A Book Review
"The Castle in the Forest" by Norman Mailer
Little Brown, London, 2007
Frightening, sickening, compelling, brilliant, vulgar are all adjectives that apply to "The Castle in the Forest." Mailer has taken Screwtape and made him the ugly, voyeuristic, devious, devil he really is. If you find reading CS Lewis's Screwtape letters a difficult experience, as I do, then expect this to be ten-fold worse.
The story follows the early few years of a young Austrian boy in the late 1890s. One is alternately sympathetic towards and sickened by the boy and his family. The knowledge of the monster, Adolf Hitler, that he grew into is always there in the background.
The story is told through the eyes of a devil who had responsibility in the region. That sounds as though it is mere fantasy and easily dismissed. But, it is the shear realism Mailer brings to this devil and his works that is frightening. How the devil uses sex (not his - that going on between family members) for his own ends is both vulgar and all too honest and very very hard to read.
What is really compelling is the monologues of the devil ... they peel back the layers of defensive "good feelings" about humans we try and build up around ourselves and expose us without mercy. Like Lewis's Screwtape, one is never sure, though, how much truth there is in these monologues. Here are some samples ....
p76 [speaking about humans] "The seek to be free. They often remark ...'I want to discover who I am.' All the while we devils guide the people we have attracted (we call them clients), the cudgels [this is the devils' name for Angels] contest us and many a particular individual does his or her best to fight off both sides. Humans have become so vain (through technology) that more than a number expect by now to become independent of the Lord and the Devil."
p99 "... we do look for the lowest common denominator to any truth"
pp215-6 "Injustice was a yeast to inspire hatred, envy, and the loss of love. For rare was the man or woman who did not possess an intense sense of the injustice done to them each day. It was our taproot to every adult. It was a fury in every child. Our work would fall apart if humans ever came to brood as intensely upon the injustice others might be suffering."
p394 "There is a good reason why it is difficult for any man or woman to picture their own death. The soul, I would offer, does expect to be immortal."
p398 "... self pity is the lubricant we use most often to smooth the entrance of the heart into the uglier emotions."
