La Biblia de neon (The Neon Bible) Book

Bittersweet Sixteen

It would be a significant literary achievement to write a convincing novel from the perspective of a sixteen year old narrator. It would be an even greater achievement, as here, if the author too was sixteen years old.

This novel is relatively straightforward in the way it unravels the plot. It's conventional and linear, until at the end you discover that it's actually circular. However, like "Stoner", one thing it does well is create pathos, although in this case there is nothing self-pitying about it. The novel creates empathy for the simple poor people who are struggling to build a good life in the context of not just poverty, but social ostracism.

The Sanctimoney of the Rich and Righteous Conformist

The characters in "Neon Bible" aspire to a life that happens to be different from those around them. Aunt Mae, in particular (without the model of whom it might be inferred there would be no "Neon Bible" or "A Confederacy of Dunces"), wants to resume her career as a singer and actor. David's father, Frank, plants some pine seeds on the mountain that reverse the destruction of the forests to build yet more identical white picket fence residences. His mother does her best to bring him up as a decent person despite her failing health and desperate lack of funds.



Gina Rowlands as Aunt Mae in the 1995 Terence Davies film of the novel

The novel scorns and punishes the scorners, especially those who proclaim from the pulpit of the preacher. It finds in Christianity as practised in the south of the United States (rural Mississippi) an hypocrisy that is incompatible with the actual tenets of the religion. There is no sympathy for or empathy with anyone's neighbour in this rural valley community, unless they are exactly like you, a mindless, compliant believer: "If you were different from anybody in town, you had to get out. That's why everybody was so much alike." The 16 year old narrator effectively skewers the judgemental self-righteousness of some deplorable religious and political fraternities in America.

Religious Correctness

It's so easy to forget that, before so-called "political correctness" existed, society laboured under the oppressive weight of religious correctness (how often do we hear people banging on about Christian values?) for centuries. It was the most powerful tool of conformism in society. Ironically, it's this very perspective that is largely behind the conservative attack on and demonisation of political correctness, which after all is based on the Christian premise of "treat others as you would have them treat you."

The novel is carefully constructed and well-written, apart from a few inelegant adolescent sentences. At only 162 pages, it deserves to be an American classic. Highly recommended.


SOUNDTRACK:

Lou Reed & John Cale - "Small Town"



You Am I - "Damage"





Buffalo Tom - "Taillights Fade"