To each province in its own script
Proof that I have, in fact, been working this past year. My book on Christian pop culture, tentatively titled Rapture Ready!, won't be published until Spring 2008. But you can see a sneak preview of sorts in this week's issue of The New Yorker, in the form of a feature story about the Bible publishing industry. The material in this article will eventually form a chapter of the book, although the style will not be exactly the same, as the book is more of a first-person narrative. (The rest of the book is even more different. This particular chapter was the one that was most like a New Yorker article to begin with, as opposed to a David Rakoff or Jon Ronson essay — at least, that's what I'm shooting for.)
In addition to making the entire article available online, The New Yorker also helped me create an accompanying slideshow featuring some of the most visually interesting contemporary Bibles.
Bonus for readers of this site: The Bible as New Yorker cartoon.
Comments
I like the cartoon. I flipped through some more, and this one is my favorite so far.
Posted by: Francis | December 11, 2006 9:10 AM
>>Apparently while I was busy closing this article, I got scooped by The Wall Street Journal. C'est la guerre.
Bastards!
Posted by: The Velvet Blog | December 11, 2006 9:19 AM
I decided to maintain my state of denial and deleted that WSJ link. It's not like either of us wrote this story for the first time. I like to think mine adds value beyond the news factor anyway.
Posted by: radosh | December 11, 2006 9:32 AM
Congrats. I'll read the article the way God intended, which is on the paper version. But that slide show is already an eye-opener.
Those are all for real? They remind me of a Bruce McCall-type feature, if Bruce McCall's features were, you know, funny.
Posted by: Vance | December 11, 2006 11:11 AM
"...considering the state the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown." Indeed.
Do any of these people ever acknowledge Bruce Barton? Or is he forgotten lore?
Posted by: TG Gibbon | December 11, 2006 4:15 PM
I'm not sure who you mean by "these people," but The Man Nobody Knows features prominently in a recent book called American Jesus, and certainly his legacy lingers, if not his name.
Posted by: radosh | December 11, 2006 4:22 PM
Finally my 20th-century-technology copy arrived. Well done. What about those BibleZines? Do they change the covers on them every so often to imitate the ADD teen consumer culture? I kind of inferred that the ads in them might change.
Posted by: Vance | December 16, 2006 1:08 AM
Yes, they put out new issues every year or so.
Posted by: radosh | December 16, 2006 10:10 AM