Earlier, George Moore’s boringly unreadable Victorian novel The Brook Kerith, about Jesus’ physical survival of the cross, lived down the back of many British book-cases in brown paper covers. In medieval tapestries there is scarcely any portrayal of the face of God, for it was considered too bright for human eyes. Now there are jokes on television about clouds and long white beards and we all claim to have enjoyed The Life of Brian.
Why then is My Name was Judas so unsatisfactory? Probably because in making Judas the opposite to the charismatic firebrand of the gospels and the great religious paintings he becomes so ordinary. His long, agreeable life on his estate in Sidon swims along in a sort of generalised regret and this mood is too static to sustain a full first-person historical novel. And in spite of our robust attitude about Christ being so ‘human’ it is embarrassing to see him doing little dances by the roadside and trilling on a pipe. His ill temper and behaviour to his mother — who seems to drop right out of the frame — we can cope with, but Jesus being massaged by Mary Magdalene, who suggests ‘a little walk in the moonlight’? Sorry, no.
Stead does paint a rather good picture of Judas meeting up in old age with Bartholemew and his weeping when he hears of the death — one by crucifixion — of Jesus’ brothers; but his insistence on the mistakenness of getting involved with such outlandish company stays solid. Judas, the plain man.
Maybe being a plain man is a sort of suicide after all?
Correction: North Yorkshire by Peter Burton, recommended by Jane Gardam last week, is published by Michael Russell. as one of her books of the year
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.