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Synopsis
of "The Lives of Elijah Brooks"
"The Lives of Elijah Brooks" is the autobiography of a soul through this, and several past
lifetimes. Our protagonist takes us on a journey from the creation of the human race out of
primitive simian ancestry, by purposeful genetic engineering at the hands of transcendentally
advanced extra-terrestrials, through various short retellings of biblical episodes, such as the
fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, the near sacrifice of Isaac at the hand of his father Abraham,
Exodus, and a brief account of the lives of Jonathan and King David. He then proceeds to
narrate his lifetime spent as Elijah the Tishbite. He is careful to have us know that, as George
Gershwin was thoughtful enough to point out, "The things that you're liable to read in the Bible,
they ain't necessarily so.". Turns out, our hero appears in stark contrast to all popular
conceptions of the prophets. Among other things, the guy is homosexual in that life cycle
(he hates the term "gay") — a state of being which puts him in a unique vantage point in
relationship to his more conventional contemporaries.
After that lifetime, he passes the next
several incarnations as a Spartan warrior and citizen, only to return to the "cauldron of the
Middle East" as a cousin of Jesus of Nazareth. This time around he is John the Baptist, and
queer again. After getting murdered at the command of King Herod, (an incident upon which he
throws an entirely new light!) he offers his own version of events in the life of Jesus.
The next incarnation of which he tells us is the current one. The stresses of being homosexual,
at any time in one's life, in a world which punishes this state with "unrelenting barbarity", can be
overwhelming. He tells details of this life, from getting his butt wiped for a change of diapers
(of which he evidently has one certain memory), of walking around frustrated, in a room full of
people talking, knowing that they are using language, and that he will one day learn the skill, even
though, at this point, it is just a bunch of noise. He tells of entering puberty, of falling deeply in
love with another boy at the age of twelve, and of discovering his society's expressed attitude
toward such love — of further discovering sexual desire towards the one he so adored and coming
to hate himself for this desire which he had been taught to regard as loathsome beyond words. He
relates the various love stories of his life — most of which, to his unhappiness, were never in any
way consummated. He tells of traveling around the Midwest with one of his buddies working on
horse race tracks — of his on again, off again college career, of his four nervous breakdowns —
of traveling all over the United States and Canada, living on the streets, hitch-hiking, hopping
freight trains — of going to Israel (just before the Yom Kippur War broke out) with dreams of
glory, of his Judaic orthodox conversion, and of returning from Israel after 26½ months, having
failed in his expectations, but having gained immensely in his knowledge and world view. After
returning to his stomping grounds in North Florida, he would eventually earn his degree in
electrical engineering and move to California to work as a computer manufacturing engineer in
"Silicon Valley". It would be here, as a cog in corporate America, that he would realize, finally
and unmistakably, who he was, and what his calling
would be, as well.
Gee! One page to get it all in! Israeli politics, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, arrest in Berkeley,
with a plane trip in handcuffs to jail in Los Angeles, hot rods, motorcycles, drugs, rock and roll,
a screen play, and a little correspondence from Prime Minister Sharon, on official Israeli
government letterhead, reproduced upon the book's cover, with two words written in Hebrew
script by Sharon's own hand that are going, at some inevitable point, to get Jews around the
world, and Israelis in particular, in an uproar — guaranteed. Absolutely guaranteed. That's when
the shooting stops, and a whole new chapter opens in the Book of Life. Isn't it about time?
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