The Book of Samson: A Novel

By David Maine

"This is the story of my life and it's not a happy one. If you wish to read about me you're welcome to but if you're looking for something to give you hope & joy comfort & inspiration then you had best leave off here straightaway and go find something else. My life has an abundance of frustration and pain plus a fair bit of sex and lots of killing and broken bones but it's got precious little hope & joy comfort & inspiration.
It's got some women in it too plus a wife. Dalila is the one you may have heard of and a rare piece of work she was. You may think you know the story but believe me there's more."
--from The Book of Samson

From the author of the acclaimed and provocative novels Fallen and The Preservationist comes a tale about a man who believes he is touched by the hand of God---then instructed by that God to slaughter his enemies. It is the story of "this worldly existence of men & brutes desire & unkindness" and of the woman, Dalila, who figures at the center of it all. In The Book of Samson, David Maine has created an unforgettable portrait, a unique and astonishing masterpiece that puts a face on a previously faceless icon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Oct 30, 2007
• ISBN: 9781466807181

David Maine

David Maine was born in 1963 and grew up in Farmington, Connecticut. He attended Oberlin College and the University of Arizona and has worked in the mental-health systems of Massachusetts and Arizona. He has taught English in Morocco and Pakistan, and since 1998 has lived in Lahore, Pakistan, with his wife, novelist Uzma Aslam Khan. He is the author of books including Monster, 1959 and The Book of Samson.

Book preview

Samson

This is the story of my life and it’s not a happy one. If you wish to read about me you’re welcome to but if you’re looking for something to give you hope & joy comfort & inspiration then you had best leave off here straightaway and go find something else. My life has an abundance of frustration and pain plus a fair bit of sex and lots of killing and broken bones but it’s got precious little hope & joy comfort & inspiration.

It’s got some women in it too plus a wife. Dalila is the one you may have heard of and a rare piece of work she was. You may think you know the story but believe me there’s more.

It’s an interesting question why anyone would seek hope & joy comfort & inspiration in a story in the first place. Something to think about. Maybe because there’s precious little of it in life so we gather up as much as we can find and put it in our stories where we know where it is and it can’t get out. But this story as I say isn’t like that. It starts and ends with me here in chains and in between if anything it gets worse. Betrayal adultery and murder all figure in words writ large as if in fire against the nighttime sky. With the story not even done yet it might get more hopeless still before my days in this world are over.

In fact I’m sure it will.

To give an idea of the killing: I once left a wedding feast to go kill thirty men and then went back to the wedding which flowed on like wine unabated. This in response to a riddle and a wager. So you see I’m not joking when I say that murder is writ large in my life in words like fire against the nighttime sky. The thirty men’s coats I removed from their stiffening bodies and then distributed to the wedding guests. Though normally prohibited from handling the bodies of the dead I was under some duress and consoled myself with thinking that they were so freshly killed that they were in fact not completely done with living as yet. Thus do we strike little bargains with ourselves and chip away at our integrity in the process.

The wedding where this took place was my own. Perhaps it conveys some idea of the nature of my in-laws that they took these new garments willingly enough and wore them happily afterward notwithstanding the rips bloodstains and other marks of wear.

I said this story begins in chains and so it does for I am in chains as I speak. They are iron and heavy and each link is the size of my hand and the thickness of my wrist. Mighty they are and in my prime they would have not held me but I’m no longer in my prime. As you might have guessed. The place of my enshacklement is a temple wondrously large which I’ve seen little of besides this sumptuous entertainment hall and the cells underground. In part this is because of the sorry state of my eyesight which is failing by the day. But I’ve seen enough to know that this hall alone is bigger than some villages I’ve walked through. At one end of it is a little platform like an altar or a stage and upon this platform I stand. Towering columns ring this hall: the largest being a pair at the far end and a second mighty pair behind me at the rear of the altar. So too is the looming statue of Dagon—the Philistines’ so-called god which I will speak more of later. In the middle of the hall an enormous bonfire roars at all hours in a pit. I stand strung up at the edge of the altar with my arms spread in a T shape. My legs are free to wander but alas there’s nowhere for them to go. I spend my day shifting from one foot to the other trying to relieve the ache and for the most part failing.

Chains stretch from the shackles on my wrists to bolts driven into the columns. Maybe forty cubits in each direction. The bolts are as thick as a man and the columns couldn’t be encircled even by ten men with their arms spread wide—and even these aren’t as momentous as the columns at each end of the hall. Truly the palace is built on a scale beyond the understanding of simple men such as myself. I would say it is the work of the gods but that would be a blasphemy most foul as there is only One True God and I know that well. The difference between my people and the Philistines that surround me is that our God is the LORD of Abraham and Moses and Josue while the gods of the heretics are made of wood and they burn or stone and they sink or animal parts and they molder away over time. They are dull lifeless inanimate things. Dagon is the god of this temple and an imaginary creature nothing more. Half man half fish and pure nonsense as even a child could tell you but what can you expect from people who came swarming in their multitudes to Canaan in boats from across the sea?

