...on Left Behind, The Book
Out of curiosity I borrowed a copy of "Left Behind," a novelization of the End Times based on some pretty selective interpretations of Revelations.
The writing is atrociously bad. Dialogue, characterization, description and plot are essentially non-existent. The only thing I can say in its defense is that it was free of spelling errors. "Left Behind" does however do an excellent job of recreating my encounters with Christian fundamentalism; an atmosphere of megalomaniacal sociopathy mixed with misogyny, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.
Pardon me if this comes across as bitter. I read it last night and still can't get the taste out of my mind.
We start out over the Atlantic where heroic Captain Rayford Steele is heroically flying his manly 747 across the Atlantic while heroic journalist Buck Williams heroically types on his manly laptop in First Class. Then, without warning, in an instant, millions of people around the world vanish.
Being a science fiction geek I'm always up for an idea story. The Rapture is theologically shaky but it is an interesting concept. Could society recover with a large percentage of the population missing? How would we reorganize if we took the casualties of a nuclear war but without any of the physical damage? Knowing that it is possible for people to vanish into thin air, what steps would we take to minimize the damage if it happens again?
Well I'll tell you what happens in a Rapture. Our heroes are inconvenienced by traffic jams and busy phones.
YES! Buck and Steele spend ENTIRE chapters looking for taxis and dial tones. Somewhere between 20 and 50 percent (I inferred the percentage from a badly researched throwaway line) of the Western world, including all children have vanished. Gone. No indication of what happened to them. No idea if they are alive or dead or if it will happen again. This is horror on an unprecedented scale, but our heroes treat it like an unpleasant business trip. Not once in the entire book do any of them act like the Rapture is more than an inconvenience. They certainly can't find the time to reach out and help their fellow human beings or even act humanely towards them. You know, the Christian thing to do?
(And if anyone who read the book wants to complain that our heroes convert after the Rapture, let me point out that this only added self-righteousness to their already horrendous behavior.)
Not that I can really blame our odious and vacant heroes. They are representative of the Left Behind universe. Human interaction is pretty limited over there. Nobody has conversations, instead you have two modes of communication a) manly, where you lecture and tell other people to shut up and listen and b) unmanly, where you whine, complain, question authority and/or act all clingy and girly. I doubt I'd want to help people like that either.
Anyway, within a week of the Rapture, the big news is that People Magazine has a new Sexiest Man of The Year.
No, I am not kidding you, the authors mention this point at least five times. This is less than six days after the mysterious disappearance of between 50 and 150 million people in America alone, plus secondary deaths from auto wrecks, plane crashes, industrial accidents, suicides, etc. Nobody has any idea what happened or if it will happen again (I guess there are no AM radio preachers in the Left Behind universe) or how the vanishing will impact things like inheritance laws, life insurance or the global balance of power.
But thank goodness People is able to go to press. Otherwise what would their readers talk about?
Our new Sexiest Man of The Year is Nicolae Carpathia. He's foreign, supports the U.N., believes in disarmament and human brotherhood, speaks nine languages and looks like a young Robert Redford (mentioned at least twice). He is quite obviously the Antichrist and represents everything that is Evil. In an even slightly better written book I'd be rooting for him to torture and kill everyone in this flat and vapid world but he is unfortunately as dull and lifeless as the rest of those Left Behind. The author's idea of a rousing speech is for Carpathia to alphabetically list the member states of the U.N. The horror, the horror.
The sole entertainment value is from the many WTF? moments. The characters make the teenagers in a horror movie look like Rhodes Scholars. "Top reporter guy! Get back to New York! In the midst of this horrific crisis I need you to write about a convention of Orthodox Rabbis! It will make a great cover story for next week's issue!" At least the screen teens have an excuse for acting retarded, they are obsessed with sex. The only thing that occupies our heroes is how wonderful it is to be a manly man whose every selfish act is endorsed by God. Women can't be heroes, but can choose to be supportive and quiet or annoying and foolish. I'm not sure what the large packs of feral dogs created by missing owners think. Like the rest of the obvious Rapture side-effects they never show up and aren't mentioned.
Along the way there were a number of murders (inconveniencing our heroes, one of them has to change his flight), the entire Russian air force exploded, the Case of The Exploding Russian Air Force was never investigated and People Magazine's Sexiest Man of The Year was given ultimate power for no adequately explained reason.
