," as a quick peek into Leviticus will show.

Doctorow addresses these questions, and people struggling to decide what parts of Judaism and Christianity to believe in and follow may find illumination watching the characters struggle with the same issues. But as I don't believe in God at all--and certainly not in those arbitrary collections of historical writings that religious people want us to think he wrote--and as I'm not in love with any rabbis (or priests, for that matter), I'm going to go with my gut response, which is, Oy.

I do love a number of books about religious crises--for example, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, about a Christian who discovers that his mother's Jewish and converts to Judaism, defying her; Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Robert Elsmere, about a Protestant minister struggling with doubt; or St. Augustine's Confessions. These are all old-fashioned (and just plain old) stories; a soul wrestling with religion can make for a damn fine narrative. And I also love a number of self-consciously non-narrative writers, from Dorothy Richardson to Jorge Luis Borges. I even love Doctorow in other work. But I didn't love this book.

Still, it's gotten me in the mood for experimental, spiritual, lefty, conscienceful writing with Yiddish intonations and old-fashioned New York settings. I'm going to go reread Grace Paley.

Thanks, Kurt. I've enjoyed agreeing with you too much.

Yours,
Polly

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This week, a discussion of E.L. Doctorow's City of God (click hereto read an excerpt and hereto buy it). Kurt Andersen was architecture critic for Time, a founder of Spy, and the editor of New York magazine, and is a founder of Powerful Media, which this spring will launch a Web-based news, analysis, and data service for the entertainment and media businesses. His first novel, Turn of the Century, was published last May (click hereto buy it). Polly Shulman is a frequent Slate contributor. She will be the Sunday book reviewer for Newsday starting in April.

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