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The Devil Never Sleeps: and Other Essays
The Devil is alive and well and living in America, Andrei Codrescu tells us, and with good reason. Nowhere else in the world--not even in Codrescu's native Transylvania--is he taken quite as seriously. When Codrescu gently derided the fundamentalist Christian belief in Rapture ("a pre-apocalyptic event during which all true believers would be suctioned off to heaven in a single woosh") in one of his commentaries on National Public, NPR received forty thousand letters in a protest spearheaded by Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. Codrescu was warned to "stay away from eschatology."
Thankfully for us, he hasn't. In The Devil Never Sleeps , one of America's shrewdest social critics sets out to uncover the Devil's most modern and insidiously banal incarnations. Once easily recognizable by his horns, tail, and propensity for plague, today's Devil has become embedded in every fiber of our culture. Discussing everything from rock 'n' roll to William Burroughs to New Orleans bars to the Demon of Prosperity, Codrescu mockingly unmasks Old Nick as the opportunistic technocrat he really is. Embracing cell phones, cable access, and cyberspace, the ubiquitous Devil of secular culture embodies the true evil facing us today--banality.
In a world teeming with distractions, we are still more than capable of being bored to death. Tormented as much by insomnia and its ravages as the Devil (perhaps they are one and the same), we've become as twenty-four-hour society, swinging desperately between tedium and terror and sleeping fitfully, if at all. As Codrescu points out, the Devil never sleeps because we just won't let him.
With his characteristic charm and playful exuberance, Andrei Codrescu has successfully teased the Devil out from the darkest recesses and comic excesses of the human experience. The Devil Never Sleeps is his most wonderfully perverse book yet.
Thankfully for us, he hasn't. In The Devil Never Sleeps , one of America's shrewdest social critics sets out to uncover the Devil's most modern and insidiously banal incarnations. Once easily recognizable by his horns, tail, and propensity for plague, today's Devil has become embedded in every fiber of our culture. Discussing everything from rock 'n' roll to William Burroughs to New Orleans bars to the Demon of Prosperity, Codrescu mockingly unmasks Old Nick as the opportunistic technocrat he really is. Embracing cell phones, cable access, and cyberspace, the ubiquitous Devil of secular culture embodies the true evil facing us today--banality.
In a world teeming with distractions, we are still more than capable of being bored to death. Tormented as much by insomnia and its ravages as the Devil (perhaps they are one and the same), we've become as twenty-four-hour society, swinging desperately between tedium and terror and sleeping fitfully, if at all. As Codrescu points out, the Devil never sleeps because we just won't let him.
With his characteristic charm and playful exuberance, Andrei Codrescu has successfully teased the Devil out from the darkest recesses and comic excesses of the human experience. The Devil Never Sleeps is his most wonderfully perverse book yet.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2000
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55 people want to read
About the author
Andrei Codrescu
162 books151 followersAndrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, and NPR commentator. His many books include Whatever Gets You through the Night, The Postmodern Dada Guide, and The Poetry Lesson. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 18, 2011
Reading Codrescu's collections actually slowed my pace and gave me a different kind of peace for thinking. Generally I look to stimulation for thought from good stimulants like coffee or Coltrane. Instead, I lay, reclined on my sofa, with July heat of Chicago spilling between my linguine window blinds. I thought about all of the things I'd like to do and the people I'd like to see. For a moment, the oppression of summer heat didn't keep me down, and I managed to enjoy the passing of the late afternoon. Maybe some of the inspiration came from noticing that despite the inhumane weather that Codrescu endures by living in the endlessly decaying New Orleans, he creates incredibly fresh and incisive writing.
Like New Orleans, Codrescu celebrates celebration. He believes art is for celebrating life. For love and writing and drinks and companions and walks and old buildings.
But, celebrating art also means to speak up and speak out--to defend and to fight. He praises the San Francisco poet laureate for delivering a critique of the city at the city's event to crown him. And he supports the "poetic terrorism" of the “Assault Poetry Unit" who delivered a variety of aesthetic demands to the New Orleans newspaper, among which that local police occasionally recite poetry. He joins a famous Russian poet who is disgusted by literati at a party who are more concerned with socializing than to respond to the recent news of Rabin’s assassination. For Codrescu, art has a purpose. Even his most poetic musings are mixed with cultural commentary, or opinion, at least:
“For myself, the pleasure of eating in an old restaurant is intimately linked to the comfort of death. “Ah,” I think to myself at Antoine’s, or Commander’s Palace, or any of the grand establishments, “One hundred years a go a man sat where I sit now, had a fine meal, and died.” This makes me inexpressibly happy. I feel that my pleasure is authorized by continuity, that it is not ephemeral the way it is in all those horrid, brand-spanking-new, automobile-riddled, and soulless clusters that pass for cities in America” (37)
Codrescu is just as strong when he leaves poetic musings and delves straight into personal essays about his Romanian homeland and the Soviet experience which read like Harper’s journalism:
“In 1989 the official narcotic ideology that went by the name ‘socialism’ was officially kaput, but the people who had been in charge were not kaput at all. Their way to hold on to power was to remind people of the undying hatred they once felt for their neighbors. Suddenly, all those sentimental songs and nasty ditties recording all the slights suffered throughout history at the hands of people with whom they had gotten along just fine for about forty years, bubbled up and started intoxicating everybody with the bittersweet juice of eternal victimization” (129).
