Whitechapel - The Devil in Fiction

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T12:55:07-07:00

I've finally gotten around to reading The Master & Margarita, which I'm about halfway through at the moment, and it's fantastic. The book has a character called Woland, who's essentially the Judeo-Christian devil, and he kicks up all manner of chaos throughout Stalinist Moscow. It's really good so far.

What are some other depictions of the devil in fiction that work? What are some that don't work?

Hell, if you know of any nonfiction accounts of the devil, tell us about those.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T13:53:26-07:00

Well, "Master & Margarita" is a beautiful narrative (i loved "Heart of a Dog" too). There are many representations of devil in our Ocidental literature, since medieval literature.

There is a author, in the Brazilian literature, João Guimarães Rosa, with a gourgeous book about devil, his names and his function (besides a real renovation to the Portuguese as language in the 1950's): The Devil to Pay in Backlands (the original title is "Grande Sertão: Veredas", literally something like "Backlands: Paths"). The Amazon's price, it´s certain, are surrealistic high, but if you can read this book (in Portuguese, better), don't miss the chance.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T14:07:52-07:00

the depiction of the devil in Gideon Mack i enjoyed a lot. but i was also hallucinating due to altitude sickness at the time so i may have to double check...

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T14:45:47-07:00

"Needful Things" by Stephen King, is a bit long but the portrayal of the devil as agent provocateur is really fun to read. The whole thing starts with a baseball card and ends with a sort of Noreaster' gotterdamurung.

"Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, the character of Judge Holden is little less than the devil incarnate. There are some intimations, subtle ones, to a supernatural nature as well.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T15:20:14-07:00

@orwellseyes:

I've heard great things about Blood Meridian, so I'll definitely make a point of reading that soon.

And just how many analogues for the devil does Stephen King have running around throughout his corpus? And how many of them are embodiments of Randall Flag?

@collin:

Used & new starting from $250? No kidding. That said, it sounds promising, but my four semesters of Latin won't do me any good towards reading it in the original Portuguese.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T15:30:10-07:00

And Paradise Lost? It's super-manipulative, but I love it. Milton really makes you fall in love with Satan over the first three books, but the devil degenerates over the remaining course of the poem, to the point where he's just some petty, insecure, bundle of anxiety at book's end.

I also really dug Mike Carey's Lucifer at first, but once he succeeds at making his own private universe, I bore of it really quick.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T15:49:52-07:00

I don't think Gaunt is part of that whole Randall Flagg thing, all the better since having tried to read some of that Dark Tower stuff I found my brain starting to choke off and die.

Oh and I forgot, "I, Lucifer" by Glen Duncan. It's a bit lad-mag in spots (Lucifer basically lives out every fratboy's dream of rockstar excess) but it's quite clever. A good devil beach read after you get beaten by "Blood Meridian".

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T16:01:34-07:00

I completely agree with you on the Dark Tower front. It was fine so long as the plot of the series mirrored that famous first sentence. "The man in black fled across the desert...et al..." But once King decides to spend books two & three just getting the four main characters to meet each other, that's where I gave up altogether. It stops being even a guilty pleasure at that point.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T16:05:11-07:00

The Master and Margarita is an excellent book, I want to re-read it at some point. Someone is doing a graphic novel version I think. I had even heard a rumour that they were making a film, but I think it is only a rumour.

I had heard that Milton's portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost was not actually intended to be sympathetic at all, but it is often read that way.

I'm pretty fond of the Marlowe version of Faust myself. Marlowe is easily as good as Shakespeare and Faust is actually quite accessible, I recommend giving it a read.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T16:07:07-07:00

Jacques Cazotte - The Devil in Love a classic of european fantastic literature. Also the inspiration behind
Arturo Perez Reverte's The Dumas Club.

