The Bible as literature; Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note; baked Cheetos

[shereads]

First of all, these new Cheetos are baked, not fried! I feel healthier already. I still have some qualms about the neon-orange powder; if anyone has a source for free-range, naturally-shed orange powder, please notify the Cheetos people.

~ ~ ~

The Book of Revelations & Hunter S. Thompson

This is not a political and/or religious thread, so you papists and athiests can leave your handguns at the door and have a beer. Jehovah's Witnesses, you can come back later for dessert and coffee.

This is about the Bible as literature and literary influence. Not all of it, but the magnificent parts, the terrifying and maddening, the passages where language takes on a life of its own. The Book of Revelations wasn't a hot topic among the Sunday School teachers and ministers of my childhood; I imagine they found it intimidating, the way teaching Shakespeare in Chinese to a roomful of South Carolina ten-year-olds might be intimidating if all you had to go on was a teacher's guide printed in a four-page pamphlet. Revelations used to scare the bejeezus out of me - not because of its dire predictions, but because I couldn't help picturing the writer as crazy, and I knew I'd go to hell for thinking that. I was glad we didn't study it much.

So Revelations is still largely new to me; a revelation, if you will.

HA!

Sorry.

Anyway, I knew the good Doctor quoted the Bible a lot, but I hadn't given much thought to the way his own writing style sometimes mirrored Revelations: unleashed, unhinged, unconcerned with whether the reader misses every other point, so long as she is caught up in its power. You can pick that kind of writiing apart a verse at a time, critique and dismiss it in pieces - and still not be free of it. It doesn't matter if you get it; it gets you.

What's weird is that HST was famously a fan of the Bible as literature, but only one of my zillion Google sources made the connection that explains his mysterious one-word suicide note:



counselor


In dozens of HST obituaries and retrospectives, there are references to the suicide note and a couple of theories: "Counselor" is Thompson's "Rosebud," deliberately cryptic, or it's the opening of a letter he chose not to finish - or wasn't allowed to finish. One writer thinks it's significant that the note was typed on the letterhead of a free-speech organization; at least one lunatic suggests that "counselor" is Thompson's clue to the identity of his killer.

One writer, D.A. Blyler, found a context that seems to fit.

From the alternative news source, The Raw Story, (Excerpt):

...Hunter S. Thompson’s The Proud Highway and a dog-eared copy of the Holy Bible instantly grabbed my attention.

Seeing Thompson’s book of letters next to the Bible, reminded me of just how much that religious work had influenced the legendary “gonzo” writer—an impact that was rarely, if ever, mentioned in the tributes that poured in after his death. It was a glaring omission, and one that I also was guilty of in my own eulogy.

In Generation of Swine, Thompson’s searing indictment of the 1980s, he acknowledges the Bible’s powerful influence on his work:

“I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starburst of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language…I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.”

But it wasn’t just Revelation’s that impacted Thompson. His writing is littered with borrowings from other Testament Books, both New and Old. A proud southern gentleman from Kentucky, he often depicted the world in biblical terms, famously claiming that Richard Nixon was evil in a way that “only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand.” And in a barbed attack on American culture Thompson described Hell as:

“…a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix—a clean, well-lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except for the ones who know in their hearts what is missing.”

The Scriptures relevance for Thompson flooded back as I stared at The Proud Highway and Bible in the bottom of the box. It reminded me of the mystery surrounding Thompson’s brief suicide note. Before shooting himself with a revolver, he had typed the single word “Counselor” in the center of a blank page. To date, fellow journalists and friends of Thompson have expressed confusion as to what the word might signify, comparing it to the mysterious “Rosebud” of Citizen Kane. And that’s when it hit me. I picked up the Bible and quickly scanned the Gospel of John. There it was in the 14th chapter:

“16 And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor*, to be with you for ever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.”

It isn’t surprising that journalists didn’t pick up on this connection with Thompson’s goodbye in the days following his death. While the Bible has wielded greater influence on the history of American Letters than any other work, we currently live in an age where any mention of the Bible immediately conjures up images of right-wing nut-cases, homophobic TV evangelists, and door-knocking Adventists in bad suits. Fewer and fewer educated people (including Christians) read the Bible anymore. But Thompson wasn’t a product of this age. He was of that rapidly dwindling generation of writers who saw the majesty of the Bible as both a work of literature and a looking-glass into the human condition.

