There's so much to say and so much to discuss, but I'm going to keep it somewhat brief, mostly to appease the thousands of fans who read this blog weekly.
First of all, I think Blatty is a fantastic author, and I would say he's probably a literary writer, not genre fiction. His passages were beautifully written for example:
"Keep your god-damned fingers away from my cunt!"
After I read that passage my eyes welled up with tears at the sheer beauty. No, but truly, Blatty had a poetic way about his prose. It was obvious he was an intelligent author.
Second, the mother-daughter relationship was written so well. I absolutely loved Chris's character and I thought, unlike many of the ghost stories we've read this semester that her reactions to the situations were realistic and heart-warming. You could feel the love she had for "Rags" in the pages.
Last night, my seven year old son, along with his five year old brother came downstairs in the middle of the night. I think he may have wet the bed (which I did until I was almost 12...and my dad said, "Your Uncle Ned pissed the bed until he was 14," which I'm not sure is true, but it made me feel better anyways) and my son said, "Something's wrong with my bed," at 4:44 a.m.....I almost shit myself, because I was smack dab in the middle of this book at the time. I was thinking, don't discount this, maybe he's possessed....and then I rolled over and let my wife deal with it. It ended up being a little pee pee, he didn't come down the stairs like a crab later in the morning...phew!
You could tell Blatty did a great amount of research for this book. The medical scenes were fantastic and realistic, and I thought the foreshadowing was well done. "They used to think there were demons....but it's most likely a lesion on the brain, or epilepsy..." I guess that really isn't foreshadowing, but again, I just think it added a great deal of realism, and even though the readers knew it was a possession, in the back of the reader's mind, he put that sliver of doubt in there, like maybe they'd find some kind of reason. It was brilliant.
Another character I loved was Kinderman, the detective. He was so smartly written. As an investigator myself, I thought he was drawn up so well, and again, it showed Blatty's genius.
Rookie interviewers who try to emulate NYPD Blues style interrogations typically fail. Rather than dominating an interview, they typically fail and create hostility, ending in a confrontation. Blatty understood this concept, and his detective reminded me of one of my favorite characters...Columbo. Although viewers may have viewed him as incompetent, he epitomized the actions of a truly dominant interviewer. (Columbo)
He had an ability for returning to the suspect for additional information, and after asking several mundane questions, he'd turn to them and ask "just one more question."
Kinderman showed his skills in building rapport with Chris and Father Karras, his skill, disarming demeanor, and layered questions were fantastic, and a joy to read.
Overall, I think this book was very complex, and there is a reason that it still resonates with people 40 years later.
I saw the movie when I was 21, and it is the scariest thing I've ever seen. I had just returned to my parents after six weeks of Marine Corps OCS, and I thought I was kind of tough. (Young and dumb) That night, I slept in my parents room, scared out of my mind. I didn't think the book was quite as scary, but I think it's because I'm a visual guy, and movies have a way of scaring me that books can't. Having said that, I enjoy books more, because they have a way of explaining things that movies can't.
No comments:
Post a Comment