Customer Reviews

Live for Golgotha

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On the surface, Gore Vidal's Live From Gologotha is a novel about St. Timothy, his relationship with St. Paul (the Apostle) and early Christianity combined with a satire on the modern media and its insatiable desire for the next story. But what this book is really about is how the modern mass media changes one's own perception of events which have happenned. Do I, for example, remember how I felt when the Berlin Wall came down or do I remember what CNNBCBS wants me to remember?
St. Timothy is an old man busy writing his memoirs when he is visited by a telvision executive from the 20th century. The executive wants to go back and broadcast the crucifixion of Jesus live for a 20th century audience, hence the title.
As Timothy continues to write his memoirs, he is constantly bothered by the feeling that what he is writing is not what really happenned, but what he has seen on the television provided to him and his wife by his 20th century visitors.
Who was Jesus? Who was Judas? Who was Paul?
As with all of Gore Vidal's historical novels, his history is bang on. What he does then is reinterpret known events from a different perspective, giving his readers an alternate history of sorts.
But the history is not what is important here, what is is Vidal's view of the media. The 20th century media has intruded into Timothy's relatively quiet first century life, preventing him from remembering things that he experienced and making him believe that he has experienced events which he has not.
For any person interested in early Christianity or media manipulation of events, or, even better, both, Live from Golgotha is a thought provoking read which has made this reviewer question his own memory with regard to history.