A repetitive, demanding and thoroughly amazing novel from the creator of "Catch 22." "God Knows" tells the story of the Biblical King David in his own voice, as the fabled Goliath-slayer remembers his life and its complication on his deathbed. As he nears the end, David can't help but retrace his life in his mind, returning again and again to certain formative events: the murderous rage of the previous King, Saul, David's still-steaming lust for wife Bathsheba and the rebellion and death of his son, Absalom.It's natural for David's mind to retrace these formative moments, the ones that brought him to his throne and also delivered such heartbreak. But it can make for slow reading, especially at the beginning of the book, when David's musings are untethered from the story that brought him to his current royal, debilitated state. It's only as the story builds that we move from his decline to his rise: playing the lyre for Saul, slaying Goliath, becoming a hero and then running from the king that sees him as a threat. We move through banditry, rebellion, the pains and pleasures of many wives, and the hard politics of managing a ruling coalition. There's also his lust for Bathsheba, which leads David to send her husband to his death in battle, a sin that ends the communion he previously had with the Lord."Did I kill Uriah to avoid a scandal or because I already had settled in my soul that I wanted his wife?" he wonders. "God knows. For not only is the heart deceitful in all things, it is also desperately wicked. Even mine. This danger in being a king is that after a while you begin to believe you really are one."Heller's David is a fully human creation, both sharp and sentimental, despairing and proud, always ready with a joke or a bit of vulgarity. See him reflect on his showdown with Goliath, "I knew I was good. I knew I was brash. I knew I was brave. And with Goliath that day, I knew that if I could get within twenty-five paces of the big son of a bitch, I could sling a stone the size of a pig's knuckle down his throat with enough velocity to penetrate the back of his neck and kill him, and I also knew something else: I knew if I was wrong about that, I could turn and run like a motherfucker and dodge my way back up the hill to safety without much risk from anyone chasing me in all that armor."The action is centered in the Middle East in Biblical times, but David's voice speaks outside the frame, referring to his statue by Michelangelo (he's not a fan), telegraphs, the Babylonians and all the uneasy history to follow. He's savvy and smart, a contrast to his son Solomon, who's humorously portrayed here as an oaf who poaches all his best lines from David.The title itself is a clever one. On one hand, it sums up the uncertainty of human lives--who knows why God does anything? But on the other, it outlines David's real gripes with the Lord: the king refuses to speak to him anymore, put off forever by the death of his infant son with Bathsheba, who was killed by God as punishment for the adultery and murder that forged their relationship.Heller does an amazing job veering from Mel Brooks-level humor to palpable pain and pathos, often on the same page. David is tired of living, but he's not tired of reliving his life in his own head, wondering about the events that shaped him and planning revenge for the slights he's endured. Tonally, the book reminded me of John Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor," another irreverent take on a historic subject. "God Knows" has a world-class author committing himself to a singular voice all the way through a moving ending. It takes a while to grab you, but after a certain point it's a pleasure just to follow along.
I was the kid in Sunday school the poor teachers must’ve hated: peeking behind the curtain, pulling the strings on our tidy little Bible lessons to go wide-eyed and watch the real, wild Bible go up in flames. I guess it’s a habit I never outgrew. So there you have me, ever the rebel kid still, relishing the secret that behind all those prettily bow-tied morals are wild kings and bloodbaths and blasphemous sacrilege that no one’s paying any mind. And here you have Joseph Heller. Since Catch-22 I’ve never wanted to read another of his novels, as one of the two highest compliments possible. I definitely didn’t want to read the sequel to Yossarian in Closing Time (how could I, when the first is so perfect?), and wouldn’t the others just be shadows of that beloved one too? Like that favorite song on an album where the rest can never live up. All because I had no idea Heller took on King David. As soon as I saw this book on the library shelf I jumped on the premise as ecstatic as Joab on that fifth rib.Ohh-h, did I love this book. Through and through, wrestling Catch-22 like Samson with a hand tied behind his back. The old Sunday-school feeling of getting deep over my head in trouble, of “Oh-h I am gonna get it for this,” only made the pleasure that much sweeter. I don’t think there’s much middle ground for it, either. I think you have to love it or you have to hate it with a fiery, book-burning passion.Which should be just as much fun.Leave it to Heller to read the same Bible I have. The Bible that isn’t tidy, that doesn’t make sense, that isn’t abstract saints in stained glass. It’s full of people who are complex and tainted and do belligerent and insensible things. Who are as brave and scared shitless as any of us, who are bursting with love and hate and cruelty and the most dangerous kind of humanity and passion. They laugh. They live. They royally screw up and get royally screwed. And I can’t help but think, this is the David those old stories are trying to tell. Not the serene shepherd, the psalmist, the stalwart king. No: the scrappy, stubborn, cocky, off his rocker, wild, maddening, bitter, beloved kid, utterly sincere and utterly full of shit, heels over head for Bathsheba, burning the kingdom down in flames. The chosen king of this nonsensical God, a God of cryptic riddles, burning bushes and incomprehensible demands. We’re the ones that tried to tame it into sainthood. We’re the ones that do the story in all of its human absurdity the injustice.Heller’s just someone putting a little flesh and blood back onto the bones: deftly, hilariously, reverently irreverent, with that turn of the knife in your heart all along. I’m just the one over here, loving every word of it.
