Take a photo of a barcode or cover
jtobin 's review for:
The Exorcist
by William Peter Blatty
The most striking thing about reading this is how direct the book is about the anxieties of the times - divorce, drugs, cults (especially the hippie variety), social disorder, crime, economic problems - and connecting them implicitly or explicitly to vulnerability to satanic forces. You can really see how the book and movie adaptation were both a crystallization of the general social unease that led to the Satanic Panic and also an important formative force in shaping the popular understanding of those fears.
Not nearly as scary as the movie, this book is at its most interesting as an examination of Father Karras's character. The investigations of his regrets, failings, and faith are really the emotional core of the book - unfortunately much more so than Chris MacNeil's relationship to her daughter - and serve as a great argument for more good books with priests/nuns/monks as main characters rather than mentors or background figures. However, the "is she possessed or not" line that dominates almost the entire novel is neither convincing or particularly interesting - we are reading this book expecting that demonic possession exits in its universe and the signs in favor of that are overwhelmingly obvious.
The most interesting thing about the possession doubt is what the author has the medically-trained characters write off as normal, scientifically explicable phenomena - namely mind-reading and powerful telekinetic abilities. "Is it really a demon or is this girl just using her totally normal mind reading powers to answer my questions in Latin?" is unintentionally hilarious, but especially after "teenagers moving furniture around with their minds is a normal outgrowth of puberty hormones." Frankly for those bits it was unclear if those things would be seen as plausible by the 1971 audience, or if the author is just a bit of a kook. I imagine the pre-googling-stuff age influenced both. Either way the author felt like he was desperately trying to convince us that this book was happening in the real world, one of the many places where his genuine Catholicism shows clearly through.
Returning to the Satanic Panic that this book had a role in laying the foundations for, the author's very Catholic worldview is striking, especially compared to the Protestant or secular cultural works that would later dominate the Panic. Although they are basically always wrapped in a Catholic aesthetic (candles, gowns, Latin, etc), the solutions they offer to the social disorder focus much less on guilt, confession, penance, and optimism about the authority of larger institutional structures - especially the Church. Later media in the genre's increased focus on cults and corrupt/incompetent organizations, with individualism or (more often) the nuclear family as the solution, makes much more sense in the Protestant, late-20th century, and fundamentally American cultural environment that the modern popular understanding of Satanism was created in. Even nominally Catholic exorcist heroes like those of the Conjuring series rarely explore Catholic-specific themes the way that this book does.
The central idea of the novel, as Father Merrin explicitly states, is that evil is fundamentally about making people give in to despair when faced with human failings and the solution to this is by doing good works for others, rather than through having a special intense feeling for God (one may say "through faith alone"). The idea of works as the solution to a crisis of faith is a profoundly Catholic idea - even if not necessarily the one a real priest may recommend. I found this theme interesting, moving, and well-executed so much so that I returned at least one star I had taken off the book. This theme works in almost every level in the book, but is most evident in the author's (frankly uncomfortable) depiction of evil as inherently disgusting.
To be real about it, this book is super gross. The acts forced upon the possessed child by the demon, the details of the black mass, the intentionally repulsive cursing, and of course the bodily fluids serve the double function of titillating transgression for the audience but also to reinforce the characterization of evil trying to draw repugnance out of human beings. I think, on a theme level, the book succeeds at the latter goal; the disgusting elements really underline the author's conception of evil. However, I'm not super down for the voyeuristic transgression stuff, even if I do understand its thematic purpose. Mostly it makes me want to roll my eyes, especially when encountering it in print. The visuals of the movie do a much better job of conveying the central emotions here, one of the reasons the scares hit much more.
The afterlife of these gross-out elements of possession are very clear. While horror entertainment mostly moved away from the bodily fluids, keeping bodily contortions, and adding graphic violence (a testament to the genuine discomfort of this book and its adaptation), the Satanic Panic itself seized almost exclusively on the sexual elements of Satanism as here depicted. Like so many of the elements of this book's cultural footprint, the social dynamics responsible for changes and interpretations of its imagery are more interesting that the original novel itself.
Not nearly as scary as the movie, this book is at its most interesting as an examination of Father Karras's character. The investigations of his regrets, failings, and faith are really the emotional core of the book - unfortunately much more so than Chris MacNeil's relationship to her daughter - and serve as a great argument for more good books with priests/nuns/monks as main characters rather than mentors or background figures. However, the "is she possessed or not" line that dominates almost the entire novel is neither convincing or particularly interesting - we are reading this book expecting that demonic possession exits in its universe and the signs in favor of that are overwhelmingly obvious.
The most interesting thing about the possession doubt is what the author has the medically-trained characters write off as normal, scientifically explicable phenomena - namely mind-reading and powerful telekinetic abilities. "Is it really a demon or is this girl just using her totally normal mind reading powers to answer my questions in Latin?" is unintentionally hilarious, but especially after "teenagers moving furniture around with their minds is a normal outgrowth of puberty hormones." Frankly for those bits it was unclear if those things would be seen as plausible by the 1971 audience, or if the author is just a bit of a kook. I imagine the pre-googling-stuff age influenced both. Either way the author felt like he was desperately trying to convince us that this book was happening in the real world, one of the many places where his genuine Catholicism shows clearly through.
Returning to the Satanic Panic that this book had a role in laying the foundations for, the author's very Catholic worldview is striking, especially compared to the Protestant or secular cultural works that would later dominate the Panic. Although they are basically always wrapped in a Catholic aesthetic (candles, gowns, Latin, etc), the solutions they offer to the social disorder focus much less on guilt, confession, penance, and optimism about the authority of larger institutional structures - especially the Church. Later media in the genre's increased focus on cults and corrupt/incompetent organizations, with individualism or (more often) the nuclear family as the solution, makes much more sense in the Protestant, late-20th century, and fundamentally American cultural environment that the modern popular understanding of Satanism was created in. Even nominally Catholic exorcist heroes like those of the Conjuring series rarely explore Catholic-specific themes the way that this book does.
The central idea of the novel, as Father Merrin explicitly states, is that evil is fundamentally about making people give in to despair when faced with human failings and the solution to this is by doing good works for others, rather than through having a special intense feeling for God (one may say "through faith alone"). The idea of works as the solution to a crisis of faith is a profoundly Catholic idea - even if not necessarily the one a real priest may recommend. I found this theme interesting, moving, and well-executed so much so that I returned at least one star I had taken off the book. This theme works in almost every level in the book, but is most evident in the author's (frankly uncomfortable) depiction of evil as inherently disgusting.
To be real about it, this book is super gross. The acts forced upon the possessed child by the demon, the details of the black mass, the intentionally repulsive cursing, and of course the bodily fluids serve the double function of titillating transgression for the audience but also to reinforce the characterization of evil trying to draw repugnance out of human beings. I think, on a theme level, the book succeeds at the latter goal; the disgusting elements really underline the author's conception of evil. However, I'm not super down for the voyeuristic transgression stuff, even if I do understand its thematic purpose. Mostly it makes me want to roll my eyes, especially when encountering it in print. The visuals of the movie do a much better job of conveying the central emotions here, one of the reasons the scares hit much more.
The afterlife of these gross-out elements of possession are very clear. While horror entertainment mostly moved away from the bodily fluids, keeping bodily contortions, and adding graphic violence (a testament to the genuine discomfort of this book and its adaptation), the Satanic Panic itself seized almost exclusively on the sexual elements of Satanism as here depicted. Like so many of the elements of this book's cultural footprint, the social dynamics responsible for changes and interpretations of its imagery are more interesting that the original novel itself.