The New Sins
by David Byrne
McSweeney's Books
93 pages
Produced as an art project for the Valencia Bienale, The New Sins, the longest sustained piece of writing from former Talking Head David Byrne, is thought-provoking, somewhat irritating, and as attractive a fetish-object as you'll find.
It's bound in red faux-leather, and looks just like a hotel room Bible. Byrne's name is conspicuously absent, except for a tiny mention on the copyright page and on the fragile wraparound band, which also states "There is philosophy here, and other things that only a fool would try to describe."
It does defy easy description. Profusely illustrated with Byrne's trademark marvellously banal and mysterious photographs, it is a book which subverts its own meanings at every turn, which is simultaneously ironic and serious, hilarious and frightening. It posits (correctly) that sin is relative, that "What was evil, despised, and abhorrent yesterday is admirable and cheered today." It then suggests a list of attributes we normally consider virtues which may be, in the context of our present culture, sins. These are: charity, sense of humour, beauty, thrift, ambition, hope, intelligence/knowledge, contentment, sweetness, honesty and cleanliness.
Byrne's explanations of why these are indeed sins are idiosyncratic and often contradictory. Honesty is decried because it presumes an essential truth, but beauty is proscribed because it is dishonest. Contentment is apparently a sin because it is the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain (!).
But the sins may not be sins at all. One of the best things about The New Sins (and almost everything about it is good) is that "everything is the exact opposite of that which it appears to be." Every sentence is, simultaneously, thesis and antithesis. Which makes for reading which stays with you and peeves you long after you've finished it.
If I have one complaint, it's that it's too compressed. Some passages verge on the inscrutably cryptic. Just like a hotel room Bible – but without the begats. But Byrne's work has always been like that, hovering on the edge of genius and profundity, then thumbing its nose at them, defying rationality and consistency. So there you have it. The New Sins, "Now in a pocket-sized edition priced so all can afford."
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