Creole PI and Sarejevo Refugee Share Pleasure and the World Is Saved

Millennium madness is upon us. With the countdown to the end of the world in full swing, cultural icons assault us with visions of the coming apocalypse, passing judgment on the last century of human progress and awaiting the Second Coming and the birth of the Antichrist. Codrescu's messiah, impressively, manages to surf the web, enjoy an orgasm, save humanity and open a restaurant all in time for Mardi Gras.

From the start one expects something impressive: written by a Romanian-born poet, essayist and English professor whose last novel,The Blood Countess,was a national bestseller, Messiah promises to stun the reader. The dust jacket insists that "mordant social commentary and incandescent characters" lie within. A short plot summary instantly intrigues. And so one has every reason to expect a marvel between the covers of Messiah. Unfortunately, one has just as many reasons to be disappointed.

To start things off, Felicity, a boyish Creole who makes her living as a PI or "girl dick," consults the Virgin Mary, thinking of her plans and hopes for the future. She ponders her hatred for the Rev. Jeremy Mullen, a rich preacher with a television show, whom Felicity blames for stealing a substantial sum of money from her. Second, she wants to experiencing something that none of her sexual encounters have ever granted her: an orgasm.

In Jerusalem, a girl who has survived the internment camps of Sarajevo, appears mysteriously at the door of a convent. Quickly taken in by the nuns and the scholars in residence, this girl, Andrea, charms everyone. Her obsession with the show Wheel of Fortune becomes a central theme of the novel. Codrescu's interest focuses on Vanna White, a subject of mass worship who brings meaning to the world by connecting letters into words. References to the game-show throughout the novel bring with them the hope that somehow all the loose ends will eventually be tied.

Thanks to Andrea, the scholars of the convent decide to invent a story about a gathering of history's greatest minds in New Orleans. The unfolding of their story effects the fabric of reality, and the great minds descend on Louisiana, sent there by heaven to pass judgment on the world in what is, perhaps, the novel's weakest link.

The stories of Felicity and Andrea unfold in separate chapters, and it takes over 260 pages for the two plot lines to finally come together. Only upon finally encountering Andrea and experiencing her first orgasm does self-awareness come. One thing that is clear throughout the book is that the two women need each other to be complete; they are two halves of a single entity, the messiah, come to save the world from the apocalypse.

Linked by their shared orgasm, the two women charge headlong into the path of Rev. Mullen's evil plan to bring about mass destruction. As the confrontation between Mullen and the messianic duo unfolds, there is almost hope that the plot might come through after all. This hope is quickly shattered, however, by the entry of the spirit world into the picture.

The great minds converge on New Orleans, watched over by an angel named Zack who spends most of his time complaining about the democratization and bureaucratization of heaven in somewhat misplaced digressions from the action of the novel. And here the plot gets entirely silly. Not only do spirits manage to communicate with mortals through their own private adult website, but complete absurdity ensues when the great minds are reincarnated in the bodies of the city's residents. At one point the spirit of Nicola Tesla "screws" itself into the skull of a wino "like a genie into a bottle." The spirits of Karl Marx, Ovid, Aristotle and Albert Einstein, among many many others, also descend on the city. Almost laughable, these passages only serve to add to a growing sense of dissatisfaction with where, if anywhere, the plot is heading.

There is something sad about these plot twists, for in them one is exposed to an imagination that strives for credibility and falters. Codrescu's attempts to integrate supernatural images into the novel are neither fantastic nor interesting, but merely commonplace and uninventive. And while it is clear that he is trying to set a foundation for some interesting interactions between famous historical personas, he is completely unable to invent an interesting conversation between any of them.

Besides being dull, the plot entirely fails to come together at the end. The Wheel of Fortune theme that seems to show such promise never comes through and seems ultimately unrelated to the novel's meaning. The idea of a man bent on causing apocalypse to wipe out the consumer society is little more than a regurgitation of long overused cliches. And neither is the message of Messiah any major surprise. The messiah saves the world through-what else?-love! Here is a safe and time tested-vision but one incapable of laying claim to any originality.

Codrescu is certainly amusing at times. Typically, he manages to find "carroty orange baby penises" in an airplane meal. Yet his obsession with breasts and genitalia often seems out of place, almost like a forced concession to the Freudian tradition and by no means necessitated by the logic of the text.

The "mordant" social commentary referred to in the dust jacket doesn't get very far. The Internet is judged to be addictive. Drugs are seen as the modern equivalent of slavery. Television hypnotizes people. Consumption of Big Macs is morally reprehensible. No one needs to read a novel to figure these things out; one needs only to look around.

Ultimately the novel fails because Codrescu's ideas are more banal than fantastic. Conspiracy theory, millennium madness, channeling of spirits: these are dated visions, and the date on the can has expired. Angels hovering above New Orleans, Albert Einstein reincarnated in the body of gigolo and pessimistic condemnations of consumer culture no longer have anything to offer us. Perhaps half a century from now a Hist & Lit concentrator writing a thesis on millennium madness will come across this novel as yet another example of kitsch ushering in the end of the world.

For now, though, Messiahis best kept for a very, very rainy day.