Went to the library today. Among other things I got the next Left Behind book. Well actually, the third. The second was out. But I found that I didn't have any trouble at all skipping from book 1 to book 3, didn't feel like I had missed a thing. I guess in a multi-part series they have to write it so that readers who can't get one of the books can skip ahead to the next without feeling totally lost. Still, I felt a little like a soap viewer -- if you can watch 2 days out of 5 and still know exactly what's going on, why would you bother to tape the show every day? Only if you love the characters and want to experience as much of them as possible. Unfortunately the characters in Left Behind are too flat to inspire that kind of dedication.
So anyway, I've gotten sucked into the Left Behind series. The writing is abysmally bad but it is entertaining, I'll grant it that. In fact I read the entire third book last night. It's interesting to compare this series to other, more successful books. There's the "near future post-apocalyptic fantasy/horror": The Stand by Stephen King. The "sweeping, multi-part epic with religious themes": Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. The "fish out of water, ordinary American guy dropped into Christian mythos": Inferno by Larry Niven. All more enjoyable to read than Left Behind.
None of these comparisons are really fair, I guess, because [snarky aside] those other writers all know how to write. Okay, actually I was going to say that none of the other authors are bound by strict faithfulness (slavish devotion you might say) to source material, which has been the downfall of many adaptations. Inferno is the only one that even references Christian source material (not the Bible, though as I understand it Left Behind isn't based on the Bible either, rather on a particular interpretation thereof) and Niven has a certain irreverence that I don't expect to see from Jenkins and LaHaye. For instance I doubt they will have anyone, much less their protagonist, call God "the Big Juju."
Also I think the obvious dual goals of converting unbelievers and inspiring believers interfere with Left Behind's ability to entertain. The lengthy conversion scenes drag the story down, all the True Christians come off like total drips, and when bad girl Hattie complains about how preachy and annoying they are, I'm right there with her. (I kind of sympathize with Hattie just for being forced to say that the rapture of all the fetuses was a bad thing because it put her sister who works for an abortion clinic out of work! Just like with soaps, when the writers make a character do and say outrageous things to show how e.v.i.l. they are, I often end up sympathizing with that character and resenting the alleged heroes.)
On the other hand, as an avowed atheist I'm surely not the target audience for the book. My guess is the proselytizing is aimed at casual Christians or those of the "wrong" denomination, which according to the book seems to be everyone except extreme conservative Baptists. (Even the pope isn't part of the rapture! He ends up leading the Antichrist's one world religion.)
On the third hand, I don't think The Book of the New Sun has any intent to proselytize, but I found Severian's epiphany (when he realizes that every thorn on every bush is like the Claw of the Conciliator, and throws his shoes in the water so as to walk barefoot on holy ground) deeply affecting. So I know I'm not immune to spiritual themes in fiction. It just has to be, you know, well written.
As both an avowed atheist and a sort of slightly practicing Jew, I'm doubly intrigued by Left Behind. Have you gotten to the forced conversion of my people yet? LMV wants to read this series (in much the same vein as you are), but I think it would send me into a depressive tailspin. In living in the US, and the Bible Belt in particular, I try to strike a balance between not sticking my head in the sand and not overly exposing myself to the stuff that makes me want to run screaming from a region I otherwise really like. Sometimes this is a difficult balance to maintain...
I think I'll stick to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for now. Or Oolon Colluphid's philosophical blockbusters.
well, that about wraps it up for God...
Well, hmm. I can't say you won't be offended by Left Behind, because there's a lot to be offended by. There's nothing about forced conversions in the first or third books. Though there are 2 Israeli mystics in the third book who preach by the Wailing Wall for months and convert 144,000 Jews to Christianity, while anyone who tries to stop them from preaching or even gets too close is magically killed. No word on how the mystics get food or go to the bathroom. I think they started in the second book but I haven't read that one.
The parts I've read about Israel didn't seem so much offensive as just stupid. (maybe someone Jewish would find it offensive, I don't know.) They've invented this magic fertilizer that makes every square inch of soil in Israel super fertile, so they're really rich and take over the whole region, and the rest of the Middle East seems okay with that, except Russia attacks them with a million nuclear weapons, all of which are destroyed in the air by a magic firestorm and hail storm, and not a single person in Israel is injured, but no one seems to notice or pay attention to this obvious miracle and there's no retaliation against Russia for starting a nuclear war. Whew, that's just the backstory.
In the first book the Antichrist talks Israel into sharing the formula with the rest of the world in exchange for a treaty that guarantees seven years of peace. Actually I take it back about not being offended. That was so stupid it was offensive. If you were Israel and you had some secret formula that everyone in the world wanted, wouldn't you expect more than seven lousy years of peace in exchange? They should have gotten at least 99 years of peace. But Tim LaHaye's personal version of the end times says there are exactly 7 years of peace in Israel before Jesus returns to earth, so 7 years it is.
Well, from what I know of the larger plot, all Jews are suppose to convert to Christianity or (I guess like everyone else) face eternal damnation. But all of this is part of a larger, scary, real-world rationale by evangelicals for supporting the Israeli right-wing. Christian Zionists are vocal about their support for Israel because Israel is supposedly integral to the return of Christ... and the ultimate conversion of the Jews.