By by VorJack
Last month, Nobel winning author José Saramago died. Saramago was apparently a very well respected figure in his native Portugal, being the only Portuguese-language writer to win the prize for literature.
There have been several attempts to honor him. The Portuguese government declared two days of mourning, and Saramago has been lauded by many Portuguese luminaries. All kind of ironic, because Saramago lived in the Canary Islands since the early ’90s. He fled there when the Portuguese Prime Minister had his most popular and controversial book The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, pulled from another literary prize competition for being religiously offensive.
Now, Saramago was an atheist, and his Gospel depicted Jesus as a flawed and humanized figure. Which leads to the most interesting homage to Saramago, by none other that the Portuguese Playboy Magazine.
The image that follows is edited, but still just this side of NSFW.
Carved on the headboard there is the title of Saramago’s work.
The blog Geek System has more images, all edited to protect you from the dreaded nipple.
Gwenny: Absolutely not! The world has plenty of people having kids. A child consumes HUGE amounts of resources, which from both a... 
Siberia: Or maybe they know they have neither patience nor inclination to deal with the fruit of their loins and thus, rather than be... 
DDM: Repubs and Dems. He’s saying they only take first impressions and... 
CM: Good point, most religions encourage having a lot of children. From an evolutionary standpoint you sort of owe it to your... 
Jasowah: “They don’t go beyond those emotions, and that’s the... 
DarkMatter: And funny that most of them are huge in size in the vid. 
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The people who put together that cover art should be very proud of themselves; it’s stunningly beautiful.
Playboy Portugal martyr of the free press? Who would dare to thought.
Theresa Hennessy, Playboy Enterprises’ vice president of public relations:
“We did not see or approve the cover and pictorial in the July issue of Playboy Portugal. It is a shocking breach of our standards, and we would not have allowed it to be published if we had seen it in advance. As a result of this and other issues with the Portuguese publisher, we are in the process of terminating our agreement.”
From
http://gawker.com/5581888/playboy-kills-off-portuguese-edition-over-sexy-jesus-photo-shoot
You have to laugh when Playboy goes all moralistic on you. They obviously don’t want to upset all their Christian readers. Er..hang on a minute…
^ Like.
I’ve heard so little about his death in Atheists blogs that I was starting to feel offended.
But, I find more disturbing the little attention the publication of “L’onnipotenza (presunta) del narratore” (The pretended omnipotence of the narrator) by Claudio Toscani in the Osservatore Romano has had.
My wife got upset and wrote “José Saramago y la omnipotencia (presunta) de Dios” (José Saramago and the pretended omnipotence of God). That kind of reactions are the ones I would expect in this case.
The only source I’ve found in English: http://qorreo.com/2010/07/saramago-iberias-godless-conscience/1136
The article, in Italian: http://lettovisto.myblog.it/archive/2010/06/19/e-morto-jose-saramago-l-onnipotenza-presunta-del-narratore.html
My wife’s article, in Spanish: http://shariel.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/jose-saramago-y-la-omnipotencia-presunta-de-dios/
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