William Peter Blatty - The Exorcist (Corgi, 1972, 1973, 1974, etc.)
Blurb:
`THE EXORCIST is a tremendous novel.,.. fast, powerful and completely gripping ... more than merely an accomplished horror story... the Devil is here, in this icy little room in a house in Washington. D.C., in the body of this all-American child... a stunning achievement.' - Sunday Express
No reader of this extraordinary, utterly compelling novel of satanism and possession will put it down unmoved by the plight of Regan, the agony of her mother and the courage of the two Jesuit priests who battle for Regan's soul...The first beer is the best beer: The taste, the texture, feeling its coldness running down your throat into the pit of your stomach, that first rush of alcohol to the bloodstream. The second beer is pretty good. By the time you reach the third beer, well, you’ve settled into things, and the third beer will taste pretty much like the fourth, the fifth – and each one until you fall over.
And so to pulp horror. I love pulp horror, it’s part of a group of entertainment that in its entirety asks a lot of the viewer (the stretching of ones imagination and acceptance of the impossible as merely improbable) to asking nothing (brief outlines of characters, caricatures, brief descriptions always giving way to action and glib dialog). It’s a perfect blend of disparate elements that come together to entertain. It’s an entertainment that flows over you, you don’t have to work at it. And when it’s done, you can leave it behind to get on with more important things.
I’ve been reading a lot of pulp lately, and with the odd exception I’ve enjoyed myself greatly. But I came to a point where I needed to clean my palette. And how to do that? Read some Graham Swift perhaps? Take a break from reading entirely? Maybe even get out of the house!
Nah. Stick with the horror. But I needed something different, weightier, for many I suppose, something better.
William Peter Blatty’s “The Exocist” was just the ticket. A revisit of a work I’d read many moons ago. One boot sale and 50p purchase later I was ready to tackle a work that had transcended the genre and become part of modern classic literature.
And you know, this book is really very good. Very very good, in fact. Blatty’s writing is simply superb, his characterisation rich and deep, and his sense of the absurd so crystallized, it’s literally frightening. One feels, as you read, that Blatty could turn his enormous writing skills to any subject and he’d be worth reading. This is wonderful stuff, legion in its quality.
But it’s not pulp.
Approaching the Exorcist, or rather in approaching thinking about the novel, I was accosted by the story, the characters, the fine climax that answers enough questions but leaves doubts that strip you of feeling truly in the know. But more, I was struck by two things: this is not pulp; this novel is overcome by the movie.
Why is this not pulp? There are countless pulp possession novels, but what sets this one aside from the rest of them? Many that followed the publication of this book in 1972 have borrowed, stolen, and emulated the formula. The Exorcist came to define this sub-genre, pretty much as James Herbert's The Rats did for animal attack novels.
No, it isn’t the story itself that sets it aside.
I’m not at all sure I have a full answer. One thing that struck me though was what is glibly described as ‘characterisation’. One feels that Blatty will never let the fantastic story he’s writing get in the way of the people. The people are central here, their convictions, their beliefs, their fears, their life away from the Regan and her mother. These people come together to tackle the startling events in the narrative, but they come together as individuals. This seems rare in pulp, because there isn’t enough time. The narrative, the plot, is the purpose, the central thrust. Everything else is secondary (not gone, but diminished).
Fair enough. This isn’t an attack or complaint about pulp. Indeed, it’s why I love it so much. I just wanted to understand why, in the end, The Exorcist is such a good book, and why too many people out there, it’s a better book. It’s not the events, it’s all the things in between the events. Make sense?
Moving forward – the biggest encumbrance to the book is, strangely, the movie. For many people (based on online reviews of the movie and book I’ve been reading) the movie is the real deal, the event, the story. The book comes second, and might even be ignored entirely. Such is the power of cinema, condensing 320 pages of a novel to a two-hour (and a bit) visual extravaganza, it has actually come to consume the original text.
The old saying: “The book is better than the movie” doesn’t seem to ring true for many people. The film has had an impact that surpasses the story itself, it’s a cultural icon of sorts. That’s a good thing – especially for horror cinema that could always do with more icons – but it’s also had the effect of pushing the novel itself onto the back burner a little. Which is a real shame, because the novel has a lot to offer. Novels aren’t movies, or if they are they’re movies for our MINDS rather than our eyes. Blatty gives us so much to work with, it’s a pity to allow a film to colour any of it for us.
But can you set aside a monumental piece of influential cinema entirely? Can you come to the book as though it’s something new? Must there always be a “this is better than that” mentality, rather than simply a “this
and that”?
If you’ve not read the novel then you’ve probably seen the film. Or maybe you’ve managed to miss both. To the readers on this site, and this after all a site about BOOKS, I’d say that if you have missed reading this one, then I highly recommend you grab a copy as soon as possible. At best you’ll be amazed at the quality on show, the extremes of both anger, violence, hate and vileness – as compared to the examination of the soul, of beliefs, of quietness and solitude– that the book contains. It’s extraordinary. At worst it’ll clean your palette for the next round of pulp.
It’s not a bad deal then. You can read the Exorcist and be thoroughly entertained, or you can read it and at the very least get to taste that first beer again when you dig into a new piece of pulp. What a deal.
Blatty’s The Exorcist is an incredible read. Don’t miss out.
