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A review by effemar
The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley
5.0
Completely incredible. I read passages of this book aloud to anyone who would listen the entire time I was reading it. I don't know if there's yet been a person who sincerely called anything by Aldous Huxley a "page-turner", but this book was.
Frequently, with authors who tend towards the philosophical, there will be moments in your reading experience where the author in question will abruptly drop the narrative to the side in order to write several interminable pages on his pet topic, which he has somehow managed to tack onto an otherwise coherent thesis. Aldous Huxley is no exception. His tangents are fantastically long and seem to exist only because he had something to say and no way to convince anyone to pay attention. His solution to this problem appears to have been putting his thoughts in the middle of a story the reader would very much like to get back to.
The miraculous thing here is that objectively I was being strongarmed into reading the theological ramblings of a racist from the fifties, and I was completely spellbound the whole time. And it's not anything to do with his style or his method. The simple fact of it is that Aldous Huxley's thoughts on religion, his view of God, the things he's interested in and the metaphysical commentary he delights in offering are so completely aligned with my interests it actually beggars belief. I had the thought while reading that this book, to anyone else, would be a solid 3.5 out of 5 star read. Fortunately for Aldous Huxley's goodreads rating, which I'm sure he's monitoring loyally from the grave, I'm me, and I will never not be down to read his meandering thoughts on self-transcendence through religious mortification of the flesh. I giggled reading this book. Audibly. Several times.
Huxley's scathing commentary on groupthink and the perils of what he terms, in his epilogue, the downward self-transcendence of 'herd-poison', remain as pertinent as ever. More pertinent than ever. When this book was published, the largest social concerns he saw fit to bring to mind were that of radio and the USSR. Now, a veritable buffet of examples of mob justice and (proverbial, in this case) witch hunts linger in the public consciousness, ripe for comparison.
The sad fate of Urbain Grandier is memorable for its brutality and blatant injustice, but the invaluable takeaway that so many such stories lack is that Urbain Grandier is a profoundly imperfect victim. He is a lecherous, arrogant social upstart who abused his position and made a series of deeply unwise choices that led to him being sentenced to complete social and bodily annihilation by a kangaroo court, and he is also a figure of immense dignity who suffered for crimes he did not commit at the hands of objectively prejudiced and terrible people. He is a bad man who nevertheless was subject to profound injustice. To empathize with Urbain Grandier, as you do in these pages, is essential to the story that is being told. You empathize with him in his bad decisions, his grasps at holiness, and his astonishing belief in both his own innocence and God's justice. Half arrogance, half genuine transcendence, Urbain Grandier's refusal to confess to a crime he did not commit despite torture, immense social pressure, and all common precedent is utterly remarkable. It is, despite everything, a kind of nobility. I did cry.
The capacity of a bad person to be innocent is a truth rivaled only in the book by the truth of Grandier's accusers. They are victims and victimizers, motivated by forces both within and beyond their control, limited by beliefs that work against their better nature. Surin, the fanatical exorcist, is moved by a God he is both impossibly close to and desperately far from; fascinating and tragic, god-maddened and god-obsessed. Jeanne de Anges, caged and vindictive, is a woman in a box, as powerful as she is powerless, wielding the double edged sword of her own sex and spitting at passerby. Laubardemont is ruthless and stifled, Trincant scorned and righteous. Even the Cardinal Richelieu is subject to the unbearable contradiction of Heaven and Earth, his own salvation assured and his body rotting away as he lives, mocked by God and men. There is a panic here, felt by all the characters keenly. The understanding is as universal as it is urgent: they truly believe themselves beset by evil at all sides. Hell is empty, all the devils are in Loudon.
Frequently, with authors who tend towards the philosophical, there will be moments in your reading experience where the author in question will abruptly drop the narrative to the side in order to write several interminable pages on his pet topic, which he has somehow managed to tack onto an otherwise coherent thesis. Aldous Huxley is no exception. His tangents are fantastically long and seem to exist only because he had something to say and no way to convince anyone to pay attention. His solution to this problem appears to have been putting his thoughts in the middle of a story the reader would very much like to get back to.
The miraculous thing here is that objectively I was being strongarmed into reading the theological ramblings of a racist from the fifties, and I was completely spellbound the whole time. And it's not anything to do with his style or his method. The simple fact of it is that Aldous Huxley's thoughts on religion, his view of God, the things he's interested in and the metaphysical commentary he delights in offering are so completely aligned with my interests it actually beggars belief. I had the thought while reading that this book, to anyone else, would be a solid 3.5 out of 5 star read. Fortunately for Aldous Huxley's goodreads rating, which I'm sure he's monitoring loyally from the grave, I'm me, and I will never not be down to read his meandering thoughts on self-transcendence through religious mortification of the flesh. I giggled reading this book. Audibly. Several times.
Huxley's scathing commentary on groupthink and the perils of what he terms, in his epilogue, the downward self-transcendence of 'herd-poison', remain as pertinent as ever. More pertinent than ever. When this book was published, the largest social concerns he saw fit to bring to mind were that of radio and the USSR. Now, a veritable buffet of examples of mob justice and (proverbial, in this case) witch hunts linger in the public consciousness, ripe for comparison.
The sad fate of Urbain Grandier is memorable for its brutality and blatant injustice, but the invaluable takeaway that so many such stories lack is that Urbain Grandier is a profoundly imperfect victim. He is a lecherous, arrogant social upstart who abused his position and made a series of deeply unwise choices that led to him being sentenced to complete social and bodily annihilation by a kangaroo court, and he is also a figure of immense dignity who suffered for crimes he did not commit at the hands of objectively prejudiced and terrible people. He is a bad man who nevertheless was subject to profound injustice. To empathize with Urbain Grandier, as you do in these pages, is essential to the story that is being told. You empathize with him in his bad decisions, his grasps at holiness, and his astonishing belief in both his own innocence and God's justice. Half arrogance, half genuine transcendence, Urbain Grandier's refusal to confess to a crime he did not commit despite torture, immense social pressure, and all common precedent is utterly remarkable. It is, despite everything, a kind of nobility. I did cry.
The capacity of a bad person to be innocent is a truth rivaled only in the book by the truth of Grandier's accusers. They are victims and victimizers, motivated by forces both within and beyond their control, limited by beliefs that work against their better nature. Surin, the fanatical exorcist, is moved by a God he is both impossibly close to and desperately far from; fascinating and tragic, god-maddened and god-obsessed. Jeanne de Anges, caged and vindictive, is a woman in a box, as powerful as she is powerless, wielding the double edged sword of her own sex and spitting at passerby. Laubardemont is ruthless and stifled, Trincant scorned and righteous. Even the Cardinal Richelieu is subject to the unbearable contradiction of Heaven and Earth, his own salvation assured and his body rotting away as he lives, mocked by God and men. There is a panic here, felt by all the characters keenly. The understanding is as universal as it is urgent: they truly believe themselves beset by evil at all sides. Hell is empty, all the devils are in Loudon.