Rating: 
Summary: A Possessing Novel
Review: James Hogg's "Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a claustrophobic, terrifying spectacle of a novel. First published anonymously in 1824, the novel centers around the manuscript of an obscure Scottish Laird who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Robert Wringhim is a well-educated, but illegitimate child of the Laird of Dalcastle. He leaves the estate to live with his mother, also estranged from the estate. Raised by his adopted father, a zealous Calvinist preacher, Robert grows to despise his biological family. When, on his 18th birthday, God reveals through the preacher, that Robert is one of the elect, the true action of the novel begins.The novel has an unusual and provocative structure: an editorial recounting of the story envelops the text of Robert Wringhim's actual 'memoirs and confessions'. The novel's temporal structure hinges on the 1707 Act of Union which annexed Scotland to England, forming Great Britain. With the editorial apparatus (and its debt to an oral tradition), and Robert's first person manuscript, Hogg seems to question the methods by which history is written and passed down. Several versions of Robert's story, from himself, his contemporaries, and the 'editor' who lives over 100 years after the events gives a startling, disturbingly incoherent vision of history. This novel is great for its wranglings with the problems of reconciling money with morality, and religion with the law. Hogg's primary concern is with the religious issue of antinomianism - the notion that God's elect are free from the dictates of human law. Robert's election and subsequent relationship with the wildly mysterious, fantastically rendered Gil-Martin put antinomianism to the harshest test. "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a rather short novel which I recommend highly. It is an entertaining historical, religious, psychological rollercoaster. Its blend of sublimely dark humor and social comment is a high achievement in any century.
Rating:
Summary: A Possessing Novel
Review: James Hogg's "Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a claustrophobic, terrifying spectacle of a novel. First published anonymously in 1824, the novel centers around the manuscript of an obscure Scottish Laird who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Robert Wringhim is a well-educated, but illegitimate child of the Laird of Dalcastle. He leaves the estate to live with his mother, also estranged from the estate. Raised by his adopted father, a zealous Calvinist preacher, Robert grows to despise his biological family. When, on his 18th birthday, God reveals through the preacher, that Robert is one of the elect, the true action of the novel begins. The novel has an unusual and provocative structure: an editorial recounting of the story envelops the text of Robert Wringhim's actual 'memoirs and confessions'. The novel's temporal structure hinges on the 1707 Act of Union which annexed Scotland to England, forming Great Britain. With the editorial apparatus (and its debt to an oral tradition), and Robert's first person manuscript, Hogg seems to question the methods by which history is written and passed down. Several versions of Robert's story, from himself, his contemporaries, and the 'editor' who lives over 100 years after the events gives a startling, disturbingly incoherent vision of history. This novel is great for its wranglings with the problems of reconciling money with morality, and religion with the law. Hogg's primary concern is with the religious issue of antinomianism - the notion that God's elect are free from the dictates of human law. Robert's election and subsequent relationship with the wildly mysterious, fantastically rendered Gil-Martin put antinomianism to the harshest test. "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a rather short novel which I recommend highly. It is an entertaining historical, religious, psychological rollercoaster. Its blend of sublimely dark humor and social comment is a high achievement in any century.
Rating:
Summary: As haunting and unusual as the events it describes
Review: James Hogg's masterpiece, this strange and evocative study of the effects of Calvinist doctrine on the Scottish mind, has slowly edged its way into the canon in the last twenty years largely because it is first and foremost a rattling good read. Like all the great Scottish novelists from Walter Scott to Robert Louis Stevenson to Muriel Spark, Hogg was haunted by the dual promise of Edinburgh both as the refined cosmopolitan Renaissance home of Boswell as well as the fanatically religious city of John Knox. THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS is a response to that dual inheritance, and the novel is filled with doubles and dual structures: two brothers (born on two floors of the same house) vie for filial recognition; one brother duplicates himself when he is visited by a devil figure, Gil-Martin, in his exact semblance; and the story is told in two parts, and one of those is itself doubled. Although the Scots dialect in sections is a real chore to get through, the book is a marvelous frightening read nonetheless, and NYRB has wrapped it all up in a glorious cover featuring a famous Blake illustration. This isn't an easy ghost read, but it is tremendously repaying.