Fernando Pessoa - The Devil's Hour (or The Hour of the Devil; A Hora do Diablo in portugeuse) one of the most interesting authors and poets. A little borgesian gnostic parable.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T16:10:45-07:00

I can heartily recommend Matthew Lewis' The Monk for some quality diabolical machinations and dalliances. Its an old Gothic horror novel written by Lewis when he was in his late teens I think - its fairly wild and very old fashioned in places but some really really nasty things happen to the characters and the language is fantastic.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T16:18:12-07:00

Lewis's The Monk, Like Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer and Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragosa are great novels, full of diabolical adventures, but not really about the devil.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T16:32:57-07:00

The Adventures of Mark Twain.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T16:36:32-07:00

@liquidcow

William Blake wrote a famous line (in the "Marriage of Heaven & Hell") about Milton being "a poet and therefore of the devil's ilk without knowing it." (paraphrase.)
I know that's taking things out of context, and that Blake disapproved of Paradise Lost for many reasons (like its widespread allusions to pagan, Greco-Roman myth cycles), but I think it's a great sound-bite, and I agree with it wholeheartedly.

It's entirely possible that Milton didn't want his readers to identify with the devil at all, even in those grand early books, but it's really not surprising that the poem shows (at least unintentional) sympathy towards Satan & his gaggle of demonic revolutionaries. Long before writing his masterpiece, Milton wrote political tracts for Oliver Cromwell, the fundamentalist zealot who led a "glorious revolution" which led to the overthrow of the British monarchy & the beheading death of king Charles I. Milton wrote propaganda defending that rebellion as just, and then he went on to write Paradise Lost after the monarchy had come back into power.

So I think it's pretty natural that he--if only by accident--found himself sympathizing with his own silver-tongued, iron-willed, satanic (anti?)hero.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T17:39:52-07:00

I still have a great deal of love for the "Screwtape Letters", although it's *a* devil not *the* devil.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T18:01:56-07:00

There's been one movie of The Master and Margarita, an Italian/Yugoslavian production from 1973. I haven't seen it, but it's not known to be especially faithful. Polish TV did a 6-hour miniseries in 1988. It's available from Amazon, as NTSC video with English subtitles. Low production values but well-acted. Both the Polish and Italian movies are based on the version that came out in 1967. A slightly more complete version of the novel came out in the 1990s, and there's a 10-part Russian TV miniseries based on it. I have it as .avi downloads, so no subtitles, alas.

I read the 1967 version (published in 1980 by Grove Press), then the one that came out by Penguin in the 1990s, but I like the Grove version better. There's supposed to yet another new English translation coming out soon.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T18:12:11-07:00

William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel. I was, inevitably, led to read the book after seeing the film (Angel Heart) and could never get De Niro as the Devil out of my head.

The Devil & Daniel Webster is a great short story by Stephen Vincent Benet - one that we all know well.

I also quite enjoyed Glen Duncan's portrayal of the Devil in I, Lucifer. Given mortal form and enjoying all the pleasures of the flesh whilst rewriting creation.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T18:20:34-07:00

Richard Kadrey's Butcher Bird has just been released and that had a portrayal of Lucifer that I quite liked. At least, it did when I read it a couple of years ago as a free pdf called Blindshrike. It's just been released under the new title and I hope it's just as good as I remember. I'll let you know after I receive it from Amazon next week.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T19:03:14-07:00

Dracko - I came across that clip a while ago, it is awesome. Claymation and Satan, together at last.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T19:14:06-07:00

I remeber something more:
- Dictionary of Demonology by Collin de Plancy - It's a very pleasant narrative encyclopedie wih heavy influence by the Voltaire and Mostequieu works. Something ironic and anti-mithical with wit and style.

- The Damned (in original French, "La-Bas") by Joris-Karl Huysmans - Huysmans was one of the best writer at his time (fin de siecle XIX and early XXth) and this book, when the author show all the signs of catholic conversion, is a great poetic and narrative tour de force abour satanism (or the irony about all this damnation things).

When I remember or found anything more, I will post...

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T19:21:36-07:00

@Nigredo
Oh yes. All gothic, romantic and early romatic fictions had any diabolical relationship, but not only diabolical relationships. And the devil, in romantic imagination, had a heavy and peculiar inclination to the symbolic and alegorical field, like the Goethe's Mephistopheles or the many men without shadow or mirror reflexion that you could found in these kind of literature.

And Fernando Pessoa is a excelent choice (a devil's choice, indeed). Are you read "Devil's Hour" in Portuguese or Spanish?

