The Final Testament of the Holy Bible
by James Frey
Gagosian Gallery
James Frey is a master of the high concept. For his latest novel, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, he has bypassed literary publishers in the US in favour of working with top art dealer Gagosian Gallery. The book is designed in the style of a bible; it strives to be an objet d'art and retails for US$50, with signed copies going for US$150.
Perhaps this attention to design is a ploy to distract readers from the content. While it mines religion in an attempt to be provocative and culturally relevant, the book suffers from extraneous detail and relentless thoughts on religion and faith. The Holy Bible is literature. The Final Testament of the Holy Bible is not, but for some it may be an entertaining read.
According to an author's note at the beginning of the book, Frey first came up with the idea for The Final Testament of the Holy Bible in 1994, when he was working as a stockboy in a store, and started writing it in 2009 after he had become infamous for his faux memoirs A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard. He writes, 'My goal was not to retell the story of Christ. That has been done, and done well. My goal was to create a new mythology.'
Has Frey been successful here? Somewhat, but the book could have had more effect with half the number of words.
The central character is Ben, a 30-year-old man who was raised an Orthodox Jew. He left home at 14 and roamed the world before living in the Bronx, where he's the only white man in his neighbourhood. One day, there's a freak accident at the construction site where he works, and he ends up in a coma. When he awakens, he suffers from seizures, but has a direct connection to God, as well as knowledge of every religious text ever written. Soon, people begin to think that he is the Messiah. And he is of the belief that the world will end due to '... the lies of religion and the government'.
The reader is meant to understand that Ben is the Messiah. His speech is rendered in red ink, like the words of Jesus in some editions of the New Testament. Throughout the book he delivers a number of speeches, including: 'The Bible was written 2,000 years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now. Beliefs that might have been valid then are invalid now. Those books should be looked at in the same way we look at anything of that age, with interest, with an acknowledgement of the historical importance, but they should not be thought of as anything that has value.'