It’s Mark Oppenheimer’s review on Heaven I suggest you read.
The piece scrutinizes both the new book of Lisa Miller, Newsweek’s religion editor and Oppenheimer’s own thoughts on the afterlife. While I am not sure about the book, the article will certainly give you a smile or two, which might have something to do with Oppenheimer being tipsy while writing it, but more about that in a second.
The review is killing, in the sense that by the time you finish it you feel you actually have read the book in question or at least you know all the interesting parts.
“[It's] a book that might guide people through the thicket of their own views about heaven by holding up a mirror of other people’s beliefs, both current and past.” Lisa Miller on Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife
Oppenheimer cherry picks through Miller’s interviewees. He tells us the argument of the American archeologist (Rachel Hallote works on ancient Israelite burial sites) that the absence of afterlife in the Hebrew Bible was an effort by the religious authorities to suppress the cult of the dead among the Hebrews. He also talks about the Swedish mystic (Emanuel Swedenborg lived in the 18th century) who believed that marriages on earth continued in heaven, an idea that was later picked up by the Mormons.
We understand that Heaven is not exactly the book of the year. Oppenheimer needed to invent a drinking game to survive the magazine journalism cliches Miller had too often applied in her book.
“do a shot every time Miller describes the interviwee’s eyes, two shots for the weather, three shots for the meal.”
The drinks might have helped Oppenheimer to keep his review hilarious with jokes I don’t intend to kill here.
But the Times’ religion columnist also takes the time to think about the question his colleague kept asking: What’s heaven like to you?
“I discovered,” Oppenheimer says, “that my heaven is a mix of:
and a song I’ve lately playing on my iPod:
