Babies are the New God

If you name your first book God is Dead, you might be a young, brash writer brimming with big ideas, or a one-note gimmick suffering from a desperate need for attention any way you can find it or you might just suffer from elephantine cojones. Luckily, in the case of Ron Currie, Jr., it's the first and last options. (Okay, with maybe just a healthy dollop of attention-baiting thrown in for good measure.)

In his compact novel-in-stories, Currie's vision is big and darkly funny. In interviews he has said that the spirit of his book closely follows a line from The Brothers Karamazov: "If God is dead, then everything is permitted.”

Fittingly, Currie has taken his idea and run with it. In the introduction, God takes the form of a Dinka woman who pleads with Colin Powell - yes, that Colin Powell - to help her. Currie imagines Powell in spiritual crisis who studies Samuel L. Jackson movies to be more intimidating. When an assistant apologizes after questioning whether Powell is black enough (hmmm, where have we heard that one lately?), Powell responds with "apology accepted. Bitch-ass." Then, after a stunning monologue, Powell calls the unnamed U.S. president a "silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker" to his face. If only, you know? If only.

With the title as its own spoiler, God is killed in the Sudan. Word of his death spreads around the world thanks to the pack of feral dogs who eat God's decaying body and are then blessed with the ability to communicate to humans. The rest of the stories deal, however directly or indirectly, with the ramifications. While the whole book is one giant "what if" for the future, Currie lets us know that maybe it's not that far in the future. To fill the void, adults start worshipping their children. Teenaged boys with no parental supervision turn cynical and violent. Warring populations kill innocent civilians in their quest for idealogical dominance. Where, oh where, does Currie get his crazy ideas?

Well, according to his acknowledgments, Currie started working on these ideas when he was in the Zoetrope Workshop. Honestly, it felt like it, too, which is neither a critique or a compliment. A lot of the stories, especially the first one, sound as if they originated around a bong or in a bar after a writing workshop. (Or, maybe in Currie's case, both?) "Dude, what if God was on Earth, like, right now?" "Yeah. And what if he was actually a woman?" "Yeah, like a snobby blonde lady who shops too much." "No! No! Like, some other woman. Like a Dinka woman." "Dude, you just said Dinka."

But that youthful courage to just go for it is exactly what's so refreshing about the book. Titles like "Interview with the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God's Corpse" are what made me unable to put down the book after catching it in Borders' Original Voices section. And luckily, Currie's prose stands up to his ideas. His descriptions land perfectly between the feminine (i.e. flowery, unending) and masculine ("muscular," clipped). He develops characters while keeping the action moving forward. And if some of the ideas don't work, as is the case with most story collections, then the ones that don't are still fascinating.

Hopefully, Currie didn't blow his creative wad on his first collection. I eagerly await his next book, whatever it may be about, eagerly anticipating how his work grows more sophisticated yet still blustery and in-your-face. We could use more fiction like that.

Also check out: Just Wondering.
And: My Love is More Like Vodka.