Subject: TALES OF THE WANDERING JEW edited by Brian Stableford

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070)
Date: 6 Jan 92 19:12:13 GMT

TALES OF THE WANDERING JEW edited by Brian Stableford
                        A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
			 Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper

        The Wandering Jew has been a popular topic in literature as an
   archetype borrowed from Christianity (though running a distant second to
   Faust).  The best-known "mainstream" work involving the Wandering Jew is
   probably Eugene Sue's THE WANDERING JEW (also available from Dedalus, ISBN
   0-946626-33-2, 864pp, L9.99).  But to nine out of ten science fiction fans,
   the name conjures up images of the old wanderer in Walter M. Miller's
   CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ.  But even if this is the only knowledge you have of
   the Wandering Jew, as Ahasuerus, or Cartaphilus, or Michob Ader, have no
   fear--Stableford explains the origin and literary history of the Wandering
   Jew (and why he has so many names).  The basic primary source material is
   two-fold.  Matthew 16:28 says, "Verily I say unto you, There be some
   standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man
   coming into his kingdom."  John 21:22 says: "Jesus saith unto him, If I will
   that he [Judas] tarry till I come, what is that to thee?  Follow thou me,"
   although the next verse appears to be a disclaimer: "Then went this saying
   abroad among the brethren, that this disciple should not die; yet Jesus said
   not unto him; He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry until I come,
   what is that to thee?"

        Though Stableford gives a very complete introduction, there are a few
   omissions worth mentioning.  Recent works that Stableford doesn't mention
   include THE LAST COIN by James Blaylock (here he is Judas), THE HOMEWARD
   BOUNDERS by Diana Wynne Jones (here he is Ahasuerus), and the CASCA: THE
   ETERNAL MERCENARY series by Barry Sadler (in which he is one of the Roman
   soldiers who gambles for Jesus's robe).  In the film THE SEVENTH SIGN he is
   Pilate's gatekeeper (but then he's Roman, rather than Jewish, isn't he?); in
   DC Comics "Secret Origins" (#10) he is the Phantom Stranger.  According to
   one person, in this version he was a man named Isaac whose wife was killed
   trying to protect their child from Herod's slaughter of the innocents and so
   he ended up hating Jesus.  Older works include George Sylvester Viereck's MY
   FIRST TWO THOUSAND YEARS, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WANDERING JEW, THE PRINCE
   OF INDIA by Lew Wallace, and the Danish play GENBOERNE.

        After Stableford's twenty-five page introductory essay, the book gives
   us twelve historical pieces, including "The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy" by
   Percy Bysshe Shelley.  While the poetry selections don't do much for me, the
   prose pieces are on the whole well-chosen.  "The Magician's Visiter" [sic]
   by Henry Neele is little more than an episode with a punchline made obvious
   by the story's presence in this anthology.  But there is real magic in "A
   Virtuoso's Collection" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a story of a museum of
   historical, mystical, and mythical relics.  That it is run by the Wandering
   Jew is anti-climactic--the catalog of items is enough to stir one's sense of
   wonder.  (I was reminded of Lawrence Watt-Evans's descriptions of far-off
   places in "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers," surely an odd companion
   piece to a Nathaniel Hawthorne story.)

        George MacDonald's "Passages from an Autobiography of the Wandering
   Jew" has some powerful moments, but also dragged in spots.  "The Holy Cross"
   by Eugene Field suffers similarly--it has a powerful story swamped by an
   overly long and drawn-out ending.  "The Wandering Jew" by Rudyard Kipling
   doesn't belong here: it's not about the Wandering Jew, but about a man
   seeking immortality.  That his method is based on a major scientific gaffe
   on Kipling's part makes this all the more annoying--why did Stableford
   include it?

        "The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem" by A. T. Quiller-Couch changes the
   basic legend of the Wandering Jew so much as to render it almost
   unrecognizable.  The same is true of "The Accursed Cordonnier" by Bernard
   Capes, though the latter's "Oriental" horror style helps save it.

        O. Henry is the first in this volume to update this story with "The
   Door of Unrest."  Michob Ader claims to be the Wandering Jew, condemned to
   wander the earth forever for turning Jesus away from his door.  But Ader
   turns out to be just an old drunk with a sad history.  Or is he?  This is,
   after all, by O. Henry.  The final historical piece is John Galsworthy's
   "Simple Tale," another episodic tale emphasizing the learning of charity
   more than the plight of the Wandering Jew.

        Leading off the recent stories is Mike Resnick's "How I Wrote the New
   Testament, Ushered in the Renaissance, and Birdied the 17th Hole at Pebble
   Beach."  Unlike the older stories, which see the Wandering Jew obsessed with
   his fate to the exclusion of everything else, this story postulates that he
   decides to take an active role in determining his future, rather than just
   wandering around.  And part of that role involves things that affect our
   history in major ways.  This Wandering Jew has changed with the times and
   his modern English is a delightful change from the King's English (King
   James, that is) that older writers seem to feel was part and parcel of the
   Wandering Jew.  Resnick does humor well--and not often enough, so this is
   doubly welcome.  (One wonders, though, how this Jew managed to get into all
   those country clubs?)

