The Most Prophetic American Book You Never Heard of

 

Published 33 years ago, The Boomer Bible is a satirical treatment of how we became a Post-Christian nation with politics finally siring its own atheistic religion at the hands of the Baby Boom generation.  It attracted its own following over the decades, although the New York Times recognized it for the attack it was and announced to the publisher that they would never review it.

The book has become a hidden work but not a vanished one. Its 88,000 print run eventually sold out and copies new and used are still available from a variety of sources.

Along the way, The Boomer Bible has spawned a variety of complementary productions in print and ion the Internet, including three dedicated websites, a book explaining the text’s complex structure and writing innovations, a brief sequel scripture spoofing the decline of youthful literacy in the 21st Century, and a complete page-by-page photographic reproduction of the original book in the Modern Archive. 

How is it different from the three other volumes shown in the T-shirt above. Like them, it is a fiction, but is also a Bible, specifically inspired by the 66 books of the King James Version, plus the Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican Hymnal. But its scripture is not a parody. It’s rather a total rewrite, beginning with creation in the book of Kinesis and concluding with sad prophecy in the book of Rationalizations, where the Messiah’s father, dying in a nursing home, laments the loss of his son and his own failures as a mentor. (There is also a third and final “Punk Testament” that many choose to read first.) In between are the trappings of the KJV,  Past Testament including a Pentateuch, the books of history from the Gypsies to the Others, the five books of prophecy that begin with the letter ‘P,’ the books of the VIPs from Adam (Smith) to Jeffrey Hunter). Followed by Present Testament including four gospels of the Boomer Messiah Harry, of the Exploits of his minions, 16 epistles to various neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Then a complete “Book of Harrier Brayer” and the Hymnal.

Importantly, the text is written in chapter-and-verse but not in faux Elizabethan English (no thees and thines to bother with.) the language is simple and colloquial because the authors are college English majors showing off, but accidental recipients of AI software that enables them to write — like punk rockers — in bands, who settle their disputes by combat on South Street in Philadelphia. They are the dispossessed, the losers, the one who are belatedly trying to battle back from their own addictions to  drugs, their ignorance, and their despair about their prospects in life. They are introduced by TBB’s two prefaces, which explain that because South Street is also a favorite nightclub destination for affluent Baby Boomers enjoying the seedy side of Philadelphia. The punks undertake to interview and record what it is the much better educated Baby Boomers know about the history and culture they come from. They are aided in their research by a charismatic punk goddess named Alice Hate, whose visits to South Street nightspots are generally bare-breasted and irresistibly charming to men and not a few women.

The Bible is composed en masse by the entire punk community, whose massive computer system features unlimited quantities of biological memory known as blue, which ultimately becomes a helpful/hurtful drug of its own. The writing is led by a spectral punk figure called St. Nuke, the scarred survivor of the dozens of duels used to decide what punk writing is and what rules apply to it. (The history of the punks above and beyond the composition of the Boomer Bible is contained in a companion book called Punk City, also available for purchase at Amazon and elsewhere.) Because of its collective approach to writing, and the writers’ personal experience with extemporizing rock lyrics, the text of TBB scripture is intensely oral, rhythmic enough to be read out loud as a kind blank verse that has its own allegiances to the use of lines and dramatic pauses, repetitions, and punchlines. It is also, due to the chapter-and-verse format, easily linked by chapter or line(s) to other related passages in the book. Why The Boomer Bible has its Intercolumn Reference — derived from the one in the KJV — in which larger ideas and resonances can be explored by those who care to.

What all have the punks chosen to cover in their three testaments and Book of Brayer? Well, there’s a 25,000 word history of the United States in there, pretty comprehensive histories of Hollywood, popular music, Fifties and Sixties TV shows, an outrageous celebration of the Vikings, a brief synopsis of the unending conflicts in the Middle East, a book of literary limericks, a couple of alphabet books, sendups of both feminism and the elite academic and literary class, a corporate slide show, books about doctors and lawyers and engineers, a long epistle to high school students in which almost all the text is penetrated by strikethroughs, rewrites of the most famous Christian hymns, a fully documented set of the readings used in PHP prayer services, summaries of the philosophical views of Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Frank Kafka, Jean Paul Sartre, Picasso, illustrated Signs & Symbols of the Pontifical Harrier Parish, including vestments, and the movie version of the gospels. Plus some treasure hunts for those who like games. (I left out Orwell and Huxley and Bradbury. No need of them here. This is my fiction, not theirs.)

And a bunch of other stuff. It’s a determinedly anti-linear work of writing. There’s no need to read it in order. One can get around to everything eventually without that. You can read at it, like a Bible.

Two facts worthy of note. Although the book was published almost exactly 10 years before 9/11, The Boomer Bible has exactly 2001 chapters. The second fact (at least I think it is) rests on the blank verse lineage and chapter-and-verse format of the text, which makes this technically the longest poem written in English. 

Take it or leave it. I haven’t given you spoilers about the story of America’s downfall recorded in the book. That’s for you to find out on your own.