Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal [Paperback]

Gore Vidal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1993

Timothy (later St. Timothy) is in his study in Thessalonika, where he is bishop of Macedonia. It is A.D. 96, and Timothy is under terrific pressure to record his version of the Sacred Story, since, far in the future, a cyberpunk (the Hacker) has been systematically destroying the tapes that describe the Good News, and Timothy's Gospel is the only one immune to the Hacker's deadly virus. Meanwhile, thanks to a breakthrough in computer software, an NBC crew is racing into the past to capture - live from the suburb of Golgotha - the Crucifixion, for a TV special guaranteed to boost the network's ratings in the fall sweeps. As a stream of visitors from twentieth-century America channel in to the first-century Holy Land - Mary Baker Eddy, Shirley MacLaine, Oral Roberts and family - Timothy struggles to complete his story. But is Timothy's text really Hacker-proof? And how will he deal with the truth about Jesus' eating disorder? Above all, will he get the anchor slot for the Big Show at Golgotha without representation by a major agency, like CAA 1,896 years in the future? Tune in.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); First Edition. first pb edition (October 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140231196
• ISBN-13: 978-0140231199
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #868,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What would Jesus do? "select all" then "delete", September 30, 2005

By 

R. McOuat (Winston-Salem, NC) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal (Paperback)

The book is first and foremost a lampoon of Christianity, more specifically, the early years of the church. St. Timothy is a first hand observer St. Paul's effort to expand the market for Christianity. Other Vidal books have documented his cynicism of Christianity and the religious right, but "Live from Golgotha" clearly sets out to satire Christianity from its source: St. Paul.

St. Timothy (blue-eyed, hyacinth curls, glutton for the older powerful ladies) is the main narrator for the story. St. Paul is the great fund raiser and dogma developer for the Christian church. While fighting off St. Paul's homosexual advances, St. Timothy experiences the charismatic St. Paul and his miraculous stage show from up close. The business interests from the future, namely NBC and its parent company General Electric, plan to utilize their time travel technology to allow them to transport a television crew back to the time of the Crucifixion at Golgotha. With the intent of sweeping the TV ratings, studio executives are transported to 96 AD in the form of holograms. St. Timothy is their main contact; the executives spare no expense to help St. Timothy prepare his Gospel. Apparently, a mysterious hacker has accessed history at its core and is erasing all other historical documentations of Jesus and his early church. So, St. Timothy must negotiate with self-serving holograms from the future. At times, he will have two holograms of the same person in his room, sent back from the future, but from ten years apart, so their holograms will be of varying quality.

Gore Vidal takes a cynical and heretical view of religion and emphasizes Christianity's objectives as self-promotion in pursuit of the all mighty dollar. St. Paul is a charismatic marketer who rolls into a town with his dog-and-pony show. Sometimes, he is taken in and provided large sums of money, other times; he is nearly stoned to death. Vidal makes references to Saint Paul's Holy Rolodex of names used for fundraising and of Jesus' attempt to lower the Prime Rate as the real reason for Jesus' ousting of the money-lenders from the temple.

With the aid of worldly knowledge he gains from a television that is transported back through time, St. Timothy transforms from an innocent apostle's assistant to an aggressive deal maker. If you can pardon the blasphemy, you will laugh and gain a new perspective of the early church. My favorite parts are the Yiddish speaking disciples, St. Timothy's gradual habituation towards "holograms" from the future, and Vidal's greatest invention; the juggling, soft-shoe dancing, seizure-prone St. Paul. Vidal seems to have an interesting response to the mantra "What would Jesus do?" According to Vidal, Jesus would erase all the material that refers to him that is today's lexicon of "Christianity."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate In Commercial TV, June 27, 2001

By 

Jon G. Jackson "j_dog_jackson" (Santa Rosa, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal (Paperback)

Most of the other reviewers of this book seem to have approached it as if it was a semi-serious study in the line of "the quest for the historical Jesus." Have they really read it? It's an absurd science fiction comedy that is actually very, *very* funny! Humankind has discovered how to go back in time...albeit only semi-accurately. And so, the race is on! The goal...to send back to the future a LIVE broadcast of the events surrounding the crucifiction of Christ! It takes a while to get there, however...an outrageous romp that insults and mocks everyone and everything along the way, the sacred icons slamming one by two in the dust. Vidal's excellent writing is surpassed only by his vivid and unbridled imagination. (I laughed for days after the scene where Shirley MacClaine briefly appears, having channeled into the past by means of her own!) The story is told by Timothy---you know, the guy that...uh...cavorted with the apostle Paul)---who has his own unique set of priorities. The inevitable result? Well, we all know how sponsors of programs want to get their money's worth, yes? Let's just say that more than a few things manage to compromise themselves in the quest for corporate profit. I'd love to see it, but I doubt this one will ever make it to TV....

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty, Irreverent, Wonderful, September 13, 2002

By 

Okla Elliott (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal (Paperback)

Fans of Gore Vidal's novels Kalki, Myra Breckinridge, Myron, and The Smithsonian Institution will love Live From Golgotha. This novel is charged with the same biting critique of religion and religious institutions as we find in Kalki, and it incorporates the playfully sci-fi elements found in The Smithsonian Institution. In short, for Vidal fans, this novel is a must.

For those poor souls who have yet to discover Gore Vidal, this is a good introduction. Vidal writes what he calls "inventions" from time to time. These are his metafictional/experimental novels that break from his more famous, and more mainstream, historical novels such as Lincoln and The Golden Age (both of which are wonderful novels). In these inventions, Vidal allows himself to be more playful and unusual. Live From Golgotha reads like a collaborative effort between Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon. Despite the apt comparison to other pop-experimental novelists, Vidal writes originally and, I feel, quite a bit better than Vonnegut, Pynchon, T. C. Boyle, and Tom Robbins.

Perhaps it is most impressive that Vidal can write anything, including these "inventions," while the aforementioned authors are limited to that style. It is clear that Vidal knows exactly what he is doing, and that he does well.

In this case, he has chosen to tell an alternate story of the Gospels through the point of view of Saint Timothy. Timothy is being bombarded by characters from the future(s) who are trying to coerce him into re-writing scripture with their political and financial concerns in mind. What we end up with is a romp-in-the-sand of a novel that makes you laugh out loud at times and grimace with knowing pain at the cut-throat attitudes present in media, politics, and religion.