Jordan Peterson’s new book was panned in a savage review by conservative British newspaper The Times as so “repetitive, rambling, hectoring and mad” that it “repels the reader’s attention” on “the level of the page, the paragraph and the sentence.”
The book, entitled We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine, promises a deep dive into the stories of the Bible Peterson writes are “foundational” to the Western world in a bid to understand society and humanity. The message, however, was lost on Times columnist James Marriott who published a merciless review of the new release on Wednesday.
Marriott describes it as a “desert of prose” blasting Peterson’s “symbological paranoia”, linking figures like John Milton’s Satan character in Paradise Lost and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust to animated characters such as Despicable Me’s Felonious Gru and Disney’s Jafar.
The review highlights the wildest moments come from Peterson’s interpretations. For example, he identifies the snitch, a winged ball used in the imaginary broomstick sport Quidditch in the Harry Potter series, as “a manifestation of the spirit Mercurius … a psychopomp who flits on the border between the human and the divine,” prompting Marriott to wonder if it might simply be “a made-up magic ball game.”
Even Moses’s staff doesn’t escape exhaustive analysis, representing everything from a “cosmic centre” to Jack’s beanstalk, of fairy tale fame.
Adding to the absurdity is Peterson’s detour into internet pornography, where he laments young men “mating with Tinkerbell, the porn fairy,” alongside tirades against “the modern whores of Babylon.”
Ultimately, Marriott concludes that the book’s overwrought allegories and pseudo-philosophical jargon transform Biblical scholarship into a surreal conspiracy theory. The promise of an even lengthier sequel leaves him pleading for mercy: “Oh God. Please not exhaustively. I can’t take it.”
It’s not the first time that Marriott has unloaded on a Peterson book. The psychologist’s 2021 release Beyond Order actually quoted from the columnist’s review on the cover.
Setting the record straight in his most recent review, Marriott said calling Peterson’s writing and ideas “bonkers” was not the endorsement he claims the author spun out of it but an honestly “negative opinion.”
This time round, Peterson may struggle to find anything for his new dust cover in Marriott’s latest evisceration.
