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Anonymus Gosh was born at the dawn of modern civilization in a small apartment building on the edge of the Roman Emona, in the heart of the Illyrian provinces, midway between the Alps and the Mediterranean. After a brief stint with the apocryphic Brotherhood of the Holy Little Finger, Gosh spent over sixty moons graduating in Comparative and Applied Thegony at St. Brian's college of the Criminally Sane. Throughout his studies he supported himself, his spouse and a batch of small forrest animals by painting critically acclaimed icons for local churches and large corporations of national importance.
Gosh's unique family name earned him the privilege of having been throughout his life often mistaken for God, a popular deity of international acclaim living just a few houses down from him on the same block. Gosh met his celebrity namesake when returning a package mistakenly delivered to his house.
The two mr. G-s became friends and during their subsequent regular Friday nights at a local pub The Big Man disclosed many a backstage anecdote from the making of his bestselling books of Genesis. Following his friend's recent untimely death, the grief-stricken Gosh vowed to put up a permanent and possibly profitable memoir to his old drinking mate. Those late-night pub-tales, shared over the twelfth pint of lager, have naturally been one of the main inspirations for the comic stories found on these pages, but, as the publisher insists, for legal purposes only, the reader should nevertheless presume that any part of our tale resembling actual people, gods or events, carried out at, after or before the beggining of the world can never be anything more than pure cosmic coincidence.
A rare self-portrait of Anonymus Gosh, cca 1360. Holy trinity in the background.
*From a discussion for the Slovenian Book of the Month club
Presenter: »Tonight we continue our in-depth discussion of that not-at-all-recent international bestseller, the eponymous Holy Bible. You've seen it in bedside drawers of hotels across the world, you might have memorized a few lines from its pages as a child, now hear what the experts have to say about this controversial and always timely text. With us are Mr. Anonymus Gosh, a scholar of Comparative and Applied Theogony from St. Brian's college and a bishop from the church of st. Peter in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
To pose the first question to you, Mr. Gosh: you have studied this famous work for decades and what I wanted to hear from you is, what is your opinion on this God character? Is He a good guy, a bad guy... There has much debate recently on his status: how much of Him is based on the real-life creator of our world and can His perspective really be equated with the opinions of the book's anonymous author.
Bishop: »Just a... Oh, alright, I'm sorry, go on, I'll... yes.
Gosh: »Thank you, bishop. Well, Wesley, there is no doubt that God is a highly complex and multi-layered hero – one might even claim He is one of the, let's say, top ten most complex heroes in the history of world lit."
Bishop: "Hm."
Gosh: "Exactly, because the funny thing is, we could hardly even claim He is the hero, the actual central character of the book. He is never the direct center of a particular story arc but He always seem to hover somewhere in the background and has at least a minor part in every chapter.«
Bishop: »A minor part? In the Bible?«
Gosh: »I'm sorry bishop, just to get back to your question, Larry: I could hardly hope to give you a straightforward answer. When we meet God in the opening lines, He is definitely shown to be incredibly creative – on a large scale. Perhaps almost megalomanic, but definitely a kind of raw, natural genius, right? And the first chapter is where he reigns absolutely supreme... There's just noone else there. Then, when he develops man as his first big project... At first you can really feel for him: you can see him try and do his best to help the little guy along... But when he fails – and this is when he first starts to take the back seat for a bit – one could argue that he turns around a bit too... sullen-like. Like a child, you know, too impulsively, like: I don't want to have anything to do with this anymore.. I made it, it didn't listen, now let it run itself into the ground...«
Bishop: »Excuse me, if I may retort...«
Gosh: »But he's still learning! Just to to wrap this up, father, I only need a minute... Anyhow, later on, like in the book of Job for instance, we suddenly get to see His dark side - you know, screwing with the helpless guy who'd do anything to please Him etcetera. But - and this is my crucial point - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! What's more, it's what makes it work for me, because it just makes Him come alive and seem all the more human! It just goes to show He's, you know, flesh and blood - just like you and me.«
Bishop: »But... my dear boy. Can't you see that what you're saying right now is absolutely ludicrous! There's nothing there about making Him look human, or, or fallable... Now I won't pretend to know the final explanation to the book of Job, it's been discussed by interpreteurs for millenia now, but the common consent is precisely that what it demonstrates is God's total impenetrability! It may seem cruel but ultimately we don't know why he does what he does to Job and that is the point at which we stand before Him in awe, not when He rewards the good and punishes the evil...