At times the Philistines even worship the works of the One True God as being gods themselves so they pray to the thunder or the sun or various animals and engage in many other laughable superstitious practices.

I say laughable but admit I’m not laughing now.

This I will attest: that at the moment they have the upper hand but one day the LORD will give me back my hands to hold over them. As He has done so many times before. And when he does so those hands will not be empty but will contain a mighty sword or awesome club or at least a very heavy stone with which to smite them. And so I shall and they will break into small pieces and die. They will die. And I will laugh and dance as will my people. They will sing songs in praise of my deeds. And tell stories.

Those are stories which will have in them no dearth of hope & joy comfort & inspiration. Mark me well.

I fear I am rambling and not sticking to the point. I ask you to forgive me as this is a fault I’m prone to—which you’ll see for yourself readily enough if you choose to attend my story for any length of time. The best thing for me to do now is start at the beginning for it is a story unlike any you have heard I have no doubt.

How I Entered the World

The manner of my birth was a sight wondrous to behold if one believes the stories as they are told and I see no reason to doubt them. Involving angels come to earth and signs in the heavens and so forth it must have quite overwhelmed my poor simple parents.

I use the words poor and simple in their poetic sense. My parents were not poor in things of the material world as my father had achieved some status in his native village of Dan and my mother’s standing was of a commensurate level. Nor were they either of them simple in any sense of the word. But faced with the glory and grandeur and mystery of the One True God and witnessing the signs His angels made in the sky plain enough for even the blind to see—well how can anyone be but simple and poor when faced with such?

What happened was this. My mother lay back to birth me and out I came heralded at the same moment by a choir of angelic voices and the fiery wings of a bird outstretched across the firmament. Naturally I remember none of this. But I have heard the story so often I feel as though I was a witness to it rather than a participant however unwitting. With the bird’s wingspan reaching from horizon to horizon all eyes were naturally fixed upon it not me nor my poor laboring mother either. And when at length the bird hurtled heavenwards to disappear into the Almighty’s eternal reaches and the angelic host had roared itself hoarse—that is when my father and my aunts who were tending to my mother remembered to drop their gaze to where she lay sweating and straining against her matting already wet with birth-water and blood and perspiration.

I should mention that my mother was no longer a young woman and I as her firstborn was an unexpected gift in later life. Doubtless she wondered whether such heavenly displays were standard childbearing fare that heretofore she had somehow failed to observe.

As I say: Everyone looked at her and what did they behold? These midwives and attendants and sisters of my mother as well as my father who had sired me? They beheld my mother and then they saw her offspring. A pink-smeared but strangely placid infant sitting upright between my mother’s glistening thighs which as anyone will tell you is not normal for a child of only a few moments. What’s more I had a thick tangle of black curly hair even as I have now but slick with the fluid of my mother’s belly. Most strangely of all perhaps was the fact that I grasped in my hand a stone of not inconsiderable weight. It was well and truly a rock—not just a wad of hard earth or ossified dung but a gray chunk of granite shot through with silver threads of mica and quartz. And with all these people watching me—so the story goes—I sat up and looked right back at them and the silence stretched between us like a length of gut pulled taut till it hums. And then when the silence had stretched as far as it could and the angels were gone and the wings of flame had vanished and my mother’s breathing had settled into a rhythm fast and shallow—that’s when I held that stone aloft. Held it overhead in one chubby infant’s arm.

And crushed it one-handed till the powder sifted gray between my fingers still sticky with the drying grease of my mother’s womb.

Seeing this my father raised his hands and said—Verily on this day has the Lord sent unto us a champion. Or words to that effect. This story has been told and retold so many times since the events took place that doubtless my father’s utterance has grown more refined over the years. I could be convinced with little trouble—knowing the manner of man he was—that at the time his actual words were more akin to—Heaven save us all from this demon! or even something coarser such as—Fuck me brother! which was all in all his favorite expression of wonder or surprise.

But anyway. Whatever he said or didn’t say I can’t vouch for. The story was soon enough about that I was the champion sent to deliver the people. My people the Israelites. All that was wanted was the opportunity as well as of course a few quiet years for me to grow up.

Some History

It has been written elsewhere but maybe you haven’t read it so here I will say it again in brief:

First came Adam and Eve whom you may have heard of and their children. One of those was Seth whose son Enos begat a son named Cainan who later begat a son named Melaleel and so on for quite some while. I assume there were women involved in all this begetting but little mention is made of them. Whether by choice or oversight I couldn’t say. However I stand by my assertion as I have seen many wondrous things in my life but I’ve yet to see an infant born of a man whether out of his stomach or mouth or anus or any other unlikely place.

