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The Eternal Footman
 
 

The Eternal Footman [Paperback]

James Morrow
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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"Homo sapiens is an amazing animal.... Get God and Aristotle off its back, and miracles start becoming the norm," theorizes a hapless human in James Morrow's The Eternal Footman. Capping off the hilarious trilogy that began with Towing Jehovah and Blameless in Abaddon, Footman tells the story of what happens after God is undeniably dead. If His giant, deteriorating corpse in the first two novels wasn't enough, now His holy skull stares down from orbit like a melancholy moon, offering daily proof to the Western world that there's nobody left to pray to.

Cirrus clouds rimmed God's skull. He appeared to be wearing a white toupee. At least there weren't any ads today. Why the Vatican permitted the multinationals to aim their lasers at His brow was a mystery she couldn't fathom. Contemplating the Cranium Dei was depressing enough. You shouldn't have to read COKE IS IT in the bargain.

Depressing? That's not the half of it, as Judeo-Christians, sure at last that nothing but blackness awaits beyond death, become "Nietzsche-positive" and are stalked by the leering embodiments of personal apocalypse. Nora Burkhart's son Kevin is the first of millions to succumb to the awful symptoms of abulia, the fatal result of death-awareness. Western civilization crumbles while Nora struggles to take her comatose son to a legendary clinic in Mexico, where a strange, powerful man is rumored to have a cure. Meanwhile, a spiritual sculptor finds inspiration in a new pantheon after his masterpiece is mangled by the Vatican--but the new gods may require the ultimate sacrifice.

This is James Morrow, after all, and despair is always accompanied by enlightenment in his satirical morality tales. Taking cues from Dante, the legend of Gilgamesh, and an imagined debate between Erasmus and Martin Luther, Morrow finds redemption for humanity in the simplest acts of decency. Giant stone brains, God's evil intestines, and the still-guilty captain of the oil-spilling tanker Valparaiso make memorable appearances in The Eternal Footman, a worthy finish to Morrow's trilogy, and a fair but passionate defense of "the West's greatest gift to the world, the miraculous faculty of rational doubt." --Therese Littleton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The third installment in Morrow's Godhead Trilogy (after Blameless in Abaddon and Towing Jehovah) returns the reader to a world that is perpetual witness to God's death as His Delaware-sized skullAthe Cranium DeiAtakes up residence in the sky. Society is beset with an apocalyptic plague; its victims "riddled with Nihilism... and malignant despair" as they progress through the four fatal stages of the disease. Each sufferer meets a personal "leveler"Aa literate, ironic demon who heralds death and dwells in its host, materializing to impart jokes, warnings, inevitabilities. Morrow offers several heroes to bring hope to this grim world, including former schoolteacher Nora Burkhart, the recently widowed mother of Kevin. Struggling to give her cerebral son a good life, she is soon faced with the arrival of Kevin's leveler, a being called Quincy Azrael. Gerard Korty, meanwhile, is a renowned, reclusive sculptor who lives cloistered with his wife on the Indonesian coast and is commissioned by the Vatican to create God's reliquary. And Captain Anthony Van Horne is the infamous oil tanker captain who's given the task of transporting the Corpus Dei to Rome. These characters' paths converge in the jungles of Coatzacoalcos, site of a unique scientific-religious institution called Somatocism, which promises a cure for the plague. Breathlessly taking on a multitude of absurdities, musings and challenges, the author and his roaming imaginationAlike a plague victim and his levelerAare stationed everywhere along the dense, occasionally bloated story's path, equally ready to debunk and apotheosize. Reminiscent of Swift, Vonnegut and Ayn Rand, Morrow comes off here as ambitious, observant and earnest. A respected satirist and tirelessly resourceful appropriator of the conventions of SF, he may not secure legions of new followers with this novel, but his devotees won't be disappointed. Agent, Merrilee Heifetz.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
"WHEN GOD'S SKULL WENT INTO geosynchronous orbit above the Western hemisphere, reflecting the sun by day and rivaling the moon each night, Nora Burkhart tried not to take it personally." Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1.0 out of 5 stars Ho-Hum, Feb 21 2004
This review is from: The Eternal Footman (Paperback)
This is the third installment in Morrow's "God-head trilogy." He should have left it at just the first two. While his first two books often pushed his ridiculous atheistic views, at least they were interesting stories. This one is just plain dull. His writing style has become so cumbersome. I can imagine him sitting at his typewriter and consulting a thesaurus with each sentence he writes. It's as though his ego needs to try and prove how intelligent he is to the reader. However, he comes across as bombastic and boring. There were many times that I almost gave up on finishing the novel because it was lulling me to sleep.

I won't go into the details of the story since so many other reviews have already done that. However, I will recommend that you pass this book up. At least, check it out from the library and don't waste your money.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The best of the 3!, Dec 18 2002
By 
R. Morell "Frostwolf" (Albany, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Eternal Footman (Hardcover)
As with the other 2 books in this trilogy, I couldn't put it down. I thoroughly enjoyed this last book, which was the most nontheism-in-action. "Abbadon" got a bit bogged down in the philosophical for my tastes, whereas this book had a straightforward narrative with few forays into the philosophy. The Corpus Dei now the malevolent Craneo Dei, hovers over the book like a wraith. The struggles of Gerard and Nora compelled me to find out how it would end. And bringing back Anthony Van Horne and Cassie Fowler caused this reader to smile.

There are a couple of "Rowlingesque" touches in this book. Naming Nora's fetch "Goneril" was a wonderful stroke, and the scene with God's Entrails was literate South Park. I howled intermittently through this book (which was a problem as I read it at my cubicle at work). Also the visions of the future were hopeful and refreshing. I liked that there was commentary about today's big issues.

One thing that's unfortunate, but I'll mention it. This book was written before 9/11. I wonder how Morrow's future work will alter its course after the disaster. Coming up with a post-organized religion way of life, as well as a postcorporate world is becoming more and more urgent. Possibly even emergent. I couldn't help but think about 9/11 through the trilogy, perhaps inevitably because the towers were prominent in "Towing Jehovah" as the Valparaiso passed them on its way out to sea.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Atheist's Doomsday, Nov 8 2002
By 
This review is from: The Eternal Footman (Paperback)
This is the final work in Morrow's excellent trilogy on the "death" of God. Unlike the wacky and satirical "Towing Jehovah" and the extremely intellectual "Blameless in Abaddon," this third installment takes on the tones of Stephen King or Dean Koontz in a slightly creepy doomsday scenario. Here God's giant corpse from the previous books finally decomposes, with the skull ascending to the sky and orbiting the Earth, constantly reminding all of humanity that God is really gone. A psychosomatic plague of death wipes out most of the western world before people come to their senses and embrace a new age of rationalism. Once again this is all a vehicle for Morrow's highly structured Atheist theories. He's not an agnostic who believes nothing, but an intellectual who has arrived at Atheism through reason and research. This novel continues to represent Morrow's theology, which is surely thought provoking regardless of your religious persuasion. Unfortunately, this installment is the weakest of the trilogy, with Morrow's post-apocalyptic wasteland showing little imagination or creativity (see King's "The Stand" for a better example), followed by visions of a politically correct future world of enlightenment that are too rosy for belief. Also, the conclusion takes way too long wrapping up too many subplots. But still, Morrow's highly articulate and visionary trilogy will never cease to provide food for thought.
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