Reading 1001 discussion

A dark surrealist long form poem about the misanthropic, evil, and shady anti-hero Maldoror. He is the focus of some of the cantos, and a looming background presence in others. Lurid, repulsive, and metaphysical, it has depictions of murder, pederasty, and sentient “gross and creepy” animals like worms, sharks, bats, etc. It explores themes of being able to express and square with the taboo, as well as encouraging the death of the conventional literature form.

Maldoror himself is kind of fascinatingly morbid and revolting. I’m not sure if I fully understood his raging at people and God, but perhaps it’s due to having expectations of how to live in God’s image (righteously) and how many people live in the façade of that. That is kind of why he is the anti-hero of the story, he embraces the more horrific parts of nature and the human condition in a way most people can’t square with. I’m not sure if the author wanted to celebrate this to the extent Maldoror takes this literally, but it does seem like at the very least he wanted to rage against the artifice of propriety and establishment society and art.

The part with the murder glowworm, and the shark mating were definitely…noteworthy. The end with Mervyn really captivated me too. I’ve read that the glowworm part shows the narrator refusing to kill a woman who represents prostitution- perhaps demonstrating a need to resist the violent urge to destroy the “underpeople” of society.
I like how in the las part the narrative seems to shift towards convention, and then subverts that with how Maldoror deals with Mervyn in the end. This seems to present the reader with a false sense of security in the standard narrative before Maldoror violently destroys that. It feels like the author metaphorically killing the standard literary form to make way for the new and experimental-the way the surrealists also did with art. It plays into rebellion from conformity as a kind of pre-punk statement.

I tend to not be moved in either direction by lurid/uncomfortable content itself, whether I approve or not tends to be based on whether I think it serviced something worth saying or not. I was interested in how this book used it as a way of encouraging challenges the acceptable content or structure of art. Kind of the way a lot early punk bands would say the most ridiculous things possible as a way to challenge the authority and suffocating culture around them, while also challenging the norms about what music was supposed to sound like. If anything, I would put this in opposition to things like Justine by De Sade, who seemed to write what he did out of genuine belief in it (esp given his own history), and with such flatness of the literary form.

I wondered if this was going to be another book from the list that I was bored by because it was just shock (Crash, Justine, etc), but I was really interested in the symbolism, structural innovation, and creativity of the book. I also love how Maldoror is the focus of some of the stories, and just like a looming presence in others- that was neat. I gave it 4 stars and would probably keep it on the list.

Great review Amanda. I have little to add.
Unlike other Gothic horror or fantasy books, Maldoror is very grounded in natural imagery and a loving emotional tone toward nature, particularly the ocean, but it is largely a book about rage. Rage against God, religion, rage against mankind, and rage against the expectations inherent in contemporary art and literature. Maldoror is sometimes the instigator of the violent action and sometimes is only an observer of this action. He is shown to be a beautiful and elegant young man, an old and pestilent relic of a human being, and even in one scene, something that has essentially become an inorganic object. Often, we only see Maldoror watching a scene or influencing a scene by his evil presence but not actually being a part of the action. He is also not predictably and completely evil. There were times he saved a victim of another's wrath, like when he saved the hanging man from his own mother and wife.
Like Amanda, I enjoyed the shifting nature of our main character and that shift being a central aspect of the book, very much.
The violence was often so clearly symbolic that it was not difficult to read. However, at other times, the visual clarity in which we see sharks feasting on sailors, the scalping of a faired hair young man, or grabbing Mervyn when he looked up to see his "savior" and throwing him in a sack, was quite impactful.
I also gave it 4 stars.

Rating: 3 stars


This is a difficult one to rate. I think it is pure genius in a lot of aspects, but I found it too gruesome and repelling to really enjoy. So, enjoyment would be a 2 and literary merit a solid 4.

Overall, I appreciated the heavy symbolism and innovativeness.

*** 1/2

Definitely not a walk in the park for the uninitiated. Heavily influenced by Baudelaire, full of symbolism and allegory, foretelling the Decadent and Surrealist movements (hello sewing machine and umbrella!), this piece of poetry in prose explores the depths of evil through six chants, the last one being more a synthesis in fiction of the previous five. If I were to create a soundtrack for this book, it would probably be a mash up of The Cure's Pornography, the last two EPs of Birthday Party (Nick Cave; Bad Seed and Mutiny) and Nine Inch Nails' Downward Spiral. It feels heavy and gruesome at times, but it is extremely well written. It's a wonder that it took at least 25 years after its first edition to be noticed at all by the literary world. One also wonders how the author's style would have developed had he survived longer than two years after this first opus.