The Werewolf of Paris

Rating:
Summary: If you liked "Dracula", you may like this even better...
Review: (And it's really written with all the good taste left to literature by the very beginning of the twentieth century... It's a classic, about the struggle between civilization and the beast we call man.)

"He panted through his open mouth. And he felt his tongue, the short and bulky tongue of man, begin to flatten and lengthen. "God help me!" he cried. But now the tongue was curling out of his mouth, was hanging over his teeth. Unable to resist any more,he sprang from his bed. He went to a corner of his room, muzzled under a piece of cloth and dragged forth an arm, a human arm. The last of the two arms he had taken from La belle Normade.

He sank his teeth into it. His eyes glared around suspiciously. Low growls came from his throat. For a while there was silence, then there were more noises, the slap of a hard dead hand as it hit the floor, the crunching a of bone, and occasionally a sharp tick as a ring on one finger struck the wood."

*****************

"Aymar soon discovered that he was talking nonsense. The Commune shot fifty-seven from the prison of La Roquette. Versailles retaliated with nineteen hundred. To that comparison add this one. The whole famous Reign of Terror in fifteen months guillotined 2,596 aristos. The Versaillists executed 20,000 commoners before their firing squads in one week. Do these figures represent the comparative efficincy of guillotine and modern rifle, or the comparitive cruelty of upper and lower class mobs?

Bertrand, it now semed to Aymar, was but a mild case. What was a werewolf who had killed a couple of prostitutes, who had dug up a few corpses, compared with these bands of tigers slashing at each other with daily increasing ferocity! "And there'll be worse," he thought and again he had that marvelous rising of the heart. Instead of thousands, future ages will kill millions. It will go on, the figures will rise and the process will accelerate! Hurrah for the race of werewolves!"

Rating:
Summary: Changes as often as a werewolf.
Review: A GRUESOME CHRONICLE OF THE 1840'S IN FRANCE. HELLO MISTER WEREWOLF! GUY ENDORE ALWAYS PUTS EVERYTHING IN HIS HALF NOVEL-HALF HISTORIC COMMENTARIES. THEY'RE FOREVER A ROLLACOASTER. FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT. ANOTHER AUTHOR TO PERUSE FOR A THRILL; MONTAGUE R. JAMES.

Rating:
Summary: Don?t let this messed-up opus slip away.
Review: Authors are painters -- little fellas that you invite into your mind who then proceed to paint pictures on the walls of your brain. Some pictures are pretty. Others are visions of horror so twisted and evil that we can only whisper the descriptions. If you read this book, Guy Endore will kick open the front door of your mind and start painting the most horrific, intoxicating, and disturbing pictures imaginable. Endore uses all of the paints too - suspense, gore, crimes against nature, murder - you name it, it's in there.

WARNING - There is history. Aw geeze, do I have to? Don't worry, it will help give depth to the dementia.

WARNING - This book is often shocking. There were moments in this book when I actually started talking to myself aloud. "No. No, he didn't. Tell me he didn't just do what I think he did. No way. (Man, this book is messed-up.)"

WARNING - Pregnant women, small children, and people who can not control their bladders should not read this book.

In my mind, I see a little guy. Occasionally, he looks back at the pictures that Endore painted. You see, the little guy can't decide if he should paint over these gory masterpieces or keep them. It's just wishful thinking though. The little guy knows these images aren't going away. There's no scrapping away these paints. Poor little fella is stuck with them. Lucky guy.

Rating:
Summary: Don¿t let this messed-up opus slip away.
Review: Authors are painters -- little fellas that you invite into your mind who then proceed to paint pictures on the walls of your brain. Some pictures are pretty. Others are visions of horror so twisted and evil that we can only whisper the descriptions. If you read this book, Guy Endore will kick open the front door of your mind and start painting the most horrific, intoxicating, and disturbing pictures imaginable. Endore uses all of the paints too - suspense, gore, crimes against nature, murder - you name it, it's in there.

WARNING - There is history. Aw geeze, do I have to? Don't worry, it will help give depth to the dementia.

WARNING - This book is often shocking. There were moments in this book when I actually started talking to myself aloud. "No. No, he didn't. Tell me he didn't just do what I think he did. No way. (Man, this book is messed-up.)"

WARNING - Pregnant women, small children, and people who can not control their bladders should not read this book.

In my mind, I see a little guy. Occasionally, he looks back at the pictures that Endore painted. You see, the little guy can't decide if he should paint over these gory masterpieces or keep them. It's just wishful thinking though. The little guy knows these images aren't going away. There's no scrapping away these paints. Poor little fella is stuck with them. Lucky guy.

Rating:
Summary: If you liked "Dracula", you may like this even better...
Review: This is my all-time favorite novel. I've read it so many times, I've lost track. When I first read it, I couldn't believe it wasn't a nineteenth century French novel, and that author Guy Endore was a twentieth century American.

Werewolf is the odyssey of born pariah Bertrand Caillet, a werewolf in spite of himself. Every life he touches suffers, whether he means it to or not. He rifles graves for sustenance during his lycanthropic episodes, and conceals his identity by becoming a French soldier during the Franco-Prussian War and the Communard uprising. He even finds the one woman whose love might save him, an equally bizarre but oddly touching Jewish outcast named Sophie with decidedly S&M tastes.

The novel is many things, not the least of which is episodic. It's a love story, a war story, a tragedy, and an absurdist comedy, by turns. It's grotesquely funny, and hilariously terrifying. Most of all, it's a mature social satire, and just an incredibly damn good read.

Crime of crimes, this magnificent literary masterpiece has once again fallen out of print. Seek it out in the used book bins, until some publisher manages to rediscover it and put it back on the shelves of your local bookstore.

Rating:
Summary: The Werewolf Classic
Review: This is my all-time favorite novel. I've read it so many times, I've lost track. When I first read it, I couldn't believe it wasn't a nineteenth century French novel, and that author Guy Endore was a twentieth century American.

Werewolf is the odyssey of born pariah Bertrand Caillet, a werewolf in spite of himself. Every life he touches suffers, whether he means it to or not. He rifles graves for sustenance during his lycanthropic episodes, and conceals his identity by becoming a French soldier during the Franco-Prussian War and the Communard uprising. He even finds the one woman whose love might save him, an equally bizarre but oddly touching Jewish outcast named Sophie with decidedly S&M tastes.

The novel is many things, not the least of which is episodic. It's a love story, a war story, a tragedy, and an absurdist comedy, by turns. It's grotesquely funny, and hilariously terrifying. Most of all, it's a mature social satire, and just an incredibly damn good read.

Crime of crimes, this magnificent literary masterpiece has once again fallen out of print. Seek it out in the used book bins, until some publisher manages to rediscover it and put it back on the shelves of your local bookstore.