Left behind

I finally finished the Left Behind series last night...and man, was it bad. And disappointing. If this is what millions of right-wing Christians think is Great Literature, there's a crying need for a nationwide program of eugenics and sterilization.

Where to begin? The names, maybe. Rayford Steele. Buck Cameron. Hattie Durham. As soon as I read those names I started forming parody names in my mind...Ramrod Steele, Suck Slamheron, and Sluttie McHarlot, for a start.

It didn't help that Ramrod - sorry, I mean Rayford - is clearly the in-book alter ego of Christian Reconstructionist and all-around Nazi Tim LaHaye, the "idea" man for this travesty of a series, while "greatest journalist in the world" Buck is apparently a stand-in for hack writer Jerry Jenkins. The only word for it is icky. It's also pretty pathetic.

I'm not going to go into great detail here. Certainly LaHaye and Jenkins didn't. In fact, that was one of the most annoying things ABOUT the books! They almost never show - they tell. It's like watching a supposedly great football game, but the instant the huddle breaks the camera always shifts to a bunch of pundits sitting around a table. They're talking in the most general way possible about the game:

"That's sure some football, Bob." "It sure is. One team is winning. Praise Jesus!"

I mean, look at the source material these people had to work with! The Antichrist. Satan. The Tribulation. Armageddon. When the Antichrist ISN'T scary, and IS actively boring, something is seriously wrong. And Satan bellowing that he wants a "big, stinky, SMELLY pig" to ride goes beyond stupidity into a sort of...I don't know what you can call it. Words fail me. As they failed LaHaye and Jenkins, throughout the whole series.

If I had written this thing, it would be electrifying. All the deadly sins would be portrayed in full disgusting glory. Instead we get lines like "the TV was filled with nothing but filth", and that's it. I remember some old comic books about the Antichrist, and by God, they stuck in my head. He should be dining on roast suckling baby, with evil naked chicks all over the place!

But instead he's boring. As are the heroes, who are surprisingly stupid. It's one of those books where you keep wanting to smack the characters on the head and shout "What are you, STUPID?!?"

"Oh, someone has delivered a mystery package of my favorite chocolates."

"Okay!"

They're morons. They barely qualify as two-dimensional. And almost all they do is talk talk talk talk talk.

The font is a large one. The margins are large. The vocabulary is aimed at the 3rd or 4th-grade level, I would guess. Large chunks of text are repeated over and over, from book to book. Each book includes several PAGES of advertising at the end for more Left Behind products, as well as a reprint of the last five or six pages of the previous book. These 12 books could have been turned into six without cutting a word, and there are plenty of words that SHOULD have been cut. Isn't avarice a sin? Bad writing should be.

In fact, the entire series really doesn't seem to be about the human species I know, not even the post-2004 election species. The people, ALL the people in this series are just plain DUMB. Over and over totally miraculous things happen, things that would make anyone not utterly insane wake up and notice that God was sending a pretty clear message, but over and over people "refuse" to admit it.

At first the writers explain this by having the Antipasto - sorry, I mean the Antichrist - come up with lame pseudo-scientific explanations. Later, they just decide that God has "hardened the hearts" of unbelievers. How do they reconcile this with their constant proclamations of God's overwhelming love? Hey, look, over there, a monkey!

Ahem. What was I saying? Oh yes, science. Let me limit myself to this: if you ever took a fifth-grade science course, or if you know enough about computers to be reading this sentence, you are going to find the science and computers in the books to be not just laughable, but bewilderingly stupid. And don't even get me started on encryption. The witch-hunters of Salem had a better understanding of modern computer technology then the two idiots who wrote this.

And the morality of it all is mind-boggling, to put it mildly. At one point some girl who works for the Antichrist helps the - oh yeah, I forgot to say: the heroes are people who weren't saved Christians when the Rapture came, but saw the light and became "Tribulation saints". They decide to form a group to fight Satan and the Antichrist, and they call themselves - get this - the "Tribulation Force".

It's like something out of a grade-Z comic book.

Anyway, some girl named Krystal (another porn-star-type name) who works for the Antichrist at the new UN headquarters in New Babylon (really!), is secretly helping the Tribulation Force (I can't type that with a straight face). But she had already accepted the Mark of the Beast, which means, according to the books, that she's damned to an eternal vacation of searing hellfire. Too bad! She made the wrong choice, and the writers seem to feel that that's that. She spies for the good guys, gets caught (we don't know by who), gets chopped up, and it's hell-time for Krystal. And nobody really seems to be bothered by that.

The strange thing is that they leave it a mystery WHO had killed her. This happens a number of times throughout the series; they put out what would be a plot hook if a competent writer was working on this, and then they forget all about it. Hey, look, over there, a monkey!

The whole thing is just off. For example, there's Hattie, the stewardess who bore the Antichrist’s baby (which then died – talk about anticlimactic). She's a major character in the book, a sort of redeemed harlot. But her death is over in half a page. “Oh, ho-hum, she confronted the Antichrist and got blasted by infernal fire, she was a real saint, huh? And quite a sport, for a Christian gal, nudge-nudge.”

Good lord - I almost forgot the racism! One of the characters in the book is "Mr. Wong", and he's the Asian equivalent of Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer". Or worse. I won't try to duplicate his sly Oriental accent, but let me just say: me no rikee velly much!

What else? Well, going by this book I’m guessing that the Christian Right is surprisingly bloodthirsty. Throughout the series the prose style is flatter than Kansas, but the final book is filled with loving, almost lyrical descriptions of Jesus melting the eyeballs of unbelievers, vaporizing the flesh off their bones, or causing their flesh to rip itself apart with incredible violence. What joy! What a delight!

And when Jesus shows, up, it’s just creepy. He keeps sending out the psychic equivalent of those annoying “personalized” bulk emails in prayer form: “[Fill In Name Here], I am with you.” “I have always known and loved you, [Fill In Name Here].” It's like being stalked by the Psychic Network.

They manage to make the worship disturbing. People stand around, worshiping, and it’s just degrading. We're supposed to want an eternity of that? I can't stand reading about it for five minutes! And when the Millennium finally comes (after 12 books, it felt like it TOOK a millennium), it’s A) short – just the last few pages, and B) lame. The heroes contentedly talk about how Jesus is going to send all remaining unbelievers to the Lake of Fire. Now, that’s my idea of a good time.

I couldn’t help but contrast that with an effective Christian author: C.S. Lewis. Whatever you think of the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, it was a damned exciting piece of work. His depiction of Heaven at the end of the book was incredibly moving, even captivating. It made you want to be there. My reaction to Left Behind was quite the opposite, although I did experience quite a sense of relief when I finished the damned thing.

For I so loved my readers that I gave my only begotten brain, that whosoever readeth this should not have to read Left Behind, but do something actually worthwhile…like floss their teeth…take out the trash…catch up on ironing…that sort of thing.

It is finished.