Rating: 
Summary: Funny encore to Jvlian
Review: Though a work of fiction, this is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I'd have to say that this book is much more of an insult to Christianity than the Satanic Verses was to Islam. Gore Vidal, a self-proclaimed "very strong Atheist," is a brilliant writer. I especially enjoyed his work Julian (JVLIAN), which was about Julian the Apostate, the only Roman emporer to leave Christianity in favor of the pre-Nicean pagan temples of Rome and their respective gods. Live from Golgotha, like Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," takes the basic characters and story line from a major religion, and alters it to make it comedy, making a sort of mockery of that respective faith. The author makes fun of Jesus, his disciples, and the apostle Paul. Jesus is badly overweight; a big fatty with an eating disorder. Paul is a notorious homosexual, and possibley even a child molester, not to mention a former hitman for Mossad. The early disciples and church fathers are either greedy Jewish gangsters or bisexual Greek converts. Both Jesus and Paul, the founders of Christianity who never met each other, have a tendency to lie and rewrite Christian history in order to make themselves look good (as Jesus gets older, he keeps lying about his age; at 40 he tells people he's only 33). The story is a wonderful read, and though Vidal makes a mockery of the story of Christianity, he is thoroughly familiar with its tenets. The story touches on the possible troubles between James' Jewish church, and Paul's gentile church, and how both had different interpretations of the message brought by the most subversive self-hating Jew of them all, Fat Jesus. As a teaser, I'll leave you with Paul's account of when he met Jesus post-crucifixion, which is found both on the back of the book, as well as in the fourth chapter: "So there I was. A hot day. Palm trees. A mirage shivering in the middle distance. A camel. A pyramid. Your average Middle Eastern landscape... Suddenly, HE WAS THERE... Wide as he was tall, Jesus waddled toward me... That face. Those luminous eyes hidden somewhere in all that golden fat. That ineffable smile like the first slice from a honeydw melon. Oh delight! He held up a hand, a tiny starfish cunningly fashioned of lard. He spoke, His voice so high, so shrill that only the odd canine ever got the whole message... 'Why,' shrilled the Son of the One God, 'dost thou persecuteth me-th?'"
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