Rating:
Summary: beware with inadequate thinking
Review: Much time ago I have thougth religion is a weapon of double edge - perhaps between others-. This is clearly seen in this novel although some other books, but usually posterior, shows a resemblance. From a Catholic point of view this novel is even more strange: a Calvinist man, undoubtly not very equilibrated is convinced that he can't commit a sin because his religion assures him the eternal salvation. From these premise and if you are stiff enough, the conclusion is clear: the man arrives to believe he can commit all classess of crimes withouth punishment. Of course, for me, the protagonist is simply a mad, and probably many people has been dragged to such foolishness when they pretend to figth with ideas that surpasses his capacities as all indiscriminate believers in anything or as a man who drives a car too fast for his ability. Biographies of great thinkers abound in mental disequilibrium. James Hogg wrote very well such a case in advance of his times.
Rating: 
Summary: Evil Committed by Those Convinced of Their Own Piety
Review: Praised as a masterpiece, Hogg's novel does indeed have that strange, brilliant quality of uniqueness, that, defying all cookie-cutter fictive forms, creates its own world. The world in question is Puritanism, specifically Scottish Calvinism in its most virulent form. The Calvinists in the novel, Robert Wringhim and his son of the same name, are scabrous parasites, full of religious cant and envy, who plot to takeover the inheritance of the Colwan household through murder, an act they rationalize because they are, they believe, already predestined to be saved so no sin can bring them damnation and secondly because the murder victim is an evil sinner who, in their mind, deserves to be killed. Thus we have the profile of those who commit evil even while convinced of their own piety, a very relevant theme in today's world of quasi-spiritual leaders who foment violence in the name of their faith. The novel is divided in three parts, ninety pages of The Editor's Narrative, a third-person account of the rivalry and murder; the 130-page first-person Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Sinner; and, thirdly, the 10-page epilogue, told again from the Editor. This is a very disturbing, funny, frightening novel, especially since its murderous characters are so believable. However, I can only give the novel four stars, not five, because the Confessions section, at 130 pages, is too long. It's unbearable and repetitive to observe Wringham's rhetorical excesses and lame justification and skewed point of view for so long. His evil is clearly and convincingly established and to hear him bloviate about how good he is and how evil everyone else is for over a hundred pages becomes tiresome. However, I don't wish to sway anyone from reading one of the best novels I've ever read about the role piety and self-rectitude play in enabling people to wreak evil and havoc on the world.
Rating:
Summary: a chilling tale of fantacism
Review: Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified sinner is the story of the illigitamate son of a Scottish laird who is convinced by the devil to act on his own spite and rage and commit murder -- but Hogg adds a clever twist (I don't want to spoil anything by saying what it is) that leaves the reader wondering... One of the great things about this book is that its serious subject matter is balanced by a dose of humor -- I was surprised to find myself giggling through the first fifty pages which tell of the laird's marriage to a reluctantly religious woman. This is a must-read for anyone interested in nineteenth-century fantasy, but its detailing of the making of a fanatic is still hauntingly relevent today...
Rating:
Summary: The Devil Made Him Do It?
Review: This book is genuinely creepy. Basically, it tells the story of a soul destroyed by a fascination with the doctrine of Predestination-Or, is that all there is to it?-It is a study in the psychology of one Robert Wringhim and the malicious form of insanity that a fervid belief in such a doctrine can inspire in a human heart.-Or is that quite all to be said here?-As a Twenty-First Century reader, one is tempted, if I may use that word anent this book, to see things in this purely "psychological" light. And, clearly, this perspective is spot on for the most part. Robert's world is obviously increasingly inhabited by the projections and personifications of his delusory mind. But one never quite knows in this book where the boundaries are between what might be called the purely endogenous functions of his mind, and what is, well, real, or if indeed such a distinction is meaningful. -It is well to bear in mind that all this is real to Robert. How are we to judge? Should we try?