        "The Wandering Christian" by Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman is an
   alternate history story--what if Constantine had been defeated by Maxentius
   outside Rome at the Milvian Bridge?  (This is the second story with that
   premise I've read in the last two months--synchronicity?)  Constantine's
   defeat, coming after his vision of a cross against the sun, is the beginning
   of the end for Christianity.  (In our world, of course, Constantine made
   Christianity legal within the Roman Empire.)  The story consists primarily
   of the Wandering Christian telling the history of his world and himself in
   the thousand years since Jesus cursed him.  The history will interest
   alternate history fans (and I won't spoil it by describing it here), and the
   Wandering Christian's personal story has one major variation--he can die.
   But whenever he dies, he wakes up the next morning in an identical body
   somewhere else.  (That one major reviewer thought this was set in the far
   future rather than an alternate timeline I can only attribute to his not
   having read more than the first page--and that not well.  Suffice it to say
   that I don't feel revealing this to be an alternate history a major
   spoiler.)  One more comment: the appellation of "Wandering Christian" rather
   "Wandering Jew" (though not used in the story itself, in which all the other
   characters are ignorant of the history of such a person) is interesting.  In
   almost all the legends, the Wanderer believes in the divinity of Jesus;
   after all, the curse worked.  So the Wanderer, whether Jew or Roman
   initially, must generally be considered to be Christian, albeit unbaptized.
   (Although it would seem easily enough to get baptized in the Middle Ages,
   when priests would baptize anyone who stood still long enough.)  Yet in
   almost all stories, he is still the "Wandering Jew."  In this, he is the
   "Wandering Christian."  An important facet of his character seems to be that
   he is of the "outsider"; once cursed, he cannot rejoin the brotherhood of
   the majority until his curse has run his course.

        In Geoffrey Farrington's "Little St. Hugh," the eponymous character is
   probably one more familiar to Jews than to Christians, and probably also
   decanonized in the recent reorganization that also demoted (Saint)
   Christopher.  Confused?  Okay--here's the background.  In the Middle Ages,
   Christians who had borrowed money from Jews and didn't want to have to pay
   it back--or who just wanted to stir things up--would put a dead child's body
   in the Jewish section of town and, when it was found, claim the Jews had
   sacrificed the child in some heathen ritual.  (Easter was a popular time of
   year for this--they could accuse the Jews of using Christian blood for their
   Passover matzoh and it fit right in with the Easter sermon on how the Jews
   killed Jesus.)  These trumped-up charges are now referred to as "blood
   libels."  The child victim of all this was usually canonized quite rapidly
   as a "martyr to the faith"--hence "Little St. Hugh."  Little St. Hugh, by
   the way, was a real person, Little St. Hugh of Lincoln, who at the age of
   nine was found dead in 1255, supposedly after being crowned with thorns,
   crucified, and then thrown in a well after an attempt to bury him failed
   when the ground refused to cover him.  Ninety-three Jews were arrested;
   nineteen were killed and the rest released after the payment of a large
   bribe to the either the Francisans or the Dominicans (accounts vary).
   Little St. Hugh's story is told by Chaucer in the "Prioress's Tale."  (Even
   Butler in his LIVES OF THE SAINTS labels the charges against the Jews
   groundless.)  In Farrington's story, the bishop is behind it all, having
   first used the child for his own Satanist rites.  When he spots the
   Wandering Jew (as a Jew he had already seen burned alive once), he decides
   that the blood of an immortal would be even better than that of a child.
   What happens, and what will happen, provides the final irony to a story
   already full of ironical touches.

        Robert Irwin's "Waiting for Zaddick" is set during World War II, or
   more specifically, during the Holocaust.  Haim is spying for the Nazis and
   is told to find out what the Zaddick is.  (In Yiddish, a zaddick, or more
   usually, tsaddik, is a miracle worker.)  Though he hears the Hassids say
   that the soul's messenger comes only once and we must welcome him when he
   comes, Haim still fails to welcome the Wandering Jew and is trapped forever
   with no hope of a second chance.  This story bothered me, because it seemed
   to imply--unintentionally, I am sure--that the Jews of the Holocaust should
   have accepted the teachings of the Wandering Jew (and hence become
   Christian).  I suppose if one accepts the reality of the Wandering Jew one
   must accept the validity of Christianity as well, but I am still not
   comfortable with the message I see here.

        "Wanderlust" by Steve Rasnic Tem is ostensibly about the Wandering Jew,
   but in truth could be about any immortal.  It is a well-considered look at
   what immortality means in terms of family life, even if the end seems a
   trifle contrived.  (While it is well-considered, I can't say it is entirely
   original; Poul Anderson's BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS is just one example of
   another work that covers this theme.)

