The story of King David – warts and wonders
I was sent this as a digital copy for review from the publishers via NetGalley.
I have admired Pulitzer prizewinning author Geraldine Brooks’ writing since discovering her 2001 book The Year of Wonders. In The Secret Chord, she is up against a more challenging task in some ways, and yet perhaps an easier one in others.
This the story of King David, from Ancient – History? Allegorical Writing? The Bible, a Holy Book? Many interpretations might be possible.
My knowledge of David was scant – he became King, and Jesus came from ‘David’s Line’ so, clearly he is part of New Testament as well as Old Testament theology.
He was a psalmist, a musician, as well as a king, and many of the Psalms in the book of Psalms are his. He fathered Solomon, fount of wisdom, and one assumes the creator of another Biblical Book, The Song of Solomon, deeply poetic, and also erotic – the song can be read as physical or as spiritual in praise, and this tradition of praise to a divinity which also has elements which could be seen as erotic is one found in other poems of love to the divine. David was the young boy, of humble birth, who slayed Goliath, with a stone. David and the then king’s son, Jonathan, formed a deep friendship. David, who seems to be courageous, charismatic, devotional, and is perceived as a wise ruler, also coveted and raped Bathsheba, his general’s wife, and sent that general into dangerous battle, where he was killed.
David Cuts off the Head of Goliath by James Tissot, (1836-1902)
His almost seems to be an operatic, soap opera story. I found the Bible original, its 1st Book of Samuel Chapter 16 onwards, through the 2nd Book of Samuel and into the second chapter of the Book of Kings, because I was interested to see the source material she had worked from, and from whence a novelist’s imagination, or, even invention, might arise.
To be honest, it’s a fairly bleak and plain telling, and inevitably reads quite drily. (The Biblical telling) The usual collection of intense smitings and smotings which litters the sometimes sorry history of our species. We do pretty well all of the smitings and the smotings ourselves, without the need of outside agencies, it seems, and utilise those agencies to justify ourselves.
As society becomes more secular (some societies, and I live in one) it perhaps becomes harder to write inside the mind-set of faith base, in a way which can allow readers outside faith to enter into characters and societies for whom it was central, without the reader judging the character as credulous or simple minded.
Brooks does flesh out this rather extraordinary life, and this rather extraordinary world, extremely well. The inevitable parallels to Mary Renault and what she did, particularly in her trilogy about Alexander the Great and the two Theseus books, are not misplaced, though Brooks doesn’t quite manage the hairs up on the back of the neck stuff, the bringing of that long ago time and its mixture of the familiar and the weird, so much into potent reality as Renault does.
David and Bathsheba Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1889
Brooks uses a couple of devices in the telling of her story, which a had a slight question mark about. She took the decision to use the original personal and place names ‘in their transliteration from the Hebrew of the Tanakh’ – so this means, instead of the versions bible readers – and more particularly non bible readers who have become familiar with the place and personal names which have passed into popular culture – are concerned. making the necessary connections may not be immediately obvious. For example, it was not until I found the source material that I realised that the Plishtim were the Philistines. I thought this decision, presumably to add a kind of historical authenticity was not helpful. It may be that a glossary will be included with the published, as opposed to the ARC copy. The combination of the archaic namings and the use of various period terms with the need at times, where she wants to show salty and foul language, such as used by soldiers, somehow grated. This is always a problem, people will always have used such language, how to marry the need for immediacy without losing a sense of place and time : the challenge of quaint and old fashioned versus something which wrests the reader out of period.
There are also decisions taken (which may or may not be accurate) but which leave the reader (or did leave this reader) wondering how much a modern gloss, a modern viewpoint, is an accurate one, and how much we are unable to see, feel, think into other times. The most obvious, here is the relationship between Jonathan and David. We live in a world which is overtly sexualised; thus it becomes almost impossible for deep love by adults, between the same sex, or between the opposite sex, to be seen in any other way than actively sexual, or as a conscious or unconscious sexual repression. We may, or may not be far too knowing now to enter into a different time. So Brooks makes David a man of broad tastes. In which she may be right or she may not. There is no concrete knowing, either way. But this decision did also put me out of an inhabitation of the past, making me realise that, for example, a Victorian writing this story may very well have accepted a loving relationship between two men without sexualisation.
David and Jonathan Cima da Conegliano, 1507
She is not in any way salacious or gratuitous in her writing about sexual content – we never go into the bedroom, she does not need to do this, as she chooses the device of having the whole story told by the prophet Nathan :
I have had a great length of days and been many things. A reluctant warrior. A servant, a counselor. Sometimes, perhaps, his friend. And this, also, have I been: a hollow reed through which the breath of truth sounded its discordant notes.
Words. Words upon the wind. What will endure, perhaps, is what I have written. If so, it is enough.
Brooks is, as ever, a wonderful story teller, one who makes characters come alive, and one who writes wonderfully.
Going back to the source, she has given rich depth, life and colour to events which were set down and her David is complex, rounded, and as my title suggest, a man full of contradictions, as all humans are.