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T19:37:51-07:00

Falling in with Reynolds "a devil" I think Clive Barker's "Mr. B. Gone" is really good, really creepy demon protagonist story.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T22:44:50-07:00

On the subject of Barker, I saw his play "History of the Devil" a bunch of years ago and thought it was pretty amazing. It took place mostly in a courtroom setting, Lucifer was on trial at the special parole hearing he gets every thousand years. Haven't read the original and I guess a stage version is different depending on the production company but I liked the version I saw.

I've always wondered about Dr. Who vs. the devil in the Tom Baker film they never made, Vincent Price was going to play the devil and his character's name was Scratchman. I read they cancelled the film when Star Wars came out because they didn't want to compete using cruddy BBC special effects.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T22:51:27-07:00

They did a moderately interesting Who vs. Satan two parter during the second season of the modern show with Tennant.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-16T23:46:23-07:00

The being that inhabits Professor Edward Rolles Weston in Perelandra is the "devil" to bring up C.S. Lewis again.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T00:52:00-07:00

I can't take credit for noticing this on my own, but Douglas Wolk pointed out (in his book Reading Comics) that when Jason Blood shows up early in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, he acts just like Woland does at the beginning of The Master & Margarita--you know, predicting how people are going to die & claiming to be thousands of years old, etc. I found that cool.

And I rather like Clive Barker, but I resisted B. Gone, partially because I'd rather he just quit whatever else he's doing and finish writing The Scarlet Gospels.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T01:13:55-07:00

I remember liking the Screwtape Letters, but it's been over ten years, and I'm not really in the same place religion-wise. I have a friend who's tried getting me to read the Perelandria books, and he gave me the first one as a birthday gift, so I'm honor-bound to read it someday.

Also on the Inkling front, I took a class on Tolkien at UGA (in the same mock-epic summer that I studied Milton), and I found myself liking the Silmarillion more than I liked the Hobbit or the Rings books. I know that sounds pretentious, but The Silmarillion is really worth the effort, because it features some really great myth-making, and something big happens on almost every page. There's an old god named Morgoth, who's pretty much out of the picture by the time Bilbo gets involved with the ring. Morgoth is great; he was the first evil being in Middle-Earth, and Sauron was originally an elemental fire-spirit who got corrupted by Morgoth, who is cast very much in the Luciferan mold, i.e. touting rebellion as proof of free will.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T06:26:51-07:00

@collindeplancy

And Fernando Pessoa is a excelent choice (a devil's choice, indeed). Are you read "Devil's Hour" in Portuguese or Spanish?

In Greek actually. One of the most underrated writers unfortunately.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T08:26:21-07:00

V for Vendetta.

Well, it's a fun theory at any rate.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T08:53:25-07:00

James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is a key text. It nicely deconstructs Calvinism as a belief system and deals with the ways that different tellings of different stories can result in completely different outcomes. It's also an incredible portrayal of how the devil, should (s)he exist, can so easily manipulate unquestioning Christian beliefs to cause mayhem and murder.

It's a wonderful book I can't recommend enough.

S.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T10:37:38-07:00

Okay. We've got beaucoup examples of the 'good' devil character lined up. What makes him tick? What makes for a convincing, identifiable, sympathetic, & entertaining (if not quite likable) devil?

I know this isn't revelatory, but I think part of it might be that we're conditioned to think of the devil in terms of his relationship with God, right? God himself is very hard to identify with as a character. (If this were a "God in Fiction" thread, I doubt there would be a lot of positive entries.) So the devil is this immensely powerful, otherworldly juggernaut of an angel, but he comes off thinking & acting just like we do. I guess the church would say that he invented human nature as we know it, and I think he led by example, and that's why I find his archetype so compelling.

(And I'm not knocking God as a concept or belief; it's just his anthropomorphic portrayals that come off badly.)

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T10:51:18-07:00

And what are some poorly executed devils? Not to start any fights, but which ones don't work, and why do you think they don't?

I don't like Dante's use of the devil as some nonverbal, three-headed monster who just sits in the center of Hell, chewing on people for all eternity. Even Gustav Dore woodcut illustrations can't make me like that devil.

