On my commute to work this morning, I began thinking about what it was that I found unsatisfying about 36 Arguments for the Existence of God.

It’s not a linear narrative, but a series of flashbacks. The longest series of flashbacks consists of episodes from the main character and his interactions with a Bellow-esque professor and intellectual (think Herzog or Ravelstein). A slightly shorter series of flashbacks return to when the main character met his current (live-in) girlfriend. The ‘present’ consists of the time when our hero’s successful book has garnered him an offer from Harvard, his girlfriend returning from a conference and then promptly leaving him, and a debate between our soon-to-be Harvard prof and a famous conservative commentator (who turns out to be little more than a straw man with an aggressive attitude).

Not earth shattered, but I don’t need that in a novel.

What bugs me is that the three parts don’t cohere, except insofar as the all involve the main character. The longest flashback, in particular, doesn’t seem to me to sufficiently inform the ‘present.’ The author seems to be setting up various characters (the Bellow-esque intellectual, the hero’s current girlfriend, his college girlfriend, and arguably the hero himself) to be archetypal, but the roles are too vague, the counterbalances don’t interact enough.

Besides showing off some decent writing, what was the point?