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The Book of Unknowing meditates on John’s confrontation with the incandescent Jesus, a figure of our desire for immortality. Guiding us through the Gospel’s coming to grips with Jesus, the poet David Sten Herrstrom prefers sparking the imagination to arguing a thesis, as he explores John’s own obsessions, such as image (light), symbol (water), sign (water to wine), shapeliness (symmetry), loves (Peter, Mary’s), and above all, words (the Word, the body of Jesus). The result is a heady, literary engagement not afraid of wit and paradox. For anyone who loves literature or whose business is interpretation–ministers and teachers–this book blossoms with fresh revelations about the many voices of Jesus living in the House of the Interpreter and interacting with another interpreter (Nicodemus), as well as about John the interpreter who continually pauses to explain Jesus’ motives, metaphors, and the meaning of his death. This meditation on John’s Gospel takes the goat’s leaping approach to the craggy language of John and Jesus rather than the methodical rock climber’s. And along the way, to help him find footholds on the how and why of John’s strategies, the author calls on other poets, from William Blake to Emily Dickinson and Miguel de Unamuno. The result: a poet’s rather than a preacher’s, theologian’s, or scholar’s reading of John’s book, one which crosses the borders of disciplines. Throughout The Book of Unknowing, David Herrstrom is unsettled and exhilarated by the peculiar orneriness and fragrance of John’s book, by its strange particulars that grab him by the throat and call lives into question. As William Blake has said, Exuberance is Beauty, and this is an exuberant book.
