Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise by Adam Spielman

even you’ve heard that before.  This freedom-loving devil sounds an awful lot like she walked out of the pages of Paradise Lost, and all this gallivanting around with dead celebrities is straight out of the pages of Dante.  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.   I scarcely need mention the central conflict, this Paradise-sans-Truth tension, a trope as old and quaint as Eden.  Throw in the haphazard philosophies, the hipster irony, the cheap jokes – It’s almost as if some publicly educated and under-employed ass is having literary spasms.”
    The eyes of Christopher’s head roamed about the studio until they found the place where the studio met the page.  And they looked up off the page and at me .  I looked away, for I was guilty.  I stepped outside and I smoked a cigarette.  I poured myself another coffee.  I thought about giving up.  But I really wanted to know how Jim was going to fix the firmament, so I went back.  I expected to martyr myself against the edges of Christopher’s rhetoric, but when I sat back down he had already moved on.
    “As for the angels,” he said, “If apes can graduate, so too can men.  It would be a cosmic travesty if we were evolution’s final product.”
    “So everybody’s got a pattern for everything,” Jim said.  He stole a drink from the half-empty glass, and he nearly spit it back out.  “Ughh, that’s bitter.”
    “It’s Amarone.”
    “It’s bitter.”  Jim set down the glass.  “So what do we do?  Nothing?  Just pull up a chair and mock what passes?”
    “Carry me,” Christopher said.
    “What?”
    “I don’t need a body to give these demagogues what-for.  Even the invicted heart draws blood from the brain.  We’ll divest them of these superstitions with reason, with the dynamics of logic and argument.  We’ll scour the fields of battle with the ink of a thousand years of secular thought.  Carry me, Jim!  I’ll eat in paradise what I merely disdained on Earth.”
    “I don’t think it will work,” Jim said.
    “Carry me,” the head said.
    Jim squatted and met Christopher’s gaze with his own.  He said, “These religious guys might be a little silly, but Immanuel Kant is a fucking dick .”  Then he made for the door.
    “Jim!  What humanity lost through submission it will win back through progress and irony!  Mark those words, Jim.  One day!”
    7
    So Jim wandered upon the fields of battle.  While he wandered he beheld many feats of violence and insanity.  He saw the pointy hat of a bishop that wobbled in the hatch of a Sherman tank, and the tank rolled at the head of a legion armed with shovels and pitchforks.  He saw great volleys of arrows exchanged between clouds.  He saw the shells of artillery rip into a battalion whose armor was duct tape and Bible paper.
    And the angels kept a loose perimeter in the sky and on the ground.  Some of them were confused or concerned, but most of them pointed and laughed and had a pretty good time.
    The crack in the firmament streaked over the war.  It glowed.
    It came to pass that Jim came to a place between three hills.  The place was sheltered by trees and a river.  It was open and flat, occupied by a peaceful throng.  A middle-aged woman in a conservative summer dress met him as he entered.
    “Welcome,” she said.
    “What’s going on here?” Jim said.  “There’s a war going on, you know.”
    “Well, we are the Presbyterian Church of Canada, and we’d much rather have a picnic.  Would you like some juice or some coffee?  There will be cake and cookies afterwards, but you’re welcome to some coffee now.  I could introduce you to the boys.  Oh, excuse me.  Men.   You’re not boys anymore, are you?  My son is about your age.”
    “Afterwards?  After what?”  Jim made his suspicions known with a squint.
    “Oh, we have a very special speaker.”  Then she leaned in and spoke confidentially.  “It’s top secret, but I’ll give you a hint.  His name is John