The Generations of Adam

by Eric Rhode

This impassioned and original book is an exploration of stories - personal stories, family stories, allegories, histories, myths - and of one myth in the Genesis account of creation. Eric Rhode takes the Genesis narrative and interweaves it with with Paradise Lost, with the wanderings of King Lear, with Piero della Francesca's painting of the Nativity, with Bunuyan's listening in to a group of women as they sat 'at a door in the sun', talking about a new birth.This is not ordinary story-telling. It is autobiographical writing against the grain. Rhode calls it a form of anti-autobiography. He suggests that our need for meaningful stories may blind us to the fact that truth of its nature does not always take symbolic forms. Rhode's re-telling of the story of Adam becomes an exploration of proto-mental states, in which tales can exist that need no tellers.

157 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2014