And I really like "Dangerous Habits" & most of the Garth Ennis Hellblazer plotlines, but I don't like his long-haired, bodybuilding, Romance-novel-coverboy-gone-bad take on the devil. I understand that he's a patsy, and while he gets his digs in here & there, he's really just there to get knocked over by John Constantine, which I can appreciate, but that doesn't make me like the character.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T11:36:49-07:00

Lucifer by Mike Carey. Excellent read from beginning to end.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T11:41:51-07:00

@Slybyron

Well, your question are really interesting ones for everyone with some more or less "antropological" (so, "neutral" or "scientific") focus on human nature, on few words, the evil's nature. Besides, I thought this the devil's narrative secret. Oh yes, there are few examples of god's narrative, but the fact is: the simetries between the nature of devil and our nature, in the Theological terms. So, the ironic and picaresque nature, the "sins revelator machine" function (in Theological terms, by the way), all this things made the devil a really sympathetic character. In the Collin de Plancy dictionaire, for example, the devil's legion generals are designed by the illustrator as funny creatures, caricaturized in the way of bad politicians.

But when you see god and devil as a kind of continuum, the things could be more interesting to the character "god". In the fiction, the Dostoievsky Grand Inquisitor (a tiny chapter of Brothers Karamazovi roman) is one fo the best representation of the second coming (so you say, the God in the person of a new Jesus), when the confrontation between ethic, evil and freedom arises. In this way, the definitions by Karl Barth in the article Gott und das Nichtige (God and Nothingness - I can't found the article online) are something new and ferocious: "Because God reigns in the left hand too, He is the cause and master of the Nothing itself" (in my bad translation).

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T11:55:36-07:00

There's a really good non-fiction book called 'The Birth of Satan' by T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley that traces the modern Devil to his biblical roots. It also gives the lie to anyone who tells you 'Satan made them do it!/is in them!/is an excuse for their behavior.'

It's very well written, wry and amusing. I'd point anyone with an interest in old Jack Scratch at it.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T13:16:54-07:00

To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust. Satan as protagonist plus more angels and devils than you can shake a pitchfork at.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T17:32:48-07:00

I'll second Mike Carey's Lucifer, along with Neil Gaiman's previous work on the guy in Sandman. I've actually quite liked all the Hellblazer depictions of Lucifer and Hell's leadership.

Old Harry's Game by Andy Hamilton (on BBC Radio 4) has quite a good portrayal of Satan.

According to 17th century French folklore, the Devil looked like a city gentleman, with long black coat, floppy black hat, and a manicured beard and moustache. You could only tell it was him because he had hooves instead of boots.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T18:43:47-07:00

I saw a documentry once that said that the Devil in any religion is symbolic of other religions. The pointy beard and unkempt eyebrows of the Devil in my childhood's picture bible probably pointing to the arabic stereotype and the goat's legs being a nod to paganism.

Let's try and forget Louis Cypher in Angel Heart... whoever says "I didn't see that coming" deserves a thorough pulping.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-17T20:07:29-07:00

Shaw's Man and Superman has a long intermission-type scene with the Devil as a character, when they all turn into Don Juan analogues. It's an interestingly nontraditional, rather gentlemanly (if fussy and peevish), portrayal.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T08:40:50-07:00

@RJBarker

Thanks for the nonfiction recommend. Another one I've found is The History of the Devil & the Idea of Evil by Paul Carus. It's up on sacred-texts.com, if anybody wants to take a look. The book is interesting in places, but I think it's a little too broad with its thesis; it takes into account Buddhist & Hindu ideas that in all likelihood have nothing to do with the devil as he 'exists' today. So there's a lot of interesting asides that don't enlighten you much about the subject of the book.

Also, is your icon taken from a Paul Laffoley painting? Just wondering.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T08:57:28-07:00

@screaming meat.

I think you're absolutely onto something. The devil being a lusty goat-man is definitely styled after the god Pan. The snake in the Garden of Eden is interesting too, given how much of an anti-Egyptian slant there is in the Old Testament. Possible Set influence? Could have my dates wrong. And the serpent is also one of the most loaded symbols of all time, more often than not representing something good, like creativity, balance, health, or Alan Moore, so who knows.

