Satyr

by Robert DeMaria

Our hero says, "I am a bachelor and may remain one as long as my mother is alive. It is impending marriage, in fact, that has brought the entire situation to a head. My mother objects vigorously, and when my mother objects vigorously to anything, it is like a nameless and invisible plague visited upon the land. You know it is killing you, but you can't describe exactly how it is being done."

Mass Market Paperback

First published August 28, 1972

About the author

Robert DeMaria was a novelist, editor, and educator known for his work in fiction and literary publishing. He taught at the University of Oregon, Hofstra College, and Dowling College, and served as editor for Macmillan and Dean of Faculty at the New School for Social Research. His novels include A Carnival of Angels (1961), Clodia (1965), and Don Juan in Lourdes (1966). In 1964 he relocated to Deia, Mallorca, where he founded the Mediterranean Institute and the Mediterranean Review, fostering connections with prominent writers.

Reviews

[rndgmoat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that, while unmistakably a product of its era, I still very much enjoyed despite a few flat patches.

This was a random used bookstore find. I'd never heard of DeMaria and bought this based solely on the cover and title, assuming it must be some kind of early horror fiction. I was wrong. DeMaria, as it turns out, is actually something of a real and respectable author and professor; my googling reveals a connection to Anthony Burgess and a multi-decade career covering many different genres including literary fiction, thrillers, and historical fiction.

This book, published in 1972, is very much a book that could only have been produced and sold (at Target, according to the stickers in the back of my edition) in that era. Like many books written by intelligent young men in that era of newfound sexual expressiveness, it is a book about a literate man's sex life. Marc, the main character, is a 35 year old suspended in a kind of permanent adolescence. He's a child of immense privilege, has a complicated relationship with his mother, works in publishing, and is torn between a conventional marriage and his swinging lifestyle. If you read that description and feel like passing on this, however, I would say hold on! This book is much better than it sounds.

First of all, it has a degree of self-awareness. DeMaria references Portnoy within his own text; his exaggerated take on these emerging tropes could be read as a literary inside joke, a mash-up of Hamlet and Philip Roth. The book is also dark and twisted, with a very black sense of humor. It begins, in fact, with the main character's confession that he has decided to murder his mother, who he blames for maybe killing his father under suspicious circumstances. As we read on, we encounter not only Marc's emerging plot to kill his mother, but also his bizarre fantasies of incest, serial murder, and rape. These are sandwiched alongside efficiently told tales of Marc's sexual conquests, his escalating existential crisis, and some pointed observations about life at the fringes of the 1970s NY literary scene. The general tone, however, remains playful and gleefully transgressive as DeMaria crafts his story of this modern day monster whose only escape, it turns out, might be submergence within the main character's literary invention.

All in all, this is a curious work that, again, while representative of some tropes that might cause modern audiences to roll their eyes, remains readable due largely to its possibly tongue-in-cheek tone and literate playfulness. Sure, maybe a dude-lit novel about a femicidal sex maniac reads poorly for many in 2023. But I kind of think this overcomes these retrospective stumbling blocks and, like I said, is a quick and entertaining read.