000			02399cam a2200241 a 4500
001			052148
005			20231009193008.0
008			220113s20002000nyu 000 1 eng d
020			_a9780679447832
050	0	0	_aPS3554.O3 _bC57 2000
082	1		_aFIC DOC _2
100	1		_aDoctorow, E.L. _d, 1931-
245	1	0	_aCity of God _b: a novel _c/ E.L. Doctorow
250			_a1st edition
260			_aNew York _b: Random House _c, 2000
300			_a272 p. _c; 25 cm.
520			_aNew York at the end of the 20th century--hardly St. Augustine's city of God--is the canvas on which Doctorow paints an impressionistic portrait of man's frail moral nature and the possibilities of redemption. Challenging and provocative, this rambling narrative is a mix of alternating voices that touch on such matters as theology, popular music, astronomy, physics and science, war, carnal love, the verisimilitude of film to life (and distortions thereof). The story is at first difficult to discern, because the abruptly changing voices are not identified. But the episodic selections prove to be passages in a notebook kept by a writer called Everett, who is searching for inspiration for a novel. The easiest thread to follow, since it ties together and finally illuminates the other voices, is Everett's interest in a mysterious theft. In the fall of 1999, the brass cross from the altar of an Episcopal church in the East Village is stolen--and later discovered on the roof of an alternative synogogue on the Upper West Side. Fr. Thomas Pemberton, the spiritually restless rector of St. Timothy's, finds a kindred soul in iconoclastic Rabbi Joshua Gruen, the leader of the Evolutionary Judaism congregation. Together they probe the validity of religion in a century that has fostered epic barbarism and bloodshed. In fugal counterpoint to their conversations, the rabbi's wife, Sarah Blumenthal, herself a rabbi, discloses the story of her father's ordeals during the Holocaust, in which he tells of a manuscript hidden in the ghetto. Ensuing events cause a gentle, grieving Sarah and an unmoored Pem, whose chronic despair, intellectual arrogance and religious skepticism have cost him his pulpit, to draw together in need and understanding.
650		4	_aCity and town life _v-Fiction
650		4	_aSpiritual life _x-Fiction
651		4	_aTme travel _x-Fiction
655		4	_aReligious fiction
942			_cMO
999			_c255389 _d255389