One day I'll have to post the opening for the alternate version that I constructed in my mind while wading through this sorry book.
The writing is atrociously bad. Dialogue, characterization, description and plot are essentially non-existent. The only thing I can say in its defense is that it was free of spelling errors. "Left Behind" does however do an excellent job of recreating my encounters with Christian fundamentalism; an atmosphere of megalomaniacal sociopathy mixed with misogyny, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.
Pardon me if this comes across as bitter. I read it last night and still can't get the taste out of my mind.
We start out over the Atlantic where heroic Captain Rayford Steele is heroically flying his manly 747 across the Atlantic while heroic journalist Buck Williams heroically types on his manly laptop in First Class. Then, without warning, in an instant, millions of people around the world vanish.
Being a science fiction geek I'm always up for an idea story. The Rapture is theologically shaky but it is an interesting concept. Could society recover with a large percentage of the population missing? How would we reorganize if we took the casualties of a nuclear war but without any of the physical damage? Knowing that it is possible for people to vanish into thin air, what steps would we take to minimize the damage if it happens again?
Well I'll tell you what happens in a Rapture. Our heroes are inconvenienced by traffic jams and busy phones.
YES! Buck and Steele spend ENTIRE chapters looking for taxis and dial tones. Somewhere between 20 and 50 percent (I inferred the percentage from a badly researched throwaway line) of the Western world, including all children have vanished. Gone. No indication of what happened to them. No idea if they are alive or dead or if it will happen again. This is horror on an unprecedented scale, but our heroes treat it like an unpleasant business trip. Not once in the entire book do any of them act like the Rapture is more than an inconvenience. They certainly can't find the time to reach out and help their fellow human beings or even act humanely towards them. You know, the Christian thing to do?
(And if anyone who read the book wants to complain that our heroes convert after the Rapture, let me point out that this only added self-righteousness to their already horrendous behavior.)
Not that I can really blame our odious and vacant heroes. They are representative of the Left Behind universe. Human interaction is pretty limited over there. Nobody has conversations, instead you have two modes of communication a) manly, where you lecture and tell other people to shut up and listen and b) unmanly, where you whine, complain, question authority and/or act all clingy and girly. I doubt I'd want to help people like that either.
Anyway, within a week of the Rapture, the big news is that People Magazine has a new Sexiest Man of The Year.
No, I am not kidding you, the authors mention this point at least five times. This is less than six days after the mysterious disappearance of between 50 and 150 million people in America alone, plus secondary deaths from auto wrecks, plane crashes, industrial accidents, suicides, etc. Nobody has any idea what happened or if it will happen again (I guess there are no AM radio preachers in the Left Behind universe) or how the vanishing will impact things like inheritance laws, life insurance or the global balance of power.
But thank goodness People is able to go to press. Otherwise what would their readers talk about?
Our new Sexiest Man of The Year is Nicolae Carpathia. He's foreign, supports the U.N., believes in disarmament and human brotherhood, speaks nine languages and looks like a young Robert Redford (mentioned at least twice). He is quite obviously the Antichrist and represents everything that is Evil. In an even slightly better written book I'd be rooting for him to torture and kill everyone in this flat and vapid world but he is unfortunately as dull and lifeless as the rest of those Left Behind. The author's idea of a rousing speech is for Carpathia to alphabetically list the member states of the U.N. The horror, the horror.
The sole entertainment value is from the many WTF? moments. The characters make the teenagers in a horror movie look like Rhodes Scholars. "Top reporter guy! Get back to New York! In the midst of this horrific crisis I need you to write about a convention of Orthodox Rabbis! It will make a great cover story for next week's issue!" At least the screen teens have an excuse for acting retarded, they are obsessed with sex. The only thing that occupies our heroes is how wonderful it is to be a manly man whose every selfish act is endorsed by God. Women can't be heroes, but can choose to be supportive and quiet or annoying and foolish. I'm not sure what the large packs of feral dogs created by missing owners think. Like the rest of the obvious Rapture side-effects they never show up and aren't mentioned.
Along the way there were a number of murders (inconveniencing our heroes, one of them has to change his flight), the entire Russian air force exploded, the Case of The Exploding Russian Air Force was never investigated and People Magazine's Sexiest Man of The Year was given ultimate power for no adequately explained reason.
One day I'll have to post the opening for the alternate version that I constructed in my mind while wading through this sorry book.
posted by ElGrande at 6/10/2005 02:55:00 PM
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