Lady Fancifull 
Intriguing. I am attempting (very slowly) to struggle through one of the ‘source documents’ – namely, the Bible – currently, but haven’t got to David yet. I do find it’s hard for both author and reader to think themselves back into different times, and your point about sexualisation is a major part of that. It’s a pity we can’t seem to see a loving relationship as not necessarily sexual – I wonder if it was always so and just not written down, or if our thought processes really have changed. A bit of both perhaps.
Oh, you are really, really wonderfully wide ranging in your reading. Just because I’m reading about them at the moment, I’m going to dub you Renaissance Woman. I assume that this is in preparation for reading Gilead?
Yes, there are certainly times when it’s possible to think that we aren’t so different from who we were thousands of years ago, but then every now and again you realise that there are places you can’t enter into, because twenty-first century thinking is a barrier. How can you un-know?
Partly for Gilead yes, and partly because I do feel it’s a great lack not getting Biblical references in general. I picked up loads in GOW that I’d have missed a couple of months earlier because I’d read the first few books of the Old Testament. In truth, I find it really hard going – it has me harrumphing a lot. I go through a spate of reading a couple of chapters a day for a couple of weeks and then have a giant pause. It may take me till about 2030 to finish it!
You are a wonder, you are (the way you grab up extending your knowledge) It IS hard going I think, and possibly particularly for women. It’s so clearly history written by men for men. And (lobbing a firecracker perhaps into the mix) if one wants to argue that it is the word of God – I would say its the word of God heard by men, and that the men writing it in those far off days may just not have been able to hear what God was actually saying. it’s all a bit like the squeaking of bats, which few human adults can hear because our hearing isn’t very sensitive at such a high range, vibration – but, because we can’t hear the squeaks, we’d be foolish to say the squeaks aren’t happening.
So you might finish the Bible at the same time I finish the challenge I’m setting for myself (to be revealed later, of course, when the first book of the challenge is finished)
Yes, I’ve been reading some of the commentaries along with it to try to get an idea of why women are willing to buy into the whole thing – I also follow several women who review books but also happen to be staunchly Christian and often talk about their beliefs. Intelligent thinking women, who accept totally that the Bible is the word of God, sometimes literally, so somehow they interpret the words differently from my atheistic brain. I find it intriguing – as you know, I’ve never been a militant atheist. Given a choice, I’d choose to believe, but the Bible (Old Testament) is in fact making me more distanced from that possibility. The commentaries are also mostly written by men… the Prof assures me it will all become clear if/when I get to the New Testament. Hmm…
When will we hear more about the challenge then? I’m still thinking about doing some form of Great British Novel Quest…
You will hear about the quest in the fullness of time. Hopefully before the end of the year, that’s my plan, as a couple of the books could fit some missing categories of that wretched PopSugar quest, so I could do birds/stones type of thing.
I have started one of the books, but it’s quite long, needs a lot of intense concentration and is a non-fiction book citing a lot of sources, so its not exactly bedtime reading
And then, how much of this is poetical, which can give another pov. So much of the Old Testament is poetry. Add in the fact that those books were written in the Oriental fashion. And then compare it with what has been going on with the Arabs.
Indeed – poetical as well as allegorical. Could you explain what you mean by ‘in the Oriental fashion’ Susan?
I’m currently reading A Little History of The World, a history book written by the Art Historian for children. It’s a wonderful but at the same time a deeply depressing read, going from prehistory to the World Wars. And it pretty well is an ongoing history of wars and conflicts over resources, ideas, ideologies, struggles between powerful individuals jockeying to get more power, and every now and again, something wonderful. And then someone or a collection of someones comes along and tries to own the something wonderful or pound it out of existence. What a terrifying species we are, unless we really pay attention to ourselves
(PS Susan I deleted your comment which just said ‘I’ as I assumed it had been typed by your cat/dog pressing the send button – mine do this kind of thing on a regular basis) I hope you haven’t been abducted by aliens or fallen asleep at the keyboard!)
I think that we do indeed live in an amazing and frightening world. Even cats know better than to excrete in the place where they eat.
What I meant by Oriental was as opposed to Occidental. The Bible is essentially an Oriental book.
Now you know I want you to go on with that idea, don’t you………….especially, as I guess in the end it got absorbed into the Occident and you could say then developed it?
I took the dog outdoors and when I came back George Bailey had a rather smug look on his face. Thank you.
Is that an invitation to a conversation?
Yes. (sorry, I did reply Yes, but have just discovered it went nowhere – disappearing replies!)
I hate when I have a good thing to write and as soon as the……. )
I wrestled with articulating my thoughts about this book but you do it very well. Good points about the language of historical fiction and about the treatment of David and Jonathan’s relationship. “How to marry the need for immediacy without losing a sense for time and place” is a difficulty in most historical fiction I find, especially lately. The ability to allow us to truly feel we’ve slipped into the past is rare — and illusory, I know, but wonderful when it happens.
Thanks Lory