Also, the Bible never explicitly says that the snake & devil are the same guy. It's funny how little the book really tells you of substance about the devil as either a character or concept. It was left up to poets, black magicians, and early church founders to fill in all the details that we know today and take for granted.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T09:15:24-07:00

@collin

I read "The Grand Inquisitor" a long time ago, but I didn't read the rest of the Brothers, so I have no sense of context. What happens is, Jesus comes back, and the inquisitor deems the messiah a heretic and sentences him to death, basically. Is that it? The idea that what people have come to believe is so much harsher than what is expected of them? I remember thinking it was very interesting, and sadly Russian literature is one of my big, glaring blindspots as a reader, which is part of why I picked up Bulgakov.

Also, has anybody read the Aeschylus play Prometheus Bound?

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T10:38:59-07:00

i've not read this one, but my boyfriend has told me about it: "satan burger" by carlton mellick the third.

i figured i'd throw that one out there, see if anyone else has read it.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T11:44:28-07:00

A book with a very different take on the Devil/Mephistopheles is Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick. It is a very interesting re-imagining of the Faust story.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T11:55:16-07:00

@slybyron

Also, has anybody read the Aeschylus play Prometheus Bound?

Yes. Prometheus is a very Miltonian figure.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T11:57:26-07:00

As for Brothers Karamazov, I'm surprised no one's mentioned the later scene where Ivan (who wrote the Grand Inquisitor poem, and is slowly going insane) has a long conversation with the devil. Which is insanely brilliant.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T11:59:10-07:00

Master & Margarita is pretty straight-up awesome.

Though I usually hate her to the core, Anne Rice's "Memnoch The Devil" was a very entertaining read... though the vampire bits were a little tacked-on, the theology-bending she goes into is a bit of subversive fun.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T12:34:55-07:00

This is kinda out of left field, but the White Wolf pen-and-paper game Demon: the Fallen created a very interesting cosmology and history of the War in Heaven, and portrayed the Devil in a rather sympathetic fashion. Which is not to say he isn't a mean fuck, just that you know why he's so bad, and that his adversaries (i.e., Heaven) are much worse than he is for a variety of reasons.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T15:21:05-07:00

@nigredo

God, you have read everything. Did you also read Percy Shelley's fanfic-like sequel Prometheus Unbound? It's pretty underwhelming, but he wrote an intro for it, where he says that Prometheus is the better form of Satan, because the Greek god doesn't carry along any bad moral baggage. (In so many words.) I can see where Shelley was going, but I think that's missing the point a bit; the ambivalence is a big part of what makes that character great.

Also, it comes as no surprise that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (the book, not the Kenneth Branagh bore-fest) is subtitled the Modern Prometheus. It's funny that Percy Shelley was apparently a big fan of the Victor Frankenstein character, whereas if you read the book now, that guy is pretty dreadful.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T15:51:12-07:00

Great to see Guimarães Rosa here. It's the second time something brazilian is refered to on this forum that I've never expected it would (first time was the Tropa de Elite movie).

Guimarães Rosa works with the notion of the devil in pretty much all of his works, it's kind of an obsession to the author. And it's amazing how the notion of the devil is always fresh and scary and funny at the same time. Didn't know that Grande Sertão: Veredas was called The Devil to Pay in Backlands, buy the way, and it is a MUST READ novel. No doubt about it.

On a side note, it's my dad's favorite writer and favorite novel of all times.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T15:58:51-07:00

i didn't notice good omens in there -- i find it hard to read pratchett without getting itchy teeth but gaiman's presence seemed to mute some of his problems with rabbiting on too much.

the devil in the film the prophecy was pretty good too though gabriel was better, if we might include films; and the you have to add De Niro in Angel Heart

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T16:41:41-07:00

@Slybyron

I read "The Grand Inquisitor" a long time ago, but I didn't read the rest of the Brothers, so I have no sense of context. What happens is, Jesus comes back, and the inquisitor deems the messiah a heretic and sentences him to death, basically. Is that it? The idea that what people have come to believe is so much harsher than what is expected of them? I remember thinking it was very interesting, and sadly Russian literature is one of my big, glaring blindspots as a reader, which is part of why I picked up Bulgakov.

