“The Man of Legends” by Kenneth Johnson

This book is unusual for many reasons. First of all, we have no idea who this “man of legends” really is until about 3/4 of the way through the novel. Second, it is positively brimming with a really unique mix of historical allusions and religious references. Third, it works to dismantle organized religion, but in a way that promotes goodness and altruism in its readers. (On second thought, it isn’t that unusual, but the method Johnson uses is pretty wacky.)

There’s no real way to talk about the book without spoilers. You have been warned.

So as I said earlier, the reader has no idea what is happening until they are a substantial part of the way through the book. It is pretty hard to keep a reader’s attention while they don’t understand what’s happening, and Johnson appears to be a master at this because I couldn’t put the book down. The key is that all of the confusing events make sense all together, as in Will continually helping others in astonishing ways. He does this over and over again, but since these events make coherent sense together (they are all variations on a theme) it keeps the reader interested until the truth is revealed.

Contributing to this is just how compelling all of the characters are. We meet several minor characters that only come together at the end, and I found myself rooting for them throughout the story, even if we only meet them briefly. A prime example of this is Tito, a teenager who loves spray painting across New York. I loved his contributions to the story, even if all we got was the briefest of glimpses into him looking at the Met for the first time.

This story also has a very interesting narrative structure. The book is framed as a journalist’s telling of these real-life events through the perspectives of everyone who was there at the time. So sections are headed by the narrator’s name, and told in their own dialect. This means that for sections the narrative can swap back and forth rather quickly, or stay with one character for the majority of the chapter. This flip-flopping never detracts from the telling though, as events are never given twice from two people’s perspectives, enabling the plot to proceed smoothly.

To get to the more juicy stuff now, this “man of legends” is in fact the Wandering Jew from Christian mythology. I had never heard of him either, but the legend goes that a man who insulted Jesus as he walked to his crucifixion was then cursed to walk the Earth forever until the Second Coming of Christ. Funnily enough, there’s a lot of discussion in the book about how the Catholic Church has distorted the nature of Jesus after he died in order to make money, but this myth never popped up until the 13^th century. That aside, it’s a very interesting take on the idea of immortality and what to do with your life if you must life forever.

The only aspect of this that I had a problem with was the people that this guy had met. We seem to have this crazy idea that if you live forever you meet everyone important and somehow affect them all. I mean really? There’s no way that you are able to do all that, especially if you are like the wandering Jew and cannot visit the same place for 333 years as part of your punishment. Just once I want to hear about someone immortal who has the worst luck in the world and misses everything important historically. I know the author is trying to make a point about his character, but that makes it seem as though we would have never had any progress without him, and there have certainly been great men and women throughout history who progressed entirely independently. I don’t know, these things just bother me.

This story does have the incredible message that we all need to live by the Golden Rule (treat others as you would like to be treated) and that we need to do so actively, with our heart fully into the deed. It is not enough to simply go through the motions, you need to actively seek out your enemy and squash him with your love. Only then will there be hope of redemption.