What do You think about God Knows (1997)?
This is my second draft of my review of this book. In my first, I began by comparing God Knows to Heller's masterpiece Catch 22. This I realize is unfair, of course, and not really taking God Knows on its own terms, so consider that review stricken from the record. It isn't Catch 22. There enough said. Here's the gist, one of King David's laments:"I know if I were God and possessed His powers, I would sooner obliterate the world I created than allow any child of mine to be killed in it, for any reason whatsoever. I would have given my own life to save my baby's and even to spare Absalom's. But that may be because I am Jewish, and God is not."Like the tone? Find the joke funny? Not too miffed by some bitterness and a little irreverence? Pick it up, it only serves to humanize one of the Bible's already fairly well covered characters (where is all the historical fiction on Nehemiah?), but in much fuller, and admittedly modern strokes. The tone itself vacillates between King James dialect and Woody Allen film (though with entirely too many Jew jokes. Bathsheba as the proto-JAP, eesh), and the narrative style is the circular, methodical style employed by this author in his not-to-be-mentioned-too-often-other-famous-book, which at times feels like an elderly relative getting lost in her own recollections, but with much more violence and swearing.
—Ben Richmond
Irreverent, bawdy, violent, energetic. This is the story of King David, as narrated by David himself at the end of his life. The tale is told from a 20th century perspective, giving the "real" David and the "real" events of his life. Although, on the surface, the events follow closely the story in the bible, the inner life of David is fleshed out in a unique and personal way. David is vain, lusty, egotistical, reckless, irreverent, manipulative and manipulated, loving and loved, and just fully human. In the end, it is really a story of needing/wanting love; from Saul, from Jonathan, from soldiers, from Bathsheba, Abagail, Michal, and other wives.I was not as familiar with David's story in the bible, as I might have been, but this made no difference: the story still completely makes sense. Whether you like it or not, God Knows makes David human in way the Bible fails to do.
—Sam
In Joseph Heller's novel "God Knows", the Jewish protagonist is an old man named David, looking back with bittersweet fondness but mostly regret at his turbulent life: numerous marriages, ungrateful children, constant battling with in-laws and relatives, and a God that seems to have either forgotten or forsaken him. It may help to know that the David in the novel is King David, of the biblical account, kvetching on his death bed about what a mess his life has become but mostly because he can't get it up anymore. Indeed, the penis jokes abound throughout this novel, which reads like a weird combination of Thomas Pynchon, Woody Allen, and John Updike, except that it is vintage Heller: serious, funny, seriously funny. Written as a kind of disjointed series of memoirs from the perspective of an aging David, the novel covers just about every facet of the biblical figure: his infamous defeat of the giant named Goliath, his many marriages (but mainly focusing on Michal, Abigail, and Bathsheba), the many battles and wars that his father-in-law Saul waged against him, the death of his first child which leads to his falling-out with God, and his moronic son Solomon whom, he is afraid, will succeed him as king. Heller manages to write a believable historical account while cleverly incorporating anachronisms (David whines about Shakespeare's prose and how the Bard basically plagiarized some of his own Psalms and Proverbs, and he also bitches about Michelangelo's famous statue of him, which inaccurately depicts David with a foreskin! But what do you expect from a goy sculptor?). This book is, at times, hilarious and moving and downright sad. It is also probably one of the best novels I have read that attempts to breathe some life into the Old Testament stories. In Heller's brilliant hands, King David becomes a flesh-and-blood human being, with real mensch-like problems.
—Scott Rhee