Gosh: »Oh, c'mon... impenetrable... didn't you ever have someone completely at your command, like, you know, your dog or a really grovelly kind of person, and you just had this irrestitible temptation to... take advantage of it – kick their teeth in, just when they're licking your boots?«
Bishop: »No! I mean, that's not at all what it is about, young man - it's us people that still respond to good with good and to evil with evil. What God wants us to do is to respond even to evil with good! But part of God's mistery and his ultimate transcendence for us is that this doesn't always happen with him, that He sometimes punishes the good and we just can't understand why...«
Gosh: »Look, bishop, I... I'm not trying to put the Man down, ok? We all know it's tough, with the position He holds, and I think the brilliance of the book is that it shows that even the greatest can slip when they're holding the reigns of the world, universe, life... the works. They can't take the stress and they lash out at innocent folk, like we all do. Nobody is perfect! But what is best, at least for me, is that we get to see Him get up and try again each and every time, that He never gives up on what he'd started. And you know, when He sacrifices his own son in the sequel, you know, that's just one of my favourite parts...
Bishop: »The sequel?!«
Gosh: »Yeah, because, you know, it's like an army general's dillema: do I pull the kid out with my connections or do I let him take the fall like everybody else? If it's for something that matters! And you can see He's having it bad, but He lets his own son die to... to redeem the world ultimately. It's the least he can do for it, you know: he made it, he ran it into the ground and then just when you think it's all over, that kind of gesture – it's tragic, it's big, I mean it's just beautiful...
Bishop: Ehm...
Gosh: »To me the real tearjerker comes when you can see how He really wants to help the kid get along, you know, He talks out of the sky for a bit, lets him walk on the water, turn stuff into... other stuff and so on. But when push comes to shove, He steps back and lets him fight his own battle, even with junior crying out for his dad at the end...
Bishop: »Junior?«
Gosh: Yeah, but he doesn't flinch. To me, it's like Godfather III with Al Pacino in his later years, you know - what Michael Corleone should have done to pass on the family business... and G, he plays his hand like a pro and he wins at the end. They're still giving him appreciative nods for that move, for letting the kid play. And the second part sold even better than the first, as far as I've heard.«
Bishop: »If you will excuse me gentlemen, I have an evening mass to hold, so...
Presenter: »Well, we're wrapping up in three minutes anyway, your excellence, so if you or perhaps mr. Gosh have any final remarks to add...
Bishop: »Well, I'm not sure what I can add...«
Gosh: »Personally, I just wanted to say that what I loved best is the drama of the plot, that's basically the gist of what I wanted to point out. And the intimate psychology. Cause it's a privilege, isn't it? To get a chance to see what it's really like. To create and run worlds, to make the tough choices, to go for that flood when you need to, you know, and to never look back. But to acknowledge and to learn from every single mistake on the way. Snake in the garden? My bad. Creating a city called Sodome and then being surprised when they starts sodomizing angels? We'll take M5 next time. But maybe it was for the best in the end, you know, spiced things up. If it works, why break it?
Bishop: »Geez...«
Presenter: »And that's what your new project is all about, am I right, mr. Gosh, there's a book...
Gosh: »That's right, Peter, it's called Paradise Misplaced, it's not a book – yet, but we're making it as a web page for now, and it's basically all about the stuff that could have happened in the Bible, but didn't make it into the final cut. It just gives you all the more perspective on exactly what we've been talking about here tonight: the M.O. of the Big guy, how he thinks, how he operates, how he would react, say, to a monkey and a banana as the forbidden fruit and what he would do, for instance, if Adam packed a handgun that could shoot down angels.«
Bishop: »Of for Pete's sake!«
Presenter: »That sounds very exciting, mr. Gosh and I am sure we are all very much looking forward to reading your thought-provoking musings online www.paradise... is it?
Gosh: It's www.paradisemisplaced.si. We couldn't get the dot com: somebody is using it for his homepage that has nothing to do with any of this at all...
Presenter: Wonderful. Well, thank you for now, I would like to thank the two of you for coming here tonight and, as always, envite all of our viewers to tune in again next week for our regular program.« |