Yeha, my friend: you take the Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor idea. If Jesus came back to Earth, the Church authorities (Dostoievsky, like a good Orthodox Christian, thinks about, in this case, the roman catholics) will sentences him to death because there is a gap between Christian authority and Christian being. If you read some philosophical speculation by Kierkegaard or Pascal, you will find this kind of idea. It's interesting: if God, in a second coming, returns to our world, the simple divine presence will place the God in the "wrong field", a heretic, a rebel, a troublemaker and, finally, a false messiah or devil messenger.

Some speculation about this conflicts in Roman Church through the History you can see at Pax Romana, a wonderful comic work by Jonatha Hickman.

And yes, the Russia/Soviet literature, art and culture is a big continent, with (unfortunately) blind spots. But the Demon and evil plays a big role in all Russian History, with all this dictators with god complex (like Ivan, for example). So, in another fields of art, Russians created some Devil/Evil characterization full with ambivalence. The film Andrei Rublev, directed by Tarkovski. It's not about devil itself, but about the terrible paradoxes of faith, violence and hope. However, the devil plays a background role in this kind of narrative.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T17:09:58-07:00

@Leandro Damasceno

Great to see Guimarães Rosa here. It's the second time something brazilian is refered to on this forum that I've never expected it would (first time was the Tropa de Elite movie).

Guimarães Rosa works with the notion of the devil in pretty much all of his works, it's kind of an obsession to the author. And it's amazing how the notion of the devil is always fresh and scary and funny at the same time. Didn't know that Grande Sertão: Veredas was called The Devil to Pay in Backlands, buy the way, and it is a MUST READ novel. No doubt about it.

On a side note, it's my dad's favorite writer and favorite novel of all times.

I fellow huge Rosa's fan. Well, you say everything: all Rosa's fictions is about, in a certain proportion, devil (or, at least, evil in pure or symbolic forms).

And the commentary about Elite Squad, well, as mine as well.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T17:56:06-07:00

I've always had a soft spot for the devil in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and to those who mentioned Monk Lewis and other Gothic novels I would add, Zofloya: or The Moor by Charlotte Dacre (1806)

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T17:56:44-07:00

@ slybyron

I haven't read Shelley's poem. I've never been comfortable with Modern Prometheus as a suitable subtitle to Framkenstein. I haven't been able to compare the nature of Victor's loss with the revenge the gods exacted on Prometheus. Moreover, Victor's experiments are nowhere near Prometheus' audacity in scope...Victor's triumph over death is an instance of hubris, but it is not developed as something that will ultimately benefit humanity in the novel. I think the comparison on Shelley's part was relatively superficial.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T18:17:29-07:00

If you ever get the chance, check out "The Devil and Billy Markham" by Shel Silverstein. He wrote a bunch of stuff for kids, but he also wrote some very racy works that publishers avoided like a leper in heat. Playboy picked up a few of them and gave him a monthly column.

Anyway, DBM has a Devil-went-down-to-Georgia kind of feel to it, in Silverstein's classic rhyme scheme, and with more sex and gambling than you can shake a bag of coke at. It also presents the idea that God and the Devil are the same entity in different costumes.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T19:34:57-07:00

I saw a documentry once that said that the Devil in any religion is symbolic of other religions.

Oh you would love the Yazidi maybe. They predate almost everything and are considered by Muslims to be Satan worshippers because their lead angel is named "Shaytan". But they say their Shaytan isn't evil, that evil only exists inside human minds.

And wow you guys are well-read. Damn. (Okay I didn't mean damn in that way). I've totally lost track, has anyone mentioned Mark Twain yet?

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-18T22:43:00-07:00

I enjoy some of Clive Barker's early reevaluations of the concepts of "devil" and "hell." and of course there are Exorcist and Legion by William Peter Blatty. I like the way they explore the reasons why devils or demons would want to possess people.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T00:04:47-07:00

@buckweiss

I had completely forgotten about "Young Goodman Brown". I just finished reading it off the Gutenberg link (thank you), and it's better than I remember from that lame survey course I took eight years ago. Stephen King wrote a story called "The Man in the Black Suit", where he tried to imitate Hawthorne (by his own admission), and it's not nearly as good. In the King story, the devil (guess what he's got on) is basically a mysterious guy who threatens to kill you, whereas in "Goodman Brown", the devil will turn everybody you love against you, and--failing that--he'll turn you against everybody you love. Aces.

