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Damascus Gate
Robert Stone
Houghton Mifflin, $26, 500 pp.
Damascus Gate has a number of elements which will be familiar to Robert Stone's readers: drugs, alcohol, the threat of violence, death, and characters searching desperately for a meaning that eludes them. But this novel is unique in the way that it approaches, head-on, the theme that moves in the background of other Stone novels: a God who has withdrawn from the universe. In much of Stone's work there is a sense either that there is no God, and we need him, or there is a God, and he is guilty of having abandoned us. This is a kind of visceral, felt gnosticism. Here Stone has found the perfect vehicle for his vision: the mystical Jewish tradition of Lurianic Kabbalah. It will help to have read Gershom Scholem before reading this book.
But this is not to say that the book is a heavy read, or that it is freighted with theology, or even that you should read Scholem. As is always the case with Stone's work, Damascus Gate works on its own as a thrilling novel, perhaps his best. It takes place in Jerusalem, and the city is itself a central character. Christopher Lucas, a journalist fascinated with religion, agrees to work on a book with Dr. Pinchas Obermann, a psychiatrist who is fascinated by the "Jerusalem Syndrome." Obermann offers a typical example: "A young man of scant prospects receives a supernatural communication. He must go to Jerusalem at the Almighty's command. Once here, his mission is disclosed. Often he is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ."
Lucas is the son of a Jewish father and his Catholic mistress. Another character, a jazz singer named Sonia Barnes, is the daughter of an African-American...