{"id":427,"date":"2012-06-11T14:10:03","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T22:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=427"},"modified":"2012-06-11T14:10:03","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T22:10:03","slug":"good-to-be-god-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/11\/good-to-be-god-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Good to Be God– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Good<\/a>Good To Be God<\/a> by Tibor Fischer<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve seen the movie Slacker<\/em> then you know it\u2019s not about a bunch of lazy people sitting around in puddles of their own apathy; everyone in the film is more or less actively engaged in some pursuit or interest. Maybe none of them are trying to cure cancer, but the film\u2019s title forces you to reconsider the context of your assumptions. I only mention this after meditating on the title of Tibor Fischer\u2019s Good to be God<\/em> for a week after reading it.<\/p>\n

Tyndale Corbett decides, after giving up on hope, to become God. Fair enough; it\u2019s as good a scam as any, and not unprecedented: Buddha didn\u2019t just wake up one day to enlightenment, but had to suffer from some extremes before he deduced that extremisms just wasn\u2019t where it was at. But what kind of God will Tyndale become? What is his understanding of God?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what this book is about: taking a fish out of water (dirty polluted water) and seeing how it flops. Tyndale flops just fine, and finally discovers his true God-given gift: the gift of failure. It\u2019s mediocrity, that curse of the middle class, taken to the extreme. Tyndale is no Job, suffering, nor is he a Christ figure, self-sacrificing. He\u2019s almost, but not quite, a cooler, a guy who\u2019s very good at making sure nothing very good ever happens.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s Godlike, if your God is a God of mediocrity, middle-class hopelessness. What would the God of faithlessness be like? Tyndale is surrounded by slackers (in the sense of the film I mentioned above), apostles and witnesses to his ascension through inertia.<\/p>\n

And (here\u2019s the review part, finally) it\u2019s all told via Fischer\u2019s wit, his flowing style, his playfulness with the written word that at times keeps you guessing (was that really a monkey spinning discs) and other times punches you right in your soul. He gives you enough stuff that you can read into the story if you want and hang symbols all over the place; or if you just want to read a mildly amusing tale about a fat Britisher living in Miami, there\u2019s that too.<\/p>\n

Too often rich people say money isn\u2019t everything, or beautiful people say beauty is only skin deep. A middle-class guy telling us that struggling for happiness is depressing can come across as \u201cdon\u2019t know how good you got it.\u201d But feeling sorry for oneself, here, is balanced by just the right amount of thankfulness. Angels can have tattoos too, you see.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good To Be God by Tibor Fischer My rating: 4 of 5 stars If you\u2019ve seen the movie Slacker then you know it\u2019s not about a bunch of lazy people sitting around in puddles of their own apathy; everyone in the film is more or less actively engaged in some pursuit or interest. Maybe none … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Good to Be God– review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-6T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}