The Life of God (as Told by Himself) [Hardcover]

Franco Ferrucci (Author, Translator), Raymond Rosenthal (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0226244954 | ISBN-13: 978-0226244952 | Edition: 1

At the center of Franco Ferrucci's inspired novel is a tender, troubled God. In the beginning is God's solitude, and because God is lonely he creates the world. He falls in love with earth, plunges into the oceans, lives as plant and reptile and bird. His every thought and mood serve to populate the planet, with consequences that run away from him—sometimes delightfully, sometimes unfortunately.

When a new arrival emerges from the apes, God believes he has finally found the companion he needs to help him make sense of his unruly creation. Yet, as the centuries pass, God feels more and more out of place in the world he has created; by the close of his memoir, he is packing his bags.

Highly praised and widely reviewed, The Life of God is a playful, wondrous, and irresistible book, recounting thousands of years of religious and philosophical thought.

"A supreme but imperfect entity, the protagonist of this religiously enlightened and orthodoxically heretical novel is possessed by a raving love for his skewed, unbalanced world. . . . Blessed are the readers, for this tale of God's long insomnia will keep them happily awake. . . . Extraordinary." —Umberto Eco

"The Life of God is, in truth, the synthesis of a charming writer's . . . expression of his boundless hopes for, and poignant disappointments in, his own human kind." —Jack Miles, New York Times Book Review

"Rather endearing. . . . This exceedingly amusing novel . . . is a continuous provocation and delight; there isn't a dull page in it." —Kirkus Reviews

"A smart and charming knitting of secular and ecclesiastic views of the world. . . . The character of God is likable—sweet, utterly human. . . . The prose is delightful . . . the writing is consistently witty and intelligent and periodically hilarious." —Allison Stark Draper, Boston Review

"'God's only excuse is that he does not exist,' wrote Stendhal, but now Franco Ferrucci has provided the Supreme Being with another sort of alibi." —James Morrow, Washington Post Book World

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In this comic yet poignant novel, God emerges from primal chaos, creates the cosmos, then realizes that His creation is monstrously flawed. As he agonizes over the limitations of human intelligence, He realizes that He's lost control over the earth's destiny. Although He encounters many heroes of the human spirit including Moses, Buddha, Thomas Aquinas, Galileo, and Mozart, He is ultimately frustrated that no one sees that self-understanding offers the only path by which mankind can save the world. Defeated, God retreats to the borders of the universe to "rest in the late ripeness of my years," reflecting as much Franco Ferruci's disappointment in humankind as His own.

From Publishers Weekly

Published in Italy in 1986 and widely translated on the continent, this curious novel from Ferrucci (The Poetics of Disguise, 1980) presents the autobiography of the character about whom Jack Miles recently wrote God: A Biography. (This first English edition is more than a mere translation; in the process of preparing it, the author deleted some sections of the original and added new material.) Ferrucci's God is a far cry from the omniscient and wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament; this is a deity who exhibits such human frailties as confusion and vulnerability as he struggles in his own search for truth and goodness amidst the chaos of the world he has haphazardly created. He visits Dante, Mozart, Freud and many other great minds, instigating much of their brilliant work and enjoying their spirited company. God also spends much time inhabiting the bodies of common folk, giving and receiving knowledge and partaking in the pleasures of the opposite sex (though flexible in many ways, Ferrucci's God is unquestionably male). Prone to wild dreams and depressive episodes, this God is distinctly un-Godlike?which seems to be the motif, or perhaps the punch line, of the entire novel. Though the narrative is amusing, and nicely energetic at times as it races through the millennia, its simple sentiments (creation is chaotic; God is himself a troubled soul; art and love are good; violence and hatred are bad) combined with an overabundance of cute touches (anxious about watering his plants, God floods entire regions) create a childlike tone that turns tedious. In the end, this novel is more an enjoyable exercise (write God's diary) or intellectual prank than a rich work of soaring imagination.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 290 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (June 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226244954
• ISBN-13: 978-0226244952
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,425,624 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovable, Sweet and Utterly Charming, September 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Life of God (as Told by Himself) (Paperback)

The Life of God (As Told by Himself) is a charming knit of secular and ecclesiastic views of the world told from the viewpoint of God, Himself. God rises out of chaos and brings into being, with a scientifically approved chronology, the universe as we know it. "The truth is that the world began when it dawned on me that I was all alone and I tried to do something about it. Everything that came later was a consequence of that moment..." God creates the sun, the other stars and the planets, of which he much prefers the Earth.

