THE BRIDGE

by D. Keith Mano ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 1973

Imagine that sometime in the near-distant future of anti-technology, the Ecological Movement (no cars, no electricity, no food, no excrement -- just a narcoticizing E-diet), finally carries its dicta against killing to its logical conclusion: the voluntary extinction of human beings, dying unwittingly but infallibly with each footstep, each breath. Along (note in the year 2035) comes the second Savior, Dominick Priest, a Neanderthal-looking dumb man who remembers the days of meat and piss before sign language replaced talk, who gleans just enough info about blood and flesh from the last surviving Christian to have a new, properly cannibalistic, religion start up around him. A hundred years later there is the horrific New World of endless black Model-Ts (the most efficient car ever designed, decides the Council), standardized New York accents (decides the Eastern School of Eco-phonologists), the sacred Eater holiday (shoot criminals, eat their flesh, drink their blood); St. Priest, St. Mary, the whole darn cycle starting over again. The author of The Proselytizer and The Death and Life of Harry Goth has written a savage, rather shocking, parable about the internal human dialectic between suicide and cannibalism: his distorted microscope enlarges every pimple and dwells lovingly on all scatological nuances. Perhaps our most serious Christian writer, certainly the one who follows his creed most relentlessly down its kinky literal byways, he has written a perversely ugly, extremely unlikable, but very good book.

Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1973

Categories: FICTION