There is one line from Hawthorne that I find head-scratchingly racist: "Scattered also among their pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft." So in other words, when white people worship Satan, partake of the black mass, and kiss him on the proffered ass-cheek, it's bad. But when they do it...

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T07:32:32-07:00

@obliterati

Melek Taus is one of the most fascinating divinities of the Yezidi belief system. Can we upload documents here? I have a few that may be of related interest.

ps. Moore based King Peacock on him, in Top 10.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T08:02:12-07:00

Don't know if anyone's read Henry James' The Aspern Papers, but Aspern and the protagonist come together to form an interesting picture of trickery, confidence and obsession; Aspern as the devil, and the protagonist as follower/missing bit from forays on the mortal plane.

re: I, Lucifer, I really enjoyed it, despite it's slow beginning (and the constant allusions to pop culture got a little tiresome) and it gives a great face to a more modern(?) devil.

re: Milton... I hate PL with a passion, partly due to the brilliance. As a text, it is superb, but emotionally harmful—all us masochists have read it at least twice.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T09:32:08-07:00

@Slybyron.

TThanks for the link. that's any chance of work today out the window. 'The Birth of Satan' is much easier to read. It's basically traces how Satan goes from a concept to an actual being. It's fascinating.

As for the Icon, nothing so artsy I'm afraid. It's this -

Except it's just a tiny bit of it cos I didn't resize it and quite liked the result.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T10:12:01-07:00

I always thought that V For Vendetta had a lot of aspects of Paradise Lost. I mean, Evey, Adam is name of the leader, and V is the devil.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T10:37:54-07:00

@collin

I think you're onto something. In Fear & Trembling (which looks at Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his first-born son from every possible angle), Kierkegaard says that true faith is such an intensely personal phenomenon, that it sets you apart from the rest of the church, instead of bringing fellow believers together. So, using that as a jump-off point, if Christ did come back all of a sudden (assuming that he really is god incarnate), it could make people feel uncomfortable and possibly threatened. They might react just like Dostoevsky's Inquisitor.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T10:49:03-07:00

@muse
I really liked Good Omens, minus the annoying, unfunny footnotes. (Except for the one that's a paragraph long, explaining the intricacies of calculating British currency; that one's hysterical.) I liked that Crowley (which is almost a lovably cheesy name for a devil) had mellowed out after several thousand years on earth to the point where he wasn't all that bad anymore.

@sasha
V actually wears horns in one scene, and says, "I'm a man of wealth...and taste." You're right. He's definitely an example of Alan Moore riffing on a lot of the stuff we've been talking about, and he (V) has got moral ambiguity in spades.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T11:02:39-07:00

@nigredo

Prometheus was the Titan whose job it was to design humankind as a race, while his overworked brother Epimetheus was charged with designing every other animal species. I think that's what Mary Shelley was referring to by calling Victor Frankenstein "a modern Prometheus," not the daring theft of fire out of heaven, so there is a point of comparison; I just think it's a flimsy one.

I agree that Victor's suffering was ultimately the result of his immaturity, whereas Prometheus got chained to a rock, where his liver got devoured by an eagle every day (only to regenerate overnight), because he wanted to better equip humanity for survival in an unpredictable world of gods & monsters. He was really a standup guy.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T17:10:55-07:00

One of my favorites was the image of God and the Devil betting on humanity in Heinlein's "Job: A Comedy of Justice." It's been a loooong time since I read it, and with everyone's "real" literature references, I apologize for my juvenile mind, but I do remember it have a very deep and lasting affect on my image of religion and God and the Devil, especially being a young teen.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-19T20:32:41-07:00

Jayverni-- I haven't read that in years either, but I remember liking it a lot when I was about 13. don't remember what the depiction of the Devil was like, though.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-20T06:43:02-07:00

@slybyron

Actually, Epimetheus and Prometheus were given the task of creating living beings. True to his name, Epimetheus gave the best qualities to the animals, which he created first, so that, when it came to man, he had to ask Pometheus for help. Among other things, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and taught men science etc...