So, God decides to settle on Earth and proceeds to create life, marine and amphibious. He soon grows tired of reptiles, however, and wanting "life to meditate upon itself so as to better comprehend itself," he shifts from eggs to live birth and mammals are born. Eventually, he finds in the monkey just the right blend of melancholy and humor to impel him to create the human soul.

"I would have a notion of a tree and bang, there it was roots and branches and leaves and trunk and bark, rooting in the earth, with arms flung wide in the open air." God can mold his creations, but he cannot alter or destroy them. As he, himself puts it, "I could not play around with the created world, and make and unmake as I pleased."

Ferrucci's God is likable, sweet and utterly human but he is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. More importantly, he his constantly learning from his own creations. God's world is inhabited by characters whose relationships are independent of him. who know more than he does about certain topics and who have power over one another with which he cannot interfere.

This is an extremely mobile God, capable of skimming through the cosmos and merging with any one of his creations, yet he cannot save Christ from Crucifixion, he cannot paint as well as Caravaggio nor can he understand Einstein, although he listens appreciatively. Most of the Great Minds with whom God interacts recognize him; some understand him, some ignore him and some blatantly reject him. Mozart is, of course, irreverent, Freud is quite unpleasant and Dante sees him as he is..."father and son of my very own self, the fire of intelligence that circulates through the cosmos and pours into humankind in order to attain the form of thought and words."

Translated freely from the original Italian, we are told that "it often departs freely from the Italian original and at points is better characterized as an adaptation." Translation or adaptation, the prose is always delightful, the writing is consistently witty and intelligent, sometimes even hilarious.

The Life of God does a wonderful job of reconciling the chaotic progress of human events with a higher but endearingly non-absolute power. It begins toward this end buoyed by a deft usage of anachronistic simile; the dinosaurs are "extremely conservative and not particularly bright...like old aristocrats in remote provincial towns, handing down to new generations both their idleness and a disquieting physical resemblance." Mixed among adorable descriptions such as the above are weighty and unscientific pronouncements attributed to this God, who, though no Einstein, himself, is setting in motion the meaning beneath the mystery of the natural world.

Ferrucci's decision to characterize the God who has set us all in motion as both sentient and chaotic, amiable and divine, is clever, compelling and more than eminently readable. Did Moses really spend all that time with God? Why are Bach's symphonies so utterly divine? Did Einstein ever have anyone to talk to about his work? This is both a very small and a very large idea. Ferrucci's whimsy protects this book from any serious criticism, because, after all, the book only smilingly claims to be about everything that ever happened. The Life of God (As Told by Himself) is a different but utterly charming, sweet and lovable autobiography.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful blasphemy, March 31, 2004

By 

S. Patel "sajioblo" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Life of God (as Told by Himself) (Paperback)

I don't understand why anyone would judge this book on its historical or Biblical accuracy, which is in fact rather childish. This is literature at its best, where the pages come to life as the history of humanity is altered to fit the tale. Nothing is sacred in this book, and thank God for that. In fact, better to say that humanity is made sacred in this work, for all its mistakes and errors.

Look elsewhere for a cruel and heartless diety of scripture, look here to find a God gifted with the highest quality--that of being human.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Which the Creator is Created in Man's Own Image, December 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Life of God (as Told by Himself) (Paperback)

Clever and thought provoking, the protagonist (God) details his efforts to understand his creation (man). Ferrucci's God is a rather amiable fellow who can't seem to fathom what makes his creation tick, nor why man insists on creating a deity in his own image - angry, vengeful, and unforgiving. A number of discourses with Moses all prove futile - Moses insists on reading more into God's simple message than is intended. Conversations with poets and philosophers throughout the ages; God also takes a hand in murder to, hopefully, come to grips with what he has created. Still, if man cannot come to understand his maker, how can the creator hope to understand his creation? Humorous at times, but it is a rather melancholy humor as, in the end, God abandons his creation in the hope of better success elsewhere. A philosophical read, I found myself questioning my ideals, both spiritual as well as societal. Not recommended for everyone, but for the thinkers among us, a real gem.