A review by stephen_arvidson
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

5.0

By now the plot of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is familiar to nearly everyone. In D.C., a young girl named Regan MacNeil is living in a Georgetown house just off M Street while her single mother, actress Chris MacNeil, finishes work on a film. After a series of poltergeist-like disturbances in their rented house—rustling noises heard at night, books disappearing and reappearing in odd places, beds inexplicably shaking and lifting off the ground—Regan begins to take ill, her state of mind gradually deteriorating. As medical treatment fails to diagnose and treat her, Regan’s condition worsens and she becomes withdrawn and frenetic, increasingly aggressive and violent, cursing like a drunken sailor, speaking in distinct voices, green projectile vomiting, and hideously violating herself with religious icons. Matters are further complicated when Chris’s friend and film director, Burke Dennings, turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, leading the local constabulary to suspect Regan as either a key witness or even the perpetrator. Despite her lack of faith, Chris desperately turns to the local Jesuit priesthood for help, requesting an exorcism for her daughter. Father Damien Karras, who at the time is experiencing his own crisis of faith, initially resists the notion of an actual demonic possession and attempts to find a medical explanation for Regan’s behavior even after witnessing some extraordinary occurrences in Regan's bedroom and conversing with the apparent demon residing in her. Karras ultimately seeks permission to perform an exorcism on the child. In the end, Father Lankester Merrin, whom we met in a highly symbolic scene at the onset of the novel, arrives to perform the exorcism, engaging in battle with the same demon he had defeated years earlier.

The Exorcist is a masterpiece of pure, unadulterated horror. The language is both vivid and beautifully descriptive. Blatty’s prose is ripe with rock-solid characterizations and nuanced, natural sounding dialogue. Each of the characters is finely drawn, from the brooding and tormented priests to the plump, neurotically endearing detective. The profanity is unrelenting and there’s an insidious undercurrent of evil felt throughout the novel. So much of the book was faithfully translated into the film, one of the key differences being the servant Karl Engstrom’s fleshed-out story arc involving his drug-addled daughter. Unfortunately, the strong correspondence between novel and film provides readers with no quarter to create the characters, scenarios, or landscapes in their own minds. The iconic faces of young Linda Blair (Regan), Ellen Burstyn (Chris), Max von Sydow (Merrin), the late Jason Miller (Karras), and unforgettable Lee J. Cobb (Det. Kinderman) cannot help but come to mind as I was reading the book. To be fair, though, this could be indicative of the mere shortcomings of this reviewer's imagination. While the film is thought-provoking, intelligent, and paints a sharper contrast between the two opposing forces—Good vs. Evil; the novel, on the other hand, delves deeper into the hearts and minds of the characters as well as the depravity and twisted nuances of the Pazuzu demon possessing Regan. Interestingly, though—and for this Blatty deserves tremendous props—so much of the book isn't about what the demon itself does but what it brings out in the fallen, struggling, and wholly human characters involved…these wounded characters struggling to find faith in God.

One of the more effective aspects of this novel is Father Karras’ inner turmoil. The Jesuit’s tortured doubts over his own faith, the guilt he feels for leaving his aged mother alone in order to pursue priesthood, coupled with his penury as well as his scattered and melancholic childhood memories, make Karras both a sentimental and philosophical character who serves as the central liaison between the reader and the strange goings-on of the novel. What the reader sees through the eyes of Father Karras is a multifaceted and unsettling vision of life and death, a conduit of our own religious and philosophical struggles.

A must-read for anyone who seeks the darkest side of the world in which we live, The Exorcist directly confronts spiritual matters and delivers a very frank and unflinching message about the notion of Evil. The Pazuzu demon remains one of the most malignant villains ever conjured, owing to Blatty’s careful treatment of sources like the Gospels and lore that transcends a long stretch of time. The Exorcist is a timeless masterstroke of the mysteries of faith, the parallel lines between science and the metaphysical, and faith’s ultimate place within contemporary society—the green puke and 360-head-twisting are merely the hook to pull you into something deeper and far more relatable.