Review of Towing Jehovah by James Morrow

1950s science fiction featured proportionately more satire than does the current landscape—an interesting fact considering the sheer volume of sf being published today. Writers like Frederik Pohl, William Tenn, C.M. Kornbluth, Wilson Tucker, and others used speculative situations to comment on the times, often in subtly eviscerating fashion. James Morrow, for as little known as he is in 2024, was one of the few writers keeping the satire torch alight in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Towing Jehovah (1994) is not Morrow's sharpest blade, but it gets its point across in wildly imaginative fashion.

Nietzsche was right: God is dead, and at the beginning of Towing Jehovah Morrow manifests this in reality by having the elder one's massive body fall from the heavens and land in the ocean stone, cold, dead. The Vatican the first to learn of his death (natch), they dispatch one of their most ambitious priests to commission a ship to tow the corpse to a secret location where they can study and attempt to revivify it. A ship and unlikely group of mariners is pulled together, trouble is, it may end up getting in its own way more than effecting the mission.

Where some of Morrow's satire can be quite sharp, it's most often because he chooses to put the might of his thrust behind one blow, i.e. one theme that is nicely unpacked. Towing Jehovah is more like a series of cuts thrown in various directions; the opponent is not located in a particular direction, rather several.

Before getting to the criticisms of the novel, one thing needs to be made clear: I am an agnostic. My challenges with the novel are not based on religion, directly or indirectly. I have sympathy for Morrow's views. But Towing Jehovah is just that: a flurry of small pokes at religion. They are clever and witty, but from the perspective of literature the book has minimal purpose other than to be the featherweight puncher, buzzing around, and throwing a flurry without any real weight behind them. It's a huge amount of fun to read but doesn't escalate toward a final, decisive point. To keep my sword fighting metaphor going, Towing Jehovah does not have a finishing blow.

In the end, Towing Jehovah is sprinkles on frosting on maraschino cherries on confectionery sugar. From scene to scene to scene it's a real treat. Morrow keeps the hits coming. But don't look for a meal. For as sweet as it is, for as tight as Morrow's prose is, and for as meaty as the theme would seem to be, Morrow provides only a dessert. No full course meal. (Apologies for mixing all these metaphors.) Thus, read at your own desire. If you enjoy fiction which plays with its atheist food in creative fashion Towing Jehovah is for you. For people looking for a weightier shakedown of religion, try elsewhere.