Customer Reviews

Hell

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I liked this book. I had read the New York Times book review and picked up a copy on a whim.

Butler's view of Hell is that it's full of people, almost all people that have ever lived. They're tormented, but not really too much. People occasionally catch on fire or are caught in a flaming sulfurous rain or feel compelled to throw themselves off of a building, but it's still a far cry from a Bosch painting.

Hell in this novel is really about compulsion. Bill Clinton is forced to unzip and wait for any woman to come by, Anne Boleyn is still obsessed with Henry VIII (although nominally she is Hatcher, the protagonist's, girlfriend). J. Edgar Hoover still cross-dresses.

There is very little retribution or punishment in this hell, other than a little Hitler hunting. The punishments that are inflicted on individuals are more psychological and personal than societal.

The main character is a TV anchorman named Hatcher. His job gives him carte blanche to travel around Hell and meet interesting people, with Dick Nixon as his autohomicidal chauffeur, no less. Along the way he discovers that he has free will because Satan cannot read his mind. He then sets out on a quest to reach heaven, loosely aided by Judas Iscariot and Virgil, among others. He sets out to accomplish this by contacting his ex-wives to find out what was wrong with him.

What happens when he achieves his goal is what the book's really about. What is heaven? What is hell? And maybe, just a little bit of what is life? That's the question that the author really tries to poke at, I think, although I'm not sure how successful he really was at that. The ending was a little predictable, IMHO, although where he places the road to heaven is kind of novel.

All in all, a good read with great descriptive passages and a surprisingly strong set of characters, although maybe not so surprising, given that he had all of history to work with. Anyone who likes Vonnegut or Tom Wolfe would probably like this book.

For the record, the Kindle formatting was atrocious, dropping letters all over the page.

There's a line of Baudelaire's that aptly describes Robert Olen Butler's depiction of Hell: "An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom." This isn't to say HELL is a tedious read --- far from it --- but think less fire and brimstone and more the sorrowful regret of Hades, the traumatic everyday reductio ad absurdum.

This is a thoroughly modern Hell --- one that advances with the ages of humanity, a kind of torture for older "denizens" who find themselves increasingly lost in an advancing world. There is TV. There is email. There are traffic jams, which are eternally long. And the sex is always unsatisfying, no matter how hard you try otherwise. This being Hell, every moment of your day is an opportunity for Satan to have his way with you, but his tortures are subtle and mundane. To break up the normal humdrum of Hell, there's the occasional violent physical trauma: Cerberus is rabid and on the loose again, or flaming hail comes down in large enough chunks to burn and shatter your body until it reconstitutes. But whether this is a worse form of torture than hitting your knee on the coffee table every time you walk past it is one of Butler's bemusing unanswered questions.

HELL spares no expense on the living and recently deceased. In the Dantean tradition of gleefully devising tortures for individuals the author doesn't like very much, there's no shortage of historical and recent celebrities, politicians and public figures suffering in unique ways: William Randolph Hearst is reduced to a blogger who can't figure out CAPS LOCK; George W. Bush is the Wile E. Coyote to Bin Laden's Road Runner; Bill Clinton waits in a seedy motel for a girl --- any girl --- who never comes. There's also some odes to Dante's version of Hell: there remains wandering nomads stalking each other while leering. But while in the rather un-PC INFERNO this is the punishment for homosexuality, Butler's Hell assigns this fate to celebrity bloggers, doomed to launch petty barbs at each other for eternity. Unrestrained by a rather limiting nine circles, Butler's Hell is tailor-made to each damned soul, and it becomes increasingly obvious that no souls have escaped Hell's grasp. Religious leaders of all the major faiths repent in vain.

HELL is more atmosphere than anything else. It's detailed but elusive, denying easy categorization or comprehension. Hell has a way of continually escaping our understanding: denizens find their way drawn into tortures they never expected, Satan seems more or less schizophrenic, and the Great Metropolis is an endless grid of streets named Peachtree and Lucky. But it's also one of the most charming views of eternal suffering you're ever likely to read.

The plot concerns a network newscaster, Hatcher McCord, now anchorman for the "Evening News from Hell" (whenever evening decides to show up), who's dating an often-headless Anne Boleyn still attached to her beloved Henry VIII. But Hatcher is more interesting as a vehicle for us to learn about Hell and its carnivalesque practices. McCord is a combined Virgil and Dante: as confused as the rest of us, but still an experienced denizen capable of giving us a complete tour. As a foil-type character, he (rather cynically) shows us how Hell isn't that much different from life: everyone is there, too trapped within their self-torturing minds to recognize the suffering of those around them. Much like Earth, Hell offers oases of horror --- often the horror of self-realization in a desert of the mundane. It's a barbed truth that takes some time to sink in, but once you begin to suspend your disbelief about Butler's Hell, it feels almost self-evident.