The thing is that the interpretation changes according to people's views. Neo-Luddites see Prometheus as a negative figure, because he basically put mankind on the pathway to technological development. At the same time, since the Enlightenment, he has become a symbol of human reason and progress.

If Frankestein is seen as a cautionary tale, then the subtitle isn' exactly flattering.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-20T07:00:44-07:00

@ slybyron

Fear & Trembling (and all Kierkegaard's speculations, I think) is a awesome book about the terrible thing that faith (and God, of course) could be, because what the difference between Abrahan, the great patriarch, when he was in order to kill his son Isaac in worship of God, and some insane assassin with the same leit motiv? In my opinion, this kind of speculation (there are many narrative examples, like The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg or Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown) is a great start for new and fresh devil's representations, without the ironic frame (it's a excellent frame, but there are more frames or none to use) usual in this kind of representation after middle ages.

About the Promethean discussion, I remember a essay wrote by the philosopher E. M. Cioran in his book History and Utopia. Prometheus, in the Cioran concept, was a kind of utopia creator. If Prometheus has a target, throw the men deep in the conscience flow and overpass the primordial nature state, this is the biggest sin of all, the arrogant sin of overpass the nature (the body, the real, etc.) for the nothing of the mind. In the Cioran essay, Prometheus "deserves" his fate.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-21T09:58:30-07:00

@nigredo
The Prometheus story isn't covered in the Metamorphoses, which is my mythology Bible, so I may have gotten a detail or two wrong.

I prefer to consider it an ironic subtitle, and that way it it works just fine. Maybe they can add a question mark at the end to make it explicit.

@collin
That's the second mention of James Hogg in so many pages on this thread, so I really will need to hunt down a copy.

@jayverni
I haven't really read any Heinlein, but it's probably just as "real" as anything else on this thread. If it's good, it's good. Period.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-21T12:27:37-07:00

@jayverni

Completely spaced on this JOB, thanks for reminding me!

And in this conversation (or any other, for that matter), if Heinlein's not an author of "real" literature, who really is?

The Devil in in Job exists as an equal to god, and one of the very few companionable characters in the novel. He's much more of a guide-type, and in this case, fighting for the just treatment of human beings.

There's a bit near the end where he takes the protagonist to the guy who makes the rules for the games played by God and the Devil, and he makes a speech to the degree of "the rules are stacked against them, and therefore they cannot really win, even if they get into heaven."

@slybyron

Absolutely right. If a so-called children's book like the His Dark Material's trilogy can be a critique of the Roman Catholic Church while simultaneously speaking to Paradise Lost, then anything can have merit and therefore be "real."

Does anyone know if Asimov or other big SF writers (aside from Herbert and Dick) ever wrote about classical religion and/or the devil?

edited for clarity

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-21T13:54:43-07:00

Asimov was way too technical and skeptical to write about the Devil. There are devil-like characters in the "Foundation" series, but nothing so explict

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-21T14:11:52-07:00

Like videocrime wrote about, the SF skepticism usually didn't match with the irrational essence of devil. Even Valerio Evangelisti awesome SF series, with the Inquisitor Nicolaus Eymerich as protagonist, don't have a devil well characterized.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-21T14:40:35-07:00

@collindeplancy : exactly. the hard SF writer is prepared to make logical leaps, not illogical ones. the whole "plausibility" factor is a big part of why SF is an intriguing genre.

there are some exceptions, as always - I always thought Gibson's personification of the Wintermute/Neuromancer AIs in Neuromancer was much like the Devil tempting Jesus... He offered Case a whole world of his own, with nothing but Linda Lee in it, if only he would give up.

Maybe not what was intended, but certainly the feeling I got from it.

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-21T17:19:21-07:00

Pennyman in The Last Coin - all neatness and elegance disguising the corruption and filth

The Devil in Fiction

2008-03-21T19:36:37-07:00

@videocrime

One character in Neuromancer even makes the devil/AI comparison explicit; a cop who's holding Case at gunpoint says that "For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible."