3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a genuine literary masterpiece!, February 6, 2010
This review is from: The Last Day: A Novel (Paperback)
The Last Day is one of -- if not THE -- most moving and yet disturbing books I have ever read. It is full of wildly gyrating paradoxes: of simplicity and suspense, of virtue and vice, of profound religious sentiment and almost pornographic violence. It is sensitive and savage, a loving and lyrical composite of heaven and hell. (I would give it ten stars were that option available.)
Without giving away the ingenious plot, it is very cleverly constructed, depicting a young soldier (Warren) who returns from Iraq to get reacquainted with his family and friends back in New Hampshire. On this difficult path he is assisted by Jesus, who appears to him as a hip middle aged man named Ray. The book depicts the efforts of Warren to reconstruct his former life, along with flashbacks to his childhood and school days before he enlisted in the Army. Along with this are fairly gruesome depictions of battle in Iraq. Not familiar with the intricacies of military life and terminology, I can only assume that the author knows what he is talking about. He certainly throws around all the weird military acronyms with authority, and he seems to know what battle scenes in Iraq are really like. Through the eyes of Warren we witness tender scenes of country life in New Hampshire interspersed with the shockingly vivid savagery of modern desert warfare.
(One of the Amazon reviewers comments that the lack of swear words makes this story less than believable. Every swear word is written like this: h___ for hell, s____ for sh-t, etc. That reviewer woefully lacks imagination or perhaps simply is too ignorant to figure out the obvious allusions to the words of soldiers in war. The more perceptive reader will find no lack of gruesome detail to make this portrayal painfully realistic.)
The author, James Landis, knows how to turn a clever phrase. He makes many strange and interesting puns and uses other linguistic techniques that remind one of the Conversations with God books by Neale Donald Walsch, in which the God persona also makes some very clever word plays. And, also like the Walsch books, this book presents some very profound religious and spiritual insights, in a literary rather than a lecturing format.
That this book is beautifully written, passionate, and powerful there can be no dispute. Many times I caught my breath and even wept as I progressed through its 290 pages. It tugs on the heart and makes the soul whirl with both passion and pathos. In this respect it is a sensational read. I believe it ranks alongside, and perhaps even surpasses, such war masterpieces as A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front. It be apt to say that it is to war what A Catcher in the Rye is to adolescence.
What disturbs me, though, is the constantly recurring theme that a true man, a truly virtuous person, must be prepared to take up a gun and kill to defend his loved ones. Warren was trained by his father to hunt as a young boy. His father embodies the strange paradox of serving as a veterinarian and a hunter, a tender preserver of animal life and a remorseless taker of it. In Iraq Warren learns to embrace this dichotomy as well. But what really disturbs is the author's attempt to get the character of Jesus to sanction Warren's actions as a highly certified Army sniper with many kills to his record. Warren himself is a deeply religious person, who frequently quotes from the Bible and finds many intriguing allusions to support his actions as a highly trained killer. Were this book required reading for all American high school students, no doubt enlistment levels in the US military would soar. The book presents a powerful fusion of religion, sanctity of life and love, and necessity of violence, all wrapped up in what clearly is a major literary masterpiece.
It is not easy to refute the basic contention of this book that war and killing are both necessary and honorable. Americans have been in search of an honorable war for a very long time, ever since the end of World War II, in fact. This book makes a good case that the current "war on terror" is such an honorable war.
Since I am nowhere nearly as skilled a writer as Mr. Landis, I shall simply list some of my objections to his underlying premises. The reader can decide what to do based on them:
1. He mentions a number of times that military chaplains frequently cite Jesus' words to His disciples at the Final Supper about the necessity of selling their purses and buying swords to defend themselves (since Jesus is now seen as an outlaw by the authorities). When one disciple tells Jesus that he has two swords, Jesus says "That is enough". Now this whole exchange is very ambiguous and debated extensively by Bible interpreters. Perhaps Jesus was being sarcastic, telling His men that they must buy swords so as to fulfill the role of "transgressors" with whom Jesus has now been numbered by the authorities. Perhaps Jesus meant they should have swords only for self-defense, since following His death they would come under persecution. (We must recall that when Peter struck off the ear of the servant in Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked him saying "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.") Finally, even were Jesus deadly serious, did He mean that the two swords mentioned by the disciple were enough for that particular disciple or for the entire company of disciples? And how can one extrapolate from these two swords to the high tech killing apparati of the modern US military?