Thompson surely would have felt drawn to the Gospel of John, the most lyrical and mystical of the four Gospels. It’s there that we find the pronouncement: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is a decree that has resonated with writers from Twain to Whitman to Fitzgerald to Miller—a revelation that words are transcendent, that a writer’s vocation is more than just a job. It should be a calling, wherein the “Spirit of truth” (Counselor) is followed unfailingly. No mean trick.

As a fan of Thompson's, and one who hated the way he died, I like to think HST found more than one message in the passage he chose as the last thing he ever read, and wrote: not just the necessity of speaking truth to power, but the hope of comfort after his final act. Parts of the Bible are a sea of terror; I like to think he found something there that he could cling to and feel safe.

Writerly stuff:

>> As a reader, and a student of writers and how they think, I wonder how many are influenced consciously or unconsciously by the Bible. (Not just the 'begats' and 'he knew' and 'she knew,' you pornographers. Stop that. I'm serious.)

>> I wonder how many haven't thought to read it as literature, and how many did but couldn't get past the begats.

>> And I wonder what we mean by "The Bible." Which version? The King James? Certainly not the modern "Living Bibles" some of us were encouraged to read as teenagers. (Remember those? Some well-meaning publishers thought they could make the Bible more user-friendly by dumbing it down, stripping it of mystery, and diluting it to dishwater. Think "The Name of the Rose" as an article in Readers Digest. If anything, those new-age Bibles made me appreciate the King James.

>> Who gets credit for the writing, when a book has been translated countless times? Is it possible that the Book of Revelations wouldn't have qualified as a Book of the Month alternate selection if not for some obscure translator who couldn't help but improve what he read?

God knows, nothing's more tempting than the urge to rewrite someone else's work.

Discuss.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Thanks, Shereads. I miss HST, and needed that.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Liar]

>> Who gets credit for the writing, when a book has been translated countless times? Is it possible that the Book of Revelations wouldn't have qualified as a Book of the Month alternate selection if not for some obscure translator who couldn't help but improve what he read?

My theology professor says that this is a point that actually *supports* the position for those who believe in the Bible to the letter.

Text morphs over time. it's like evolution. Every translation, every recontextualisation, every re-telling of a story, distorts it a little. You get something wrong, miss a phrase, get creative, et al. Back when stories were told by mouth, this happened even faster. It's said that the Illiad we know today, probably is not much at all like the Illiad Homeros once told.

And so, the bible, subject to much more intepretation, politics, translation and controversy than any other book in history, can't reasonlably be anything like the original Bibe, pre or post Nicea.

Or can it? Yes it can, says the believers. Because it's Holy and Special and Stuff. And since it is, it doesn't change over time like Other Books do. So saying that text isn't static, just re-affirms the believers belief that the Bible is not just a book. It's a perfect circular argument, but impossible to counter.

 

[glynndah]

First of all, these new Cheetos are baked, not fried! I feel healthier already. I still have some qualms about the neon-orange powder; if anyone has a source for free-range, naturally-shed orange powder, please notify the Cheetos people.


They do sell All Natural Cheetos. They are a pale yellow color, perhaps because the free-range, neon-orange powder critter remains elusive and cannot be raised in captivity. So now you have a dilemma, "All Natural" or "Neon Orange Goodness". What to choose, what to choose....

 

[McKenna]

I was raised with the King James version of the Bible. I always figured it was part of the process to not understand every word, but to let the meaning come to me when I sat quietly and pondered.

It's actually a practice that served me well when I started reading James Joyce, Thoreau, and others whose meaning didn't hit me all at once, but rather in those quiet moments of reflection.

I still like the Song of Solomon simply for it's poetry. I sometimes wish whoever translated that portion of the Bible had translated all of it, but then I'd miss the tone and feel of the other books in the Bible. And why is there only one book written by a woman? Dan Brown certainly made me wonder about the sacred feminine and if it truly had a place in ancient Christianity. I'd love to have read more sacred texts by women.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

... And why is there only one book written by a woman? Dan Brown certainly made me wonder about the sacred feminine and if it truly had a place in ancient Christianity. I'd love to have read more sacred texts by women.

Modern scholarship recognizes 4 (or maybe 5) different authors of the first five books of the bible, based on their writing style, areas of interest, and idiosyncrasies. The oldest sources are known as 'J', the Yahwist, who refers to God as Yahweh (or Jehovah) and 'E', the Elohist, who refers to God as Elohim.

