The Divine Comedy of John Venner - Hardcover

Smith, Gregory Blake

3.64

14 ratings by Goodreads

9780671788544: The Divine Comedy of John Venner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067178854X ISBN 13: 9780671788544

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1992

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John Venner, a thirty-five-year-old doctor of divinity at a small New England college near one of America's last Shaker outposts, becomes obssessed with a shapely Shaker virgin and battles the conflicting emotions brought on by the yearnings of the flesh and the spirit

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Fast-paced morality tale by the author of The Devil in the Dooryard (1986). John Venner--a religion professor having a hard time with his soul--teaches at a New Hampshire college near New Eden, the original colony of the celibate Shakers. Only a handful of old women remain of the colony, with one exception: a 23-year-old foundling named Sabbathday. Venner lusts for Sabbathday but also envies her purity, so he tries to become a Shaker himself--and wrestles, unsuccessfully, with celibacy. Sabbathday has had enough of purity and wants to embrace the world; she wants Venner to pursue her. Venner is driven to such antics because his ex-wife, with whom he once shared a more conventional religious (and sexual) ecstasy, has decided that her best means to conquer the flesh would be to go on MTV--a kind of electronic transubstantiation. She becomes Medusa (rather than Madonna), a modern spiritual tease. Venner's two women are good and evil, sort of, and, meanwhile, there's his tiny daughter Eve, in place for the new New Eden. Smith makes compelling speculations about the nature of purity and sexuality, Shaker lore, and Sabbathday's teenage diaries. He's a fine stylist, subtle, witty and learned. Trouble is, his women won't hold still: Sabbathday wants to turn what remains of the Shaker heritage into a corporation and become famous; Medusa retreats from fame and wants her husband back. Smith's conclusion- -that we may seek the divine but in the end are merely human--is a letdown, a mere intellectual exercise in this time of real trouble between the sexes. As religious argument, this fizzles. As a comic character study of weak John Venner, it's a delight to the end. -- Copyright �1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

John Venner, professor of religion at a small New England college, grapples with the dual nature of the human condition in this new novel by the author of The Devil in the Dooryard ( LJ 9/1/86). The recently divorced Venner lives in the college chapel's steeple with his talking cat, Sometimes Why. He becomes obsessed with the nearby Shaker community of New Eden and its attractive acolyte, Sabbathday Wells--truly the last of her kind, since the Shakers abstain from sex and refuse to admit any new members. While Venner seesaws between his lust for Sabbathday and his desire for salvation, a media tour reverses the sacred and profane as he knows them. Witty prose, a bizarre scenario, and a compelling story distinguish this funny, outlandish, irreverent fiction. Recommended for public libraries.
- Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Connecticut at Torrington Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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