The only comparable book/story I can think of in English Literature is Henry James's The Turn of The Screw, where James, it seems to me, clearly meant for the psychology of the governess to be the key. While I don't think James believed in ghosts haunting the clichéd manor, I'm not so sure that Hogg did not believe in the Devil (in some form), embodied in the darkling wastes and dank, baroque towns of a religiously fervid and superstitious Scotland. To cut to the chase, to call this book MERELY psychological is to miss something here. It becomes a dismissive term, dismissive of the dark haunts and mysteries of ourselves and of our world that we have not fathomed. Ideally, this book should give us an eerie pause to stare into those depths without recourse to clinical terms such as "psychology" and "projection" and reexamine where certain boundaries lie in the murkiness of our own individual worlds - And, to shudder.
Rating:
Summary: The Devil Made Him Do It?
Review: This book is genuinely creepy. Basically, it tells the story of a soul destroyed by a fascination with the doctrine of Predestination-Or, is that all there is to it?-It is a study in the psychology of one Robert Wringhim and the malicious form of insanity that a fervid belief in such a doctrine can inspire in a human heart.-Or is that quite all to be said here?-As a Twenty-First Century reader, one is tempted, if I may use that word anent this book, to see things in this purely "psychological" light. And, clearly, this perspective is spot on for the most part. Robert's world is obviously increasingly inhabited by the projections and personifications of his delusory mind. But one never quite knows in this book where the boundaries are between what might be called the purely endogenous functions of his mind, and what is, well, real, or if indeed such a distinction is meaningful. -It is well to bear in mind that all this is real to Robert. How are we to judge? Should we try?
The only comparable book/story I can think of in English Literature is Henry James's The Turn of The Screw, where James, it seems to me, clearly meant for the psychology of the governess to be the key. While I don't think James believed in ghosts haunting the clichéd manor, I'm not so sure that Hogg did not believe in the Devil (in some form), embodied in the darkling wastes and dank, baroque towns of a religiously fervid and superstitious Scotland. To cut to the chase, to call this book MERELY psychological is to miss something here. It becomes a dismissive term, dismissive of the dark haunts and mysteries of ourselves and of our world that we have not fathomed. Ideally, this book should give us an eerie pause to stare into those depths without recourse to clinical terms such as "psychology" and "projection" and reexamine where certain boundaries lie in the murkiness of our own individual worlds - And, to shudder.
Rating:
Summary: Precursor of the Psychological Thriller
Review: This book was published in 1824 and harks back to the novels of the 18th Century (no prudery, but primitive sociopolitical views), without any major trappings of incipient Victorianism. It reads surprisingly well in modern English, but that is partly because this is quintessentially a 'Scotch' book -- a commentator says no Englishman could possibly have written this novel.
The novel is not a mystery, but it IS a murder story, and is just as upsetting as PSYCHO or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It goes right into the depths of psychological realism, even though that wasn't systematized back then -- a story of religious fanatacism that you can fit to modern avatars like Jones or Manson. And the underpinning is the horrible travesty of Christianity the Scots grafted onto Calvinist Protestantism that caused so much woe back in the days of Cavaliers vs. Covenanters -- i.e., that certain people are predestined by God to be saved (because He set up everything in advance, before time even began), so it doesn't really matter WHAT they do in life, which led to a kind of Caledonian Khomeini-ism. There are the usual bits of Scottish dialog rendered in pseudo-phonetics, but not as egregious as in other novels of the sort. In spite of being set in the early 1700s, it generally comes across as a description of a Scotland that hasn't changed much in modern times, with parallels to football hooligans and drunks and debauchees, plus an innate puritanism and political extremism -- the more things change, the more they say the same.
Structure of the plot is clever: a 90-page summary by the "Editor" based supposedly on publicly available details, that lays out the bare bones of the story in a very journalistic (I mean news-in-depth) manner, followed by the revealed Memoirs, where of course the narrator is naive enough to display all of his faults as supposed virtues -- although he finally catches on at the end. Hoary plot device, but it works very well. This presages JEKYLL AND HYDE, which, knowing now of this book, I can see was influenced by it (well, Stevenson was a Scot too, and would have known Hogg, whereas the rest of the Eng-Lit world only paid attention to Sir Walter and Burns in his whimsical vein in those days). Basically, it is a story of a man who murders his older brother to inherit his lairdship and lands, although he is of a type who would never admit to such a base motive. He goes on to do even more horrible deeds (maybe!). The protagonist is a snotty, ugly little twerp, even as he portrays himself and as he is portrayed by others. This paradoxically adds a bit of fun to this dour book -- the author was one of the radical-poet circle of his times, so he could indulge in an unusual level of cynicism for the period. There is a lot of irony and satire in this, conveyed in a wry way that is almost uniquely Scottish (closest to it is Yiddish).