        Ian McDonald's "Fragments in an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" centers
   more around the premonitions of its central character, a young Jewish woman
   just before and during the Holocaust.  The Wandering Jew is a secondary
   character, appearing solely to stir up people's fears and hatreds.  The idea
   that one person in a cabaret show could somehow cause the rise of the Third
   Reich--even with Hitler in the audience--is difficult to accept.  But the
   undeniable poetry of McDonald's writing makes up for the necessary
   suspension of disbelief.  Actually, the story's ONLY weak spot is the
   Wandering Jew.  Even the cabaret performance works--it's just the
   implication of its widespread effect that I question.  (But then, accepting
   an eternally cursed immortal requires some suspension of disbelief anyway.
   Perhaps giving him this much power is something others can more easily
   accept than I can.)

        In "The German Motorcyclist" by Pat Gray, I think the title character
   is supposed to be the Wandering Jew, but quite honestly I found the whole
   thing too obscure and pointless.

        Scott Edelman may have gotten his inspiration for "The Wandering
   Jukebox" from Thomas Disch's "Brave Little Toaster," but this tale of
   household appliances seems to have little, if anything, to do with the
   Wandering Jew, and I found it tedious rather than intriguing.

        Brian Stableford included one of his own stories, "Innocent Blood,"
   about the (definitely this time) Wandering Jew and the AIDS-infected junkie
   he tries to save.  In this story Stableford ties into a variant of the
   legend of the Wandering Jew invented by Eugene Sue--that the Wandering Jew
   was also a plague-carrier, bringing cholera with him wherever he went.  Told
   from the point of view of the junkie, this is a successful modernization of
   the legend.

        If Stableford brings the Wandering Jew into the gritty present,
   Barrington J. Bayley brings him into the far future in "Remembrance."  About
   five million years in the future, that is, and condemned to wander the
   universe from planet to planet until Jesus returns, which will apparently
   not be until the end of the universe--another twenty BILLION years.  (The
   question of how he travels from planet to planet is never answered.)

        And finally we have David Langford's "Waiting for the Iron Age," in
   which the Wandering Jew, after many deaths and rebirths, finds himself
   reborn in a data bank in a time capsule, immortal till--once again--the end
   of the universe, here described as 101500 years (the last story was 109).
   Now his wandering is reduced to wandering electrons around a loop, and this
   raises the question: is the purpose of the curse on the Wandering Jew to
   punish him or to have him serve as a lesson to everyone else?  In this
   story, it must be the former, yet I think that the stories that presume the
   latter have more scope and offer more opportunity.  This isn't a bad story,
   but by reducing the story to an emphasis on the awful punishment, Langford
   had removed any opportunity for repentance or salvation.  And if
   Christianity is a religion that preaches that true repentance in one's
   lifetime will lead to salvation, this must hold true even for the Wandering
   Jew.

        TALES OF THE WANDERING JEW offers a variety of interpretations of a
   well-known legend.  In spite of its fantastic nature, it is less well-known
   in the area of science fiction than might be expected, and Stableford's
   anthology may help change that.  Currently there is no American edition, but
   by all means check your local specialty shops or science fiction convention
   dealers rooms; I recommend this book.

   %B      TALES OF THE WANDERING JEW
   %E      Brian Stableford
   %C      Langford Lodge, St. Judith's Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, Great Britain PE17 5XE
   %D      1991
   %I      Dedalus
   %O      paperback B (trade paperback), L8.99 (I paid US$20)
   %G      ISBN 0-946626-71-5
   %P      368pp
   %T      "The Wandering Jew" (anonymous)
   %T      "The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy" (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
   %T      "The Magician's Visiter" (Henry Neele)
   %T      "A Virtuoso's Collection" (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
   %T      "Passages from an Autobiography of the Wandering Jew" (George MacDonald)
   %T      "The Holy Cross" (Eugene Field)
   %T      "The Wandering Jew" (Rudyard Kipling)
   %T      "The Wandering Jew to Ancient Rome" (Eugene Lee-Hamilton)
   %T      "The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem" (A. T. Quiller-Couch)
   %T      "The Accursed Cordonnier" (Bernard Capes)
   %T      "The Door of Unrest" (O. Henry)
   %T      "Simple Tale" (John Galsworthy)
   %T      "How I Wrote the New Testament, Ushered in the Renaissance, and Birdied
           the 17th Hole at Pebble Beach" (Mike Resnick)
   %T      "The Wandering Christian" (Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman)
   %T      "Little St. Hugh" (Geoffrey Farrington)
   %T      "Waiting for Zaddick" (Robert Irwin)
   %T      "Wanderlust" (Steve Rasnic Tem)
   %T      "Fragments in an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (Ian MacDonald)
   $T      "The German Motorcyclist" (Pat Gray)
   %T      "The Wandering Jukebox" (Scott Edelman)
   %T      "Innocent Blood" (Brian Stableford)
   %T      "Remembrance" (Barrington J. Bayley)
   %T      "Waiting for the Iron Age" (David Langford)

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]