Then there's also D, the Deuteronomist, who wrote Deuteronomy and most of the rest of the first five books, and 'P', the Priestly source, who wrote about matters of sacrifice and temple protocol. I believe it was P who was also responsible for those endless lists of 'begats', which is basically propaganda, a way of proving the pedigree of the ruling kings of Israel and Judah at the time.

Anyhow, at least one literary critic (Harold Bloom?) thinks that J was a woman and he wrote a book about it, the name of which I of course have forgotten He based his conclusion on the nature of the God she describes as Jehovah, who's not as masculine and warlike as in the passages that refer to Elohim, and some other things that I've also forgotten.

Anyhow, a great book on modern scholarship's ideas on how and when and by whom the bible came to be written is "Who Wrote the Bible?" by a guy named Friedman. It's drop-dead fascinating if you ask me. A lot of the first five books is just political bullshit and propaganda and name-calling between the nations of Israel and Judah, and it's pretty certain that all the stuff written by P was inserted by priests who were worried about losing their social and economic status after the Temple was destroyed and wanted to make themselves look important. And this is the book we worship. It's like worshipping a Rush Limbaugh transcript. Since I read Friedman's book, I just can't take much of the bible very seriously anymore.

Revelations was almost kept out of the NT because there were serious question as to the author's sanity. It's popularly attributed to the St. John who wrote the gospel, but no one ever really believed that, and the hysterical rantings and apocryphal hallucinations in the book hardly even seem Christian.

As to what sort of influence the bible has had on me as literature, I'd say none, aside from my admiration for Onan. And I always wanted to name one of my characters Boaz.

 

[rgraham666]

It's pretty much been proven that the John of Revelations is not the John of the Gospels.

As I recall, the earliest written Gospels found are from about 50 AD and written in Hebrew. The earliest Revelations is about a century older and written in Latin.

I also remember that Northrop Frye did an analysis of Revelations. Apparently most of the demons etc. in that were the deities of the major religions in competition with Christianity at the time. Revelations showed how all of them would be destroyed by God.

So it's pretty much a propaganda piece as well.

 

[cumallday]

I'm largely unfamiliar with Hunter S, but as for God...

I'm a regular listener of a CBC radio program called 'Tapestry' - a theology program. About a year or so ago the program featured a somewhat controversial Bishop who argued strongly against the crass notion of the bible as literary truth for one in which it is seen as a metaphor. He also suggested that the problem with the bible is that we've largely closed it and wanted us to re-open it and write our own chapter - the idea of scripture as a living, breathing text.

He went on to argue against the idea that Christians need to be born again prefering instead that they grow up; mature into humans that do not succumb to the idea of a punitive father figure God creating a false sense of certainty and security for one of God as a mysterious transcendent companion of infinite love and forgiveness along life's journey.

'Fear and Loathing' was a great flick.

 

[glynndah]

As an illustration of my humble little corner in the grand scheme of things, while everyone else discussed the Bible, religion, Hunter S. Thompson, etc. what do I head right for? CHEETOS!

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I'm listening to a series of academic lectures on tape these days, "The Bible as Literature."

 

[Liar]

As an illustration of my humble little corner in the grand scheme of things, while everyone else discussed the Bible, religion, Hunter S. Thompson, etc. what do I head right for? CHEETOS!

Kind of Zen, isn't it?

 

[glynndah]

Kind of Zen, isn't it?

Well, it is nice to know you're right where you belong.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[ABSTRUSE]

And Jesus took the fishes and Cheetos feeding the masses before him..."Eat the fish for it has Omega 3's and the Cheetos are baked not fried, for the Father will free you from sin as welll as cholesterol."
and taking the Aquafina sports bottle in hand..."Wine anyone?" and yea, another miracle was upon them and dining Al Fresco was born.
and word spread amongst the people of a man who would cleanse their body and well as their soul.

 

[Grushenka]

...for the Father will free you from sin as welll as cholesterol.

Brilliant, the whole bit. Thanks for a great guffah. Gr.

(Scary AV, though.)

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Brilliant, the whole bit. Thanks for a great guffah. Gr.

(Scary AV, though.)

The Cheetos were almost missed until archeologists and forensics of modern times were able to scrape away the aged Cheeto dust left smudged from a scribe...so for years "bread" was mistaken and replaced the word "Cheeto".

I shudder to think how much other history is covered in lunch time stains.

 

[Grushenka]

I shudder to think how much other history is covered in lunch time stains.

It's probably best we never know.

