About the book

“What does this Book say? I’ve made it say a thousand things. What does it say?”

Self-Reader is the best Polisher in Mine-Own-Meaning, a city of glass where every Bible is silvered so its reader sees himself behind the words. Ladies cross the river to have their Books done by him. Then a stranger leaves a black-boarded Book on his bench, and when he scrapes away its tarnish he finds letters that will not reflect him at all.

Struck from the city’s register, renamed Inquirer, and armed with an iron lantern that burns on one oil only, he sets out for the City of the Word. His road runs through the Kneeling Stair and the Lighthouse of the Illuminator, the House of the Copyists and the Ferry of Tongues, the Forest of Syntax, the Museum of Etymon, the Covenant Highway and the Citadel of Doctrine. He meets Perspicuity the lamplighter, Plain-Sense the ferrywoman’s son, and Analogy the old bookbinder. He meets Mr. Felt-Meaning, Anachron, Madam Allegory, and the Knight of the Closed System. And at the Exchange of Novelties he meets the worst enemy of all: himself.

Written in the tradition of The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Pilgrim’s Process turns the whole art of biblical interpretation into a unforgettable journey. Every stage is a step of sound reading; every friend a principle; every foe a fallacy. It is a story for anyone who has ever opened the Bible and found only a mirror.