Publisher's Synopsis
In his project, the Icon, Brendan Graham Dempsey is imagining a future civilization through its canon of sacred scriptures. This multi-media work-incorporating writing (in various genres), illustration, and music-will offer a glimpse into an imagined culture, an entire tradition of myths, rituals, songs and ceremonies, philosophy, criticism and commentary. And just as every civilization has its epic literature, so GOD, a 500-page pentameter poem written by a mysterious figure named Julian, is theirs.
DESCENT is the second installment in the GOD trilogy, picking up where DEATH left off. Humanity, having won their war against Heaven, now sets about building a new world in the ashes of the old. However, after proving unable to come together over a shared vision or purpose, mankind soon fractures into discord. Into the bedlam steps the Salesman, who calms their unease through easy consumption. Now, a City rises, led by the Salesman and loomed over by his colossal Beast fed by humanity's insatiable industry-a series of developments that Joel, former angel and the speaker of the poem, comes to deem even worse than the troubled religion all this has overthrown. In desperation, he decides to risk a mad descent into the underworld-to see if he might be able find God in the abyss and bring him back.
The conclusion to this profound and timely endeavor will be taken up in the poem's final installment, RESURRECTION.
GOD is presented in the form of a critical edition by this culture's future scholars. In addition to Julian's poem, then, are over 100 pages of supplementary material. This includes:
- an address and marginal notes by the poem's original editor, A. Severan
- introduction, additional marginalia, and appendices of extended notes, discussion questions, and literary criticism by the critical edition's editor, M. M. Greenwood
- canto-by-canto analysis of the poem's "hero's journey" motifs by psychologist and comparative mythologist Sadie Alwyn Moon
- manifestos and other literature by two important interpreters of the poem, Alesky Varian and Leaf
- the second in a triptych of philosophical essays called The Oil & The Lamp.