 

[shereads]

It's pretty much been proven that the John of Revelations is not the John of the Gospels.

As I recall, the earliest written Gospels found are from about 50 AD and written in Hebrew. The earliest Revelations is about a century older and written in Latin.

I also remember that Northrop Frye did an analysis of Revelations. Apparently most of the demons etc. in that were the deities of the major religions in competition with Christianity at the time. Revelations showed how all of them would be destroyed by God.

So it's pretty much a propaganda piece as well.

Yes, but it's a gorgeous work of propoganda.

As an agnostic - and one who thinks the Old Testament reduces the Creator of All Things to an ill-tempered high-school principle with a vicious sense of humor - I accept that the Bible is propoganda. As a guide to human behavior, it can be jaw-droppingly cruel. But that's one of the things that makes it fascinating. The cruelty of the Old Testament is a strange preface to the sudden burst of compassion that emerges in the New.

If you had read only the Old Testament, about a God who condoned the death penalty for non-virgin brides, and ordered Abraham to murder his child without regard for how the boy might feel about Dad's show of faith - and if you were told there would be a sequel, would you have imagined anything like the Beatitudes? WTF?

So it fascinates me that these stories have such power despite the contradictions - or is it because of them? It's like a grab-bag of moral imperatives from which people can choose to take as gospel the ones that suit them, and pretty much ignore the others. It's one book for the "an eye for an eye" crowd, and another for the "turn the other cheek" people. It's a guide to non-violent social change, or it's a call to war.

Has there every been a more flexible tool for the promotion of inflexible dogma?

That isn't what attacts me, though. And while I appreciate parts of the Song of Solomon, that's not the piece of the bible that impresses me most as literature. (I like to think that the first written version of the Song of Solomon was used by children the way we used Websters Unabridged Dictionary at the school library - for the thrill of looking up dirty words)

No, for me it's Revelations. Like HST said, it's music. Not pretty music, but the kind that would make the neighbors call the police, who'd tell you to turn the volume down or spend a night in the hoosegow. In the pacing, the terror, the passion, the desperate plea for repentance, you can find the roots of speeches by charismatic preachers from Cotton Mather to Johnny Cochran. And Hunter S. Thompson. It's not the message, or even the madness that makes it powerful. It's the way the language charges forward like a locomotive, and the reader is invited to get on board, or get splattered on the track.

Language as locomotive:

Revelations 16



[13] And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
[14] For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
[15] Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.
[16] And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.
[17] And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.
[18] And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.
[19] And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
[20] And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.
[21] And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.

Yikes! It feels like brainwashing. You get caught up by the rhythm, eased into it by the repetitive pacing, and before you know it you've been pulled inside a Hieronymous Bosch painting. You don't want to be in this guy's head, but it's almost impossible to look away.

Brilliant lunacy.

Has anything else this crazy ever been this famous for this long? WTF?

 

[shereads]

Maybe the biggest reason it doesn't change is what happened in the first 200 years after Christ.

Apparently there was no "bible" (New Testament) for many years. One came into being, as such, by one of those so-called heretic groups. What little was written (so few people could write back then), then copied - and there was much back then - was a source of constant in-fighting among the different groups. It became a matter of which group would come into the ascendancy.

Oddly, again, it was people like Tertulian, Origen, Irenius, and a few others who were the big time "heretic" hunters of their day. They attacked others, steered "orthodoxy," had other works destroyed, and finally, they in their turn, were set upon by other "more orthodox" members.

What was destroyed left little to "change," as it were.

Still, the words of these people, the "heretic hunters," left traces of what was thought otherwise. Then, slowly, and in more open times, some hidden documents were found. The most famous are the "Dead Sea Scrolls," but now the "Nag-Hamadi" have really brought to light much of what was available back then, at least in part, since they are, as most of the so-called New Testament, copies.

Still, they are finding agreement with what the original "heretic-hunters" wrote.

So, yes, it's no wonder that the "bible" is unchanged, especially the New Testament. As for the Old Testament, well, there was basically only one group. However, interpretations abound, therefore: Kabbalists.

Doesn't it change? We have only the word of people who read and comprehend the original languages that the Bible doesn't change - and not all of them agree. A former AH regular said that the aramaic word for "virgin" is the same as the one for "young girl." Which leads to the possibility that the Immaculate Conception began as a misinterpretation of the original.

 

[cloudy]

Yes, but it's a gorgeous work of propoganda.