In Codrescu’s eyes, the artist has a role here, too, which he states explicitly: “We are no longer living in the era of the Cold War. How is it possible for some politicians to revive racism by using coes like ‘crime’ ad ‘IQ’ to mean race? Racial purity is a myth. It is an artist’s job to expose and subvert these insidious codes, as well as to thoroughly mix the palette” (174).
Published in 2000, reading The Devil Never Sleeps is like reading the 1990s. Codrescu rails against prosperity-induced complacency, that seems so distant in our recession-induced politicization and polarization. There are references to Seattle, the quintessential city of the 90s, Bill Gates, the 90’s celebrity, AOL, and the use of the prefix “cyber,” perhaps the prefix of the 90s. But only in the topical territory of the Internet does the datedness of the book interfere with Codrescu’s keen observation.
Like New Orleans, Codrescu celebrates celebration. He believes art is for celebrating life. For love and writing and drinks and companions and walks and old buildings.
But, celebrating art also means to speak up and speak out--to defend and to fight. He praises the San Francisco poet laureate for delivering a critique of the city at the city's event to crown him. And he supports the "poetic terrorism" of the “Assault Poetry Unit" who delivered a variety of aesthetic demands to the New Orleans newspaper, among which that local police occasionally recite poetry. He joins a famous Russian poet who is disgusted by literati at a party who are more concerned with socializing than to respond to the recent news of Rabin’s assassination. For Codrescu, art has a purpose. Even his most poetic musings are mixed with cultural commentary, or opinion, at least:
“For myself, the pleasure of eating in an old restaurant is intimately linked to the comfort of death. “Ah,” I think to myself at Antoine’s, or Commander’s Palace, or any of the grand establishments, “One hundred years a go a man sat where I sit now, had a fine meal, and died.” This makes me inexpressibly happy. I feel that my pleasure is authorized by continuity, that it is not ephemeral the way it is in all those horrid, brand-spanking-new, automobile-riddled, and soulless clusters that pass for cities in America” (37)
Codrescu is just as strong when he leaves poetic musings and delves straight into personal essays about his Romanian homeland and the Soviet experience which read like Harper’s journalism:
“In 1989 the official narcotic ideology that went by the name ‘socialism’ was officially kaput, but the people who had been in charge were not kaput at all. Their way to hold on to power was to remind people of the undying hatred they once felt for their neighbors. Suddenly, all those sentimental songs and nasty ditties recording all the slights suffered throughout history at the hands of people with whom they had gotten along just fine for about forty years, bubbled up and started intoxicating everybody with the bittersweet juice of eternal victimization” (129).
In Codrescu’s eyes, the artist has a role here, too, which he states explicitly: “We are no longer living in the era of the Cold War. How is it possible for some politicians to revive racism by using coes like ‘crime’ ad ‘IQ’ to mean race? Racial purity is a myth. It is an artist’s job to expose and subvert these insidious codes, as well as to thoroughly mix the palette” (174).
Published in 2000, reading The Devil Never Sleeps is like reading the 1990s. Codrescu rails against prosperity-induced complacency, that seems so distant in our recession-induced politicization and polarization. There are references to Seattle, the quintessential city of the 90s, Bill Gates, the 90’s celebrity, AOL, and the use of the prefix “cyber,” perhaps the prefix of the 90s. But only in the topical territory of the Internet does the datedness of the book interfere with Codrescu’s keen observation.
February 27, 2011
When the essays are good, they are amazingly good. When they are not, it is slow going. I felt the distinction usually rested on whether or not Codrescu had an explicit point. The writing is always great, but the pointless great writing is tiresome. I really enjoyed "Tolerance, Intolerance, Europe, & America".
my favorite quote: "The problem with it is that it left out the one unpredictable element that usually renders nonsensical the best theories, namely, people's deep-seated and emotionally unassailable stupidity."
my favorite quote: "The problem with it is that it left out the one unpredictable element that usually renders nonsensical the best theories, namely, people's deep-seated and emotionally unassailable stupidity."
January 24, 2012
I had read a book of his essays several years ago as a freshman in college. I remember enjoying them.
Codrescu is a good writer and even if you disagree with him in his conclusions, you can appreciate the skills he has as a writer. He's especially interesting when he is observing small details and will often give surprising and thoughtful opinions.
His main strength is his ability to go from factual tone to a sort of off-beat, lyrical one. He can do both well and really shines in the latter. (But I tend to like overdramatic and overblown writing anyway.)
Codrescu is a good writer and even if you disagree with him in his conclusions, you can appreciate the skills he has as a writer. He's especially interesting when he is observing small details and will often give surprising and thoughtful opinions.
His main strength is his ability to go from factual tone to a sort of off-beat, lyrical one. He can do both well and really shines in the latter. (But I tend to like overdramatic and overblown writing anyway.)
July 29, 2008
The essays in this book were quite interesting. However, I cannot recall any of them and am not even sure I finished the book. I do remember being impressed with what I'd read and I would like to read more....
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews