God Is Dead--really?

I was given the opportunity by Sycamore Review (Purdue U) to review Ron Currie Jr.'s God Is Dead. I was further elated when the author contacted me, and thanked me for such a review of his book. He sent me a signed name plate, and I, sent a copy of my review. The exchange was a wonderful one, and showcased the amicability between reviewer and author. I was truly honored.

Ron Currie Jr.’s first novel, God is Dead, is a contribution to the larger “what if” dialogue regarding the death of God and what happens to life, humanity, and hope without the presence of a divine figure. Currie has received critical acclaim for his short stories, which have appeared in Glimmer Train, The Sun, and Night Train; but this new project probes deeper, examining what happens to the human self when God, or the “head” of a concentrated belief system, is removed. Suggestively, God and hope are held in tandem, and it is not until the former is demised and the latter, essentially departs, that the fractured self take precedence. Instead of reliance on God to fix our distinctions, the onus is re-appropriated back into the hands of humankind. Thus in the novel, when God, “disguised as a young Dinka woman,” dies, word of the Creator’s demise immediately spreads as wide and far as the Sudan desert itself. But in Currie’s imagination, God’s death leaves the world unchanged; no cataclysmic earth shatter or Zeus-like thunder bolts emerge. Instead, wars and violence continue, and people continue to complain and act selfishly.

From the opening chapter of God Is Dead, Currie creates a fragmented world that is uncannily familiar. Tethered by the common filament of progressive human failure, his chapter selections present this world in a collection of narrative vignettes. “God Is Dead,” “Indian Summer,” “Interview with the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on the God’s Corpse,” and the closing chapter titled “Retreat,” all remind us what it means to be human in a frightening age. For the most part, each narrative focuses on a single character, and it is not until the end of the text that we notice characters overlap, a technique that serves to emphasize human despondency. While each chapter selection can stand on its own as a didactic interval, a morsel of instructional warning for better living, overall they help to further disrupt the traditions of the Divine character.

Inhabited by desire, conflict, and the sadism it uncovers, God Is Dead illustrates the death of a concentrated belief system, but not necessarily, belief itself—offering in tasty bite-size morsels a meal of reflection as well as a feast of our fissured selves and our carnal shortcomings. Currie not only kills God, but decides to “take out” religion altogether, replacing it with subjects such as teenage suicide, and the well-placed humor of Aramaic-speaking desert dogs who reluctantly feast on God’s flesh. Currie ends his threaded tale with “Retreat,” an Armageddon of sorts. In a world already on the brink of self destruction, the absence of God does not staunch the progress of our own divisive methods. Currie presents the reader with plagued human beings that though forgettable in name, are not so when they present a reflection of our present real-world indifference.

Currie openly experiments with the flaws of humanity by first suggesting there is perhaps a flaw in the Creator. Though “God came at dusk to a refugee camp in the North Darfur region of Sudan,” and is clothed in “a flimsy green cotton dress, battered leather sandals, hoop earrings, and a length of black-and white beads around his neck,” death does not respect such a transfiguration. Further, when first introduced to God’s less than perfect physique we are told that “He’d manifested a wound in the meat of his right calf, a jagged, festering gash upon which fed wriggling clumps of maggots.” With an early and disturbing image of God, Currie further problematizes God’s demise by raising a somewhat philosophical question: If humankind prays to God on their death bed, then who can God pray to exactly? Better still, who could accept the burden of carrying such a confession? These are the intriguing inquiries that Currie hoists upon the reader and are the true brilliance of the book. At the same time, these questions demonstrate the humor, criticism, and measured irreverence of Currie regarding God, death, and hope. For example, at one point the author shows a pensive Colin Powell confessing to a “sympathizing” and dying God. The character Powell asks:

how does a man become the first black assistant to the president for national security affairs? How does a man become the first black chairman of the Joint
Chiefs? How does a man become the first black secretary of state? And then I
answer myself: by behaving, in every possible manner, like a white man.

Again, the reader comes face-to-face with Currie’s wit, denigration, and careful impertinence as a powerful man questions his own failures. In God Is Dead, no one is exempt from direct scrutiny and the pressure to re-examine and re-evaluate the self—not God, not Powell, and not the engaged reader. Indifference must be eradicated and responsibility privileged.


One could argue that Currie’s personal philosophy is at stake in God Is Dead, but his command of language and the situating of current events alongside religious upheaval contain lasting implications about the fractured self, which is constant and not necessarily dependent on God being alive. We as readers are all implicated, as the novel is a mirror of our own frail, finite and fantastic selves. Currie shows that people do not necessarily need God to behave as civil, rational, and responsible human beings. Filled with equal parts seriousness and hilarity, Currie’s master tale is at once a fiction and a truth-telling of our current status, namely that we are all too human. By taking the title from a phrase long associated with Friedrich Nietzsche, Currie has developed a thoughtful, yet disturbing text that, like Nietzsche, claims to disrupt the status quo. In his world, God is truly dead, but unlike the German philosopher, Currie does not overtly claim, “and we have killed him!” Although there are moments of hilarity, this is ultimately a serious book, and readers should approach this novel with the measured tension of both reverence and irreverence.

Ron Currie, Jr.
God Is Dead
Viking Penguin Group, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-03867-1.
182 pages
$21.95.