{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3989",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3989,
    "subject": "Paul Park's new novel",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-05-10T10:20:26+00:00",
    "last": "2003-05-10T10:20:26+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0305-3394@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nicholas Gevers",
        "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2003-05-10T10:20:26+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Paul Park's new novel",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Readers of Gene Wolfe have often expressed fondness\nfor the works of Paul Park; here's the publication\nannouncement for Park's latest novel, THREE MARYS,\nwhich I've edited for Wildside Press. Available\nthrough amazon, bn.com, www.wildsidepress.com, and\nother online booksellers.\n\n--Nick Gevers.\n\nPaul Park, THREE MARYS: A NOVEL\n\nWildside Press, 178 pages\n \nISBN: 1-58715-519-2\n\nHC $29.95 \n\nMay 2003\n\n\nBOOK DESCRIPTION:\n\nIn 1996 Paul Park published The Gospel of Corax, a\nhighly acclaimed rendering of a theosophist legend,\ndescribing Jesus of Nazareth's journey to the Indian\nsubcontinent and Tibet. In Three Marys, his new novel,\nPark returns to first-century Palestine to recreate\nwith penetrating insight the historical community of\nJesus, and to follow the first tangled strands of\nChristianity after his death. Here is Jesus's world as\nit very likely was, confused, conflicted, rife with\nmessianic rumor and factional ambition; here is the\nbrazen cruelty of Roman occupation and the domestic\noppression that mirrored it, seen through the eyes of\nthe women who knew Jesus best. \n\nThis is the story not only of Christ but of the three\nMarys who survived him and were true to him, each in\ntheir own way. Their inner and outer narratives,\nsometimes tortured, sometimes rhapsodic, make up the\nspare but radiant tapestry of this novel. There is\nMary of Magdala, visionary and wandering, perhaps\nJeshua's wife; there is his mother Mary, tough,\ncharismatic, earthy, ultimately desolated by his loss;\nand there is Mary of Bethany, the girl who followed\nJeshua in his last days and has to bear the burden of\nher undying brother Lazarus for decades afterwards.\nOutcasts because of their sex, yet possessors between\nthem of some fragmented sense of the true ineffable\nnature of Christ the man and Christ the messiah, they\nare presented with luminous tragic humanity and given\nproper voice at last. \n\nPaul Park is one of contemporary American literature's\nmost subtle and original explorers of religious\nexperience. As exotic in coloring and as rich in\nunderstanding as his superb science fantasy novels,\nThree Marys is a masterpiece of historical and\nspiritual reconstruction.\n\n\nADVANCE PRAISE FOR THREE MARYS:\n\n“Three Marys speaks with such eloquent and mesmerizing\nauthority concerning the early formative period of\nChristianity, it seems that the novel is less an\nastonishing recreation and re-estimation of those days\nthan the product of brilliant observation. Paul Park’s\nbody of work concerning Jesus and his milieu is unique\nin American letters.”---Lucius Shepard, author of Life\nDuring Wartime and Valentine\n\n“To the short list of successful New Testament\nextrapolations--a literature that includes Alain\nAbsire's Lazarus, José Saramago's The Gospel According\nto Jesus Christ, and Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last\nTemptation of Christ--I would now add Three\nMarys.”---James Morrow, author of Only Begotten\nDaughter and Blameless in Abaddon\n\n“Paul Park has been, for far too many years, one of\nthe most unjustly unknown contemporary American\nauthors. Those who do know have long spread the word,\nbut ultimately, to know his work you must read the\nword. Three Marys should, I believe, be the\nnovel--rich in incident, warm in characterization,\nunforgettable in approach--that at last brings him the\nwider attention he justly deserves.”---Jack Womack,\nauthor of Terraplane and Going Going Gone \n\n“From the first moments, Paul Park's intense, always\nprecise language brings ancient stories to life\nwithout ever cheapening them through a fake ‘realism’.\nThe gospel stories are well served in this vividly\nimagined book.”---Rachel Pollack, author of\nUnquenchable Fire and Godmother Night\n\n“Like the canonical Gospels, this story's vibrant\ntapestry is woven with threads of disappointed hopes,\nblames and betrayals, and the yearnings of people\ntrapped by multiple oppressions. Unlike those Gospels,\nit is told in women's voices, fresh out of the\nmaelstrom that might have immediately followed the\nCrucifixion. Haunting, carnal, stunning, disturbing,\nThree Marys imprints on the reader's imagination a\ntriptych of powerful women, not easily\nforgotten.”---The Reverend Peter T. Elvin\n\n“A compelling and iconoclastic narrative of the\nformation of the early church told from the\nperspective of the disempowered women who were at its\nheart, Three Marys is a brilliant book, richly\nimagined, beautifully written, and intellectually\nstimulating. Like The Gospel of Corax, Park's new\nnovel artfully incorporates findings from the spate of\nrecent scholarship on the historical Jesus, and offers\na fascinating look at the processes through which\nhistory is transformed into myth.”---Bradford Verter,\nProfessor of History and Religion, Bennington College"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}