No, the man said, looking past him with his empty gaze, the realm of the dead isn’t anything. But to those who have been there, nothing else is anything either

Imagine, if you will, The Life of Brian, but it’s not funny.

That’s not quite right, but it’s in the same ballpark. It’s kind of what would happen to Barabbas, released on mercy by Pontius Pilate, were to be the center of a novel.

Accordingly, this novel is a spare, ironic, and ultimately fairly laconic representation of this question. We start off with Barabbas being released from captivity, hearing about the crucifixion, not yet knowing the role Jesus will play in his life, and dealing with an emotional state that’s about 50% survivor’s guilt and about 50% annoyance that Jesus has lived and more or less upstaged the rest of his life.

Coming to the understanding that your life is not your own because someone else’s presence is overshadowing any and everything you might ever accomplish is a kind of 20th century frustration.

The novel is a meditation on survival. It was written and published in the years after WWII, and I can’t imagine a stranger time to be alive. Coming to terms with mass death and the subsequent guilt that comes with that. But also, also, the annoyance at being told how you have to feel about the subject and being told THAT you have to feel a certain way about it.

I mentioned in my review of The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick a similar feeling.

At least in the US we are bombarded with a whole lot of carpe diem crap thrown at us all the time. And so sometimes it’s nice to lash back and saying: Life is the longest thing I’ve ever done, and sometimes it’s boring. That’s not 100% what this novel is about, but it got me thinking.

(Photo: http://www.parlagerkvist.com/)