As an agnostic - and one who thinks the Old Testament reduces the Creator of All Things to an ill-tempered high-school principle with a vicious sense of humor - I accept that the Bible is propoganda. As a guide to human behavior, it can be jaw-droppingly cruel. But that's one of the things that makes it fascinating. The cruelty of the Old Testament is a strange preface to the sudden burst of compassion that emerges in the New.

If you had read only the Old Testament, about a God who condoned the death penalty for non-virgin brides, and ordered Abraham to murder his child without regard for how the boy might feel about Dad afterwards - and if you were told there would be a sequel, would you have imagined anything like the Beatitudes? WTF?

So it fascinates me that these stories have such power despite the contradictions - or is it because of them? It's like a grab-bag of moral imperatives from which people can choose to take as gospel the ones that suit them, and pretty much ignore the others. It's one book for the "an eye for an eye" crowd, and another for the "turn the other cheek" people. It's a guide to non-violent social change, or it's a call to war.

Has there every been a more flexible tool for the promotion of inflexible dogma?

That isn't what attacts me, though. And while I appreciate parts of the Song of Solomon, that's not the piece of the bible that impresses me most as literature. (I like to think that the first written version of the Song of Solomon was used by children the way we used Websters Unabridged Dictionary at the school library - for the thrill of looking up dirty words)

No, for me it's Revelations. Like HST said, it's music. Not pretty music, but the kind that would make the neighbors call the police, who'd tell you to turn the volume down or spend a night in the hoosegow. In the pacing, the terror, the passion, the desperate plea for repentance, you can find the roots of speeches by charismatic preachers from Cotton Mather to Johnny Cochran. And Hunter S. Thompson. It's not the message, or even the madness that makes it powerful. It's the way the language charges forward like a locomotive, and the reader is invited to get on board, or get splattered on the track.

Language as locomotive:



Yikes! It feels like brainwashing. You get caught up by the rhythm, eased into it by the repetitive pacing, and before you know it you've been pulled inside a Hieronymous Bosch painting. You don't want to be in this guy's head, but it's almost impossible to look away.

Brilliant lunacy.

Has anything else this crazy ever been this famous for this long? WTF?

It helps to read Revelations while keeping the context in your mind of what was going on in that part of the world when it was written.

It is indeed propaganda, and is basically someone thumbing his nose at Rome, and saying "You'll get yours! Just wait until....um, just wait until.....the messiah comes back! Yeah, that's it!"

 

[shereads]

It helps to read Revelations while keeping the context in your mind of what was going on in that part of the world when it was written.

It is indeed propaganda, and is basically someone thumbing his nose at Rome, and saying "You'll get yours! Just wait until....um, just wait until.....the messiah comes back! Yeah, that's it!"

But those frogs are in that dragon's mouth!

 

[rgraham666]

On another board I have one of my few alts, a demon working for the Big Guy Downstairs.

He loves the book of Revelations. It serves the purposes of the Great Enemy so well. Revelations is especially good at feeding the Deadly Sins of Wrath and Pride.

 

[breakwall]

Doesn't it change? We have only the word of people who read and comprehend the original languages that the Bible doesn't change - and not all of them agree. A former AH regular said that the aramaic word for "virgin" is the same as the one for "young girl." Which leads to the possibility that the Immaculate Conception began as a misinterpretation of the original.

It's a very delicate balance of translation and interpretation.

The Bible is a powerful piece of literature. It is unique in that it is one of the most heavily edited books in human history, and is one of the most enduring. While some wisdom texts are older, like the Vedic scriptures and Far Eastern writings, none have really been analyzed and translated and re-translated and re-analyzed in quite the same way as the Bible (and companionably, the Torah). Even the Q'uran has escaped that kind of scrutiny.

As McKenna, I was brought up with the King James version of the Bible. And since then, I have studied several different versions for several different reasons. But when it comes to reading the Bible as literature, I turn back to the KJV, just as I would rather read the original Shakespeare and not some modernized interpretation of it.

The poetry of Revelation is particularly powerful. But then, so is the brutal imagery in Isaiah, and Ezekial. And the powerful prose in the Book of John, and in Job.

The Bible is a fantastic compilation of great wisdom and great writing. It has survived not DESPITE its sometimes opaque and difficult passages, but BECAUSE of them. People love delving in and getting lost in the words.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[SlickTony]

I was raised on King James, too.

Speaking of he Bible, you reckon some of you could go to the Coming Together Submissions list and vet my two-parter? It's based on Genesis 19.