Rating: 
Summary: FUNNY, CLEVER, INTELLIGENT & ORIGINAL
Review: It is the funniest, smartest, and most enlightening book I've read. It is also clever, intelligent, and original. It is the best book I have ever read. The story and its characters are unforgettable.
It follows the cursed life of its "unfortunate", unlikely anti-hero, the Jewish psychoanalyst, Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S. - "Just Some Poor Schmuck". Kassler strikes a deal with the Devil, who wants psychoanalysis, because the Devil feels he's really a good soul that is being wrongly blamed for the worlds' ills. In exchange for 7 sessions of psychoanalysis, the Devil agrees to tell Kassler "The Meaning of Life", after the 7th session. He does.
Rating:
Summary: GOOD BOOK YOU HOLES
Review: IT's GOOD, PURCHAse IT NOW or I WiLL BE sAD
Rating:
Summary: "Satan" is heavenly.
Review: Java is filled with unlimited possibilities. Consider this: I was at a local coffee place with a friend who was leaving town. He ran into the coffee shop's lending library (take a book and either return it or replace it for the other interested readers around you) and came back out with a book that he said had caught his eye during his many excursions for caffeine. The book was Jeremy Leven's 1982 "Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S." Quite a mouthful of a title. I nodded politely and began edging toward the door. But my friend's description of the book ("Some doctor develops a computer program that believes it is Beelzebub, and proceeds to give it therapy") intrigued me. So, after a few weeks of tossing and turning, I decided to return downtown and check out the book. The story is a little more complicated than that. Dr. Sy Kassler does indeed see a computer that may or may not turn out to be Lucifer, Prince of Darkness. But there are many hilarious twists and turns to this 500-page tome, and many different aspects to the plot. SATAN: The computer, if that is what it is, is the brainchild of the genius Dr. Leo Szlyck. Szlyck is called to connect and create a mysterious bunch of wires and synapses to result in ol' Mephistopheles. But it is during the course of therapy that the Dark One asks us to ponder, "Think about what it must take to dare to be God's enemy." THE UNFORTUNATE DR. KASSLER: Sy Kassler is indeed unfortunate. We first meet him coercing an STD-beleaguered, only-Italian speaking girl into his bed. Then there is his subsequent love affair with and marriage to the commitment-shy Vita, who turns psychotic after the birth of their first child. Kassler leads the life of a tragic figure. And now he's treating Satan? God help him. Literally. EVERYTHING ELSE: There's Lupa, the beautiful woman who falls in love and has an affair with the computer; Sam Zelazo, Kassler's boss and Szlyck's archnemesis and a multitude of other plotlines and characterizations that make the on-cover comparison to novels like Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" seem very apt. It is a story that is very much about Satan's psyche and those of the people surrounding him. Leven compiled a classic comedic think piece with "Satan," and philosophers and comedy seekers alike should seek it out. Author Robert Heinlein has a quote on the back of the book that is so appropriate to the tone and mood of the book that it deserves to be the last word: "'Satan' is terrific! I could not put it down. However, Jeremy Leven will be lynched if they ever catch him."
Rating:
Summary: One of the funniest and enlightening books I've ever read
Review: Jeremy Leven's Satan his Psychotherapy and cure is a must for any college student. One of the few novels to blend real ideas with good story telling. The way Kasler descends slowly into a world of complete insanity is really great. If anyone wants to read a novel that is both illuminating and well written read Paul Omeziri's Descent into Illusion published by PublishAmerica. This is an amazing novel. I give them both five stars.
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Summary: Why hasn't this come back to print!?
Review: Look at all those reviews... and here I thought I was perhaps one of ten people who ever read it. I agree with all they said and more. This is one of the few books I keep coming back to over and over again. Which brings me to my point: if so many people love this book, how come it's been out of print for 15 years?
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Summary: Wonderful !
Review: Makes you believe there are less fortunate people in the world than you...
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: My father reccomended that I take a look at this book after I finished Catch-22, and I absolutely loved it. This book points out the hypocrisy of our society without sounding self-righteous or arrogant, and Satan is an amazingly funny and perceptive voice of reason. Not really right for the super-religious among us, but for me, a perfect book.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: My father reccomended that I take a look at this book after I finished Catch-22, and I absolutely loved it. This book points out the hypocrisy of our society without sounding self-righteous or arrogant, and Satan is an amazingly funny and perceptive voice of reason. Not really right for the super-religious among us, but for me, a perfect book.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best American novels of the last 50 years
Review: No one has ever done a subtler or a more devastating send up of the psychiatric/psychology industry, nor have many been able to insinuate sly philosophical digressions into a frothing satiric text with such grace and pacing. This satan, faceless, locking himself inside a computer in a public gallery, has the charm to coax a snake out of new skin. The complications are wonderfully wild and orchestrated, and Kassler's travails as a single dad trying to rekindle a relationship with his children are heart breaking as they are potently hilarious. I am in the league that lent his copy out, and I've been trying to replace it for years. This book needs to come back into print. Author Leven has given us one of the best structured, best written American comic novels, and its a disservice to the reading public to keep it out of print.
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Summary: Just wish for one thing...
Review: OK first of all, all the standard adjectives...this book is fabulous, wonderful, amazing, etc., comic genius, highly original, blah blah blah...but I do have one complaint. I know Kessler's downspiral is accentuated by Bernie Kohler's suicide, but I wish Leven had let Bernie live. It seems if Kessler had let the door swing completely the other way (as opposed to only on two occasions) he would have been happy forever with Bernie. I know that defeats the purpose of the book, but a day won't go by where I wish things could have turned out differently. I guess that's what made this book so amazing to me, that even though I read it 5 years ago I still remember feeling hurt when Bernie committed suicide not much longer after he and Kessler hooked up (to a certain extent, unfortunately from Kessler's end the engagement was only physical and not as emotional as Bernie). But anyway, if a book can leave me with that sadness still, it must have been more powerful than I thought.
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