While this activity was going on there was also the other ordinary intercourse of human existence which is to say: plowing & planting birthing & dying building & destroying fucking & fighting. Especially these last two. The story as I understand it is that the Lord made all the animals and then He made human beings but I can’t see as that things changed terribly much from the morning of the sixth day to the afternoon. By which I mean that if you looked at the history of human beings since the days of the Garden and then at another history—that of pigs leeches and wolves—you would not discover any extraordinary difference.

But I’m not sticking to the point which I warned you is a habit with me. I can get distracted by one thing or another and as likely as not that thing will be a pretty face or the swelling of a woman’s backside. Such has been the case more than once and I’m sure you’re eager to hear it all and so you shall but first other things must be told. So bite back your impatience for I promise to bring to you more than one swelling backside before my sorry tale is done.

History is what I will discuss for now. What you must understand is that the land where my people the Israelites lived after we descended from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was at the time of my birth possessed by us no longer. Or not solely. There are many reasons for this but the main one is that my people had chosen to turn their backs on the One True God and had fallen into immoral and idolatrous ways which is something they seem to do with numbing regularity. Ever since Moses led them forth from the land of Pharaoh they have shown themselves remarkably unreliable in this regard—to the point where I have wondered more than once whether the One True God hasn’t felt a touch of doubt over whether the people He has chosen were in fact the right people after all.

So then. Before I was born was one of those times when idols ruled our hearts and minds and the affections of my tribe were easily swayed by things of little value. And at that time we fell under the rule of the Philistines and all was not well for us. But I think giving this little history now has only led to the need for more.

I know you’re hungry for sex and blood. Just a little longer I promise.

The Philistines

Imagine a small closed hut with only one door and then put a rat inside and stop up the door and what will happen? The rat will not be happy but given time it will perhaps grow placid enough. This is especially true if you make the effort to provide it adequate water and food and a place to deposit its waste and—if you feel generous—a she-rat for it to void its loins into. Supposing this hut is large enough then over time even the most ill-tempered of rats might grow to learn serenity and peace. I’m not saying it’s certain to happen but it might.

Suppose however that into this small enclosed hut several more large rats or even rat clans are introduced. The outcome would be predictable. Although in the long run maybe all the animals would learn to coexist in a certain hierarchy of power understood by themselves alone and in constant flux you would have heavy work of it in the meantime: cleaning up dead bodies torn bits of fur and congealing puddles of blood.

Well this is close enough to what happened in the land called Canaan which is the land of my people the descendants of Isaac and Jacob. We lived there for a time before being taken away to the land of Pharaoh for 430 years which is plenty long enough for things to change and when Moses led us back lo! there were strangers in the place we had left. These were the Philistines who apparently had arrived on boats while our attention was otherwise occupied with making strawless bricks and so forth. These new arrivals were reluctant to depart so the only thing to do was of course to fire their homes & salt their fields rape their women & murder their sons which we duly did. Before you call us rash or unthinking remember that we acted thus because the LORD commanded it so think hard a moment about whether you would have the nerve to look the One True God in the eye and call Him rash or unthinking.

So then. We didn’t worry overly much about distinguishing between Canaanite and Philistine although it must be said that the Philistines arrived after we did ourselves while the Canaanites had occupied this land all along. Anyway there was little enough difference since—going back to my example—the hut was small and there was by now an overabundance of rats.

My people trusted in the LORD to sort out this confusion and sort it out He did.

Josue led the charge and soon the air was sweet with the smoke of burning bodies and ruined lives. Along with many other wondrous signs I’m sure you know such as the angels sounding their trumpets and the walls of Jericho tumbling into ruin and the sun halting in its journey across the sky so as to give us the extra time we needed to finish the slaughter. And I defy any man to think on these things and take them to heart and conclude anything other than the obvious which is that my people the Israelites are favored by the LORD above all other men.

However this happy turn of events didn’t last long for it led to no end of problems as the Philistines took it upon themselves to ignore this obvious conclusion. Instead they chose to fire our villages & salt our fields rape our daughters & murder our sons in return. This of course couldn’t be tolerated and so we retaliated and so they retaliated and thus it has lasted for many years right up to this day—an endless back-and-forth between the two nations with each striving for ascendancy but neither keeping it for long. There are many stories to tell from this conflict but I haven’t the strength to tell them now. Suffice it to say that at length we reached an uneasy equilibrium with both sides pecking at each other like crows at a corpse while avoiding all-out war. But from time to time one side or the other gains in strength and then it is hard going indeed for the

Reviews for The Book of Samson

[bibleblaster · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Unique take on the Bible story. Gripping narrative voice. I'd definitely read more Maine...

[bdickie_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting retelling of story, a bit darker than his other books.