The familial situation is rather odd, consisting of an old-fashioned huntin' drinkin' laird, his mistress/housekeeper, his older Tom Jones-ish son, the Blifil-ish Sinner, the laird's pious and prudish wife (whom he rapes on their wedding night rather than kneeling down for some wholesome prayer), and her spiritual adviser Wringhim, who 'adopts' the younger son in time (or is perhaps his father, but not likely, this being a novel of people looking like their role models, like dogs are supposed to resemble their masters). Wringhim, while not a 'sinner', is a perfect ass, and is responsible for educating his snot-nosed ward into his perception of personal infalibility. After all this, it turns out to be a Faustian story, because the Devil went on vacation from his other duties just to have fun playing with this particular victim. After all, how could he resist leading to depraved evils a person who believed through his Justified Religion that he was predestined by God to be one of the elect in Heaven no matter what he did on Earth? Satan, in this story, is a marvelous invention in that he takes on the features and character of whatever/whomever he is being seen by at the time -- for the most part, your own image as you perceive yourself to be, or if you're thinking of Jesus, he'll look like Jesus, or of Ringo Starr like Ringo Starr, etc. (At one point, the protagonist thinks, "I had no doubt now that he was Peter of Russia.") Naturally, Satan leads on the Justified Sinner to commit murders and despicable acts that the 'hero' thinks he can't be damned for since he's been predestined for heaven. (An alternative reading is, of course, that Colwan is paranoid/schizo, and this devil is his own delusion.) Edinburgh setting: there is a fine and scary scene that takes place on Arthur's Seat, which you will appreciate all the more if you know that city. The end of the story is a phantasmagoria, magical events and all. Here, the devil in the new Laird Colwan's guise commits seductions, frauds, and murders of a despicable nature (including matricide: "she had by this time rendered herself exceedingly obnoxious to me"), driving our 'poor hero' into a state of total schizophrenia (he believes or doesn't that he really did these things, and maybe he did). Dirty trick follows dirty trick, to excess -- and maybe that isn't fair, considering how the book went before. For the devil to implement rather than instigate is of dubious orthodoxy, yet there is some doubt as to what really happened. When Colwan finally tells his friend to 'begone', he replies: "Our beings are amalgamated, as it were, and consociated in one, and never shall I depart from this country until I can carry you in triumph with me." (Guess that finally makes the situation clear.) "If this that you tell me be true," said I, "then it is as true that I have two souls, which take possession of my bodily frame by turns, the one being all unconscious of what the other performs; for as sure as I have at this moment a spirit within me, fashioned and destined to eternal felicity, as sure am I utterly ignorant of the crimes you now lay to my charge." Colwan's adventures, when he goes on the lam, pursued by the obligatory mob (as in the movie versions of the contemporary novel FRANKENSTEIN), will be omitted here -- discover for yourself! (Well, he does get all tangled up in a miller's loom, and ends up in Edinburgh as a typesetter's apprentice -- hence 'justification' for the existence of the Memoirs.) This is a very fine book, and I'll leave off now (as it is, this summary ended up being a lot longer than I intended).
Rating:
Summary: Before its time
Review: This is a psychological horror novel long before the genre had been invented. It has been compared in subject matter (a man believing in his right to commit atrocious crimes) to Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' but I found this to be far more sinister and disturbing. The author's device of narrating the story twice, once from an external observer's point of view, and again but from the protagonist's point of view, helps reinforce how just how strange the world inside his head is, a world that is especially piquant to anyone familiar with any of the world's more fundamental religions. I don't normally go for horror books, but this is different class. A chiller.
|
