The prophet's scribe: A review of Daniel Torday’s THE 12TH COMMANDMENT
Daniel Torday’s novel The 12th Commandment is the story of a man’s search for the truth: not just the physical truth, but the spiritual truth of the world he inhabits through both journalistic rigor and religious revelation.
When the main character of the novel, Zeke, returns to his college town years after graduating for the funeral of a friend, he finds what might be the breakthrough that he has been looking for as a writer. A local Jewish-Islamic sect leader, Natan of Flatbush, has been accused of murdering his own son in accordance with the religion's 12th commandment, which states that those who leak information about the religion to the outside should be killed, and it seems everyone in this small Ohio town wants Zeke to write his story. What follows is the story of a man trying to work his way through bigotry, religious devotion, and legal jargon to understand the truth and find answers for his editor back in New York.
Zeke never takes the easy answers the other characters try to give him though, and neither does the novel. This is because both are concerned with truth and truth is rarely if ever found in easy answers. Every character has what they believe and are ready to share it with Zeke, and each one of them, from the antagonistic local sheriff to a prosecutor on the case, and even the accused prophet himself, is a realized character that makes both Zeke and readers see some legitimacy to their positions, but it is through Zeke’s role as the collector of all these stories that the novel asks the reader to do more than take these convictions at their word but rather prove them.
And since the novel takes place in a world resembling ours it is important that characters be made to prove things, to be pushed by journalists to back up their claims. The inhabitants of the town the story takes place in constantly yell “Fake News” and notably worse things throughout the novel that reflect many Americans’ attitude towards journalism.
Adding to the complexity of the novel is its excellent prose and dynamic movement throughout that keeps readers engaged and questioning as the narrative progresses and complicates. While structurally the novel does not engage in anything particularly radical, that does not mean it is without risks or formal innovations. Torday swaps between future, present, and past tenses, changes narrators and perspectives, and even at one point drops the novel form for stage directions. He does all of this without the reader ever feeling lost; all his movements feeling natural in order to best serve the narrative.
More than anything, though, The 12th Commandment is a book about America. The way that we treat outsiders, divide, and isolate ourselves. We do all these things for our own protection, but as the mystery central to the opening of the novel unfolds, we begin to ask ourselves if we are true believers. What is really being protected by these choices we make and what are the people in power really concerned with? What is the role of a true believer of anything anymore in the modern world where greed is king and we see fascism casually on the rise around us, insidious and lurking? These are the questions asked in The 12th Commandment and if you are interested in them I cannot recommend the book enough.
Joe Phipps is a poet from southern West Virginia where he earned a BA in Creative Writing and Literary Studies from Marshall University. Joe uses his poetry to explore ideas like the liminality of loaned tools, people’s inability to visualize wolves, and other things his father describes as, “things he’s put a lot of effort into thinking about, even though they aren’t important whatsoever,” in an attempt to connect to something bigger. He just hasn’t quite settled on what something bigger is yet.