2. Landis assumes that the cause of the Iraqi insurgents is totally unjustified and that they present the American troops with no choice but to kill or be killed. He never stops to consider the fact that we invaded their country and occupied it. And Landis in fact equates the death of American combat personnel with the death of Jesus Himself, as a selfless sacrifice on behalf of saving others. But Landis fatally contradicts himself when he has Warren say contemptuously about the Iraqi suicide bombers that they are not martyrs, since martyrs are always purely innocent (ie, unarmed) victims, while true soldiers are always killers. If this is so, then it seems there are no grounds for comparing American soldiers to Jesus, since while the former truly are armed and dangerous, the latter was truly the Lamb of God, unarmed (except with the Truth) and dangerous to no one but to liars and arrogant hypocrites. Furthermore, Jesus called upon His followers, all purported Christians, to follow His example of serving as witnesses to the Truth and, if necessary, as martyrs at the hands of our enemies. Jesus never sanctioned using violence to promote His Gospel, and according to many Bible scholars neither did He sanction using it to defend our lives. I have heard pastors attempt to draw this same parallel between a soldier who dies in combat and Jesus dying on the Cross; and while it is true that the sacrifice of the soldier is very great, beyond that there is simply no comparison to Jesus. The comparison is made as a kind of cheap rhetorical propaganda technique to goad these young men on to bloody sacrifice. But these men are often impelled by fear, threats, and financial exigencies of enlisting in an organization whose access to funding seems virtually unlimited in an era of overall economic stagnation and disintegration. None of these ideas does Landis address.
3. Even worse, Landis repeatedly hearkens back to 9-11 as the flash point when America purportedly was unrighteously attacked by Muslim terrorists. Landis seemingly is oblivious to the many anomalies of that fateful day, which point to a deliberately orchestrated attack by our own elites to force the American public to accept war that would, as always, enrich the military-industrial complex and the international bankers. Landis furthermore seems oblivious to the fact that there was no connection between Iraq and the alleged Arab hijackers of that day. Landis blithely accepts all the discredited information implicating Iraq and fills Warren's heart and mind with thoughts of vengeance and righteous "self-defense."
4. In one very tender scene, Warren meets a young Iraqi woman whose son was murdered by Saddam Hussein. Again, the author is oblivious to the fact that this murder might well have taken place when Saddam was a close American ally fully supported as our surrogate against the Revolutionary Regime in Iran.
5. The Jesus who instructs us to love our enemies, warning us that if we only love our friends and relatives then how are we any different from sinners who also love their own kind, is nowhere to be found in this book. This Jesus is a hip, macho-tolerant and even an enthusiastic enabler of Warren's political and moral delusions. This Jesus does not offend anyone, except those of us who are looking for the supreme example of non-violent resistance, which many believe Jesus to be.
Landis is a very gifted writer. His prose is semi-lyrical, almost poetic, and poetry is mentioned frequently by a number of the characters. Poetry, says Warren's high school English teacher, is the language of life. It is able to activate our emotions like no other force (apart, perhaps, from song, which is poetry set to music). But the problem with poetry is that in addressing the emotions it also has the potential to circumvent the intellect. Poetry can be equally persuasive in the mouth of a saint or a sinner. In the end, this book helped me to understand the deep mystical reverence of Moslems for the Qu'ran, which they too claim is an amazing kind of Divine Supernatural Poetry. And thus I finished The Final Day with a profound sense of unease, as I came to realize that, utilized by evil men, good poetry will drive good men to do evil things. And it makes no difference whether that poetry is written in Arabic or in English. (I just...
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breathtaking, marvelous book!, October 3, 2009
This review is from: The Last Day: A Novel (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
First, let me say this is an excellent book and one I couldn't put down! The Last Day by James Landis tells the story of a man who spends a day with a Jesus who likes wearing blue jeans, hamburgers, and being called "Ray." Now, before you stop reading, it's not a book pushing religion or trying to save your soul; in fact, it might tick off some conservative religious readers. Rather, it's the story about a man who's experienced tremendous heartache and loss throughout his life, gone through war, and is now trying to find his way.
The Last Day introduces us to Warren Pease, nicknamed "War" because of his training as a sniper in the Iraq war. As a young man, Warren loses his mother by suicide and grows up with an emotionally distant father because of the tragic loss. The story opens with Warren sitting on the beach at night, unable to remember how he got there. Finally a man shows up and introduces himself to Warren - it just so happens to be Jesus.
From there on out, Jesus and Warren spend the day together, discussing life, the world, Jesus' (just call me "Ray...") love for hamburgers. There is humor, tears, love and many scriptural references, without being dogmatic, in short, just talking about Warren's life and helping him make sense of it.
The Last Day is written so it makes you feel you're actually spending the day with Warren and Jesus, privy to their increasingly enjoyable conversations! When you start reading it, you just can't put it down. It really is a marvelous book and one I enjoyed thoroughly. I highly recommend it.
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