Unfortunately this plot is often clumsy and aimless, dropping storylines to pick them up only much later (if at all) and possessing so little continuity as to be too confusing, even for a surreal portrait of the underworld. The satire at times feels overdone. McCord is a charming character, but wouldn't be interesting enough in his own right were he not a foil for the rest of us. But his suffering and attempts at redemption (a rare attempt for the long-suffering, defeated denizens of Hell) are genuine, and HELL rewards its readers with a heartfelt, but not maudlin, conclusion offering a restrained, human form of redemption as the answer to false messiahs and blind faith. There's hope for us, somewhere.

--- Reviewed by Max Falkowitz

This is a good book. It's rare -- a provocative book that raises serious questions but is very entertaining, and even a fast read.

Robert Olen Butler won a Pulitzer Prize for an earlier book, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. He's an excellent writer who writes almost breezily about serious subjects. Here the subject is self-absorption, conscience, guilt, and redemption. The lead character is Hatcher McCord, anchorman for the Evening News from Hell. If that sounds odd, it's representative of how Butler treats life in Hell. It's not just pools of molten sulfur (although it sometimes is) so much as a depressing version of ordinary life, with seemingly everyone who ever lived on Earth gathered to suffer together. At one point, Hatcher and one of his ex-wives sit reflecting on their lives together on Earth and in Hell:

Hatcher thinks: We only hurt each other. "Why are we here?" he says, softly.
"We were always here," she says.

That is the question that Hatcher poses to his on-air interview subjects, including J. Edgar Hoover, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, and even Satan himself -- "Why do you think you're here?" Each, with the exception of Satan, answers with some account of what they have done to deserve being in Hell. But another way to take the question, especially given how much Hell resembles ordinary life, is, "What is my purpose in Hell?" or "What am I here in Hell to do?" That would seem an especially poignant question, given that you will be there forever.

Hatcher is there to escape. Everyone wants to escape from Hell. And Hatcher comes to believe that escape is possible.

The question is what escape would mean. Everyone is in Hell, suffering all together. Where else is there to go? Who would be there? What would Heaven be?

For those of us who have ever wondered what hell is like (or will be like), this book humorously describes best what might lie ahead. The book is well written and easy to read, and has numerous references to historical figures with entertaining insight into their thoughts. As anyone would try to do who found themselves in hell, Hatcher McCord, a popular news anchorman in life, tries to find his way to heaven out of hell. Using his "nose for news" he wends his way through the complicated streets of hell, meeting assorted characters from his past life and from history.

I found this book entertaining for it was funny, scary, insightful, and philosophical. Butler's take on our human condition is accurate and I found this book (ironically) uplifting. If you wish to read fiction apart from the standard story line and one that is especially well written, then this book is for you.

The basic idea of Butler's strange tale of a journalist in Hell (the literal place, not a metaphor for human disasters such as war or polluted cities) is interesting. Hell is an ever evolving place, where the latest technology becomes integral part of the eternal suffering imposed by Satan on his captive souls. (Several scenes feature Richard Nixon as a reckless driver who keeps smashing people's bodies, though of course nobody dies in Hell, so the bodies promptly reconstitute, ready for more pain and suffering.) The main character, a famous journalist, is enrolled by Satan to conduct the evening news show for the "local" television station, but if you think this is the premise for a comedy, you are sorely mistaken. The book is dark and deeply disturbing, even though comedic moments are not entirely absent. The going is initially pretty slow, but things get better and more interesting later on, until several unexpected turns of events take place toward the very end. You'd never suspect why our hero actually ends up preferring Hell to Heaven...

I found the story meandered through scenes, much like you'd find in a movie, but drastically changed pace and threw a massive portion of the plot progression into the final 20%, wherein the ending of the book is rushed down your (or rather, my) throat in an exuberant and unsatisfying way. The storyline was moderately contrived and lacking sufficient detail where it was needed, while drowning in detail (sometimes literally, like in the Titanic scene) in places in which it was not.

A primary attraction of the book was the novelty of the cameos of famous people in hell (certainly more than in a regular Tarantino film). However, too much time was spent regaling their inner thoughts and that facet quickly lost its appeal.

I really could have lived without the political commentary. It was about as subtle as a baseball bat to the face and nearly as well articulated. This agenda, thankfully, subsides quickly and seems to go by the wayside as the author is distracted by the next point in his story.

I felt like there were three voices telling the story in three parts and I'd love to say it was reminiscent of the Divine Comedy (which is just one of the countless allusions), but alas it felt more like the book was written in three long and possibly drug addled sections.

That being said, the plot was enjoyable enough that I finished it with little complaint and less time. The book was moderately clever when it wasn't pandering to the semi-masturbatory whims of literature buffs the world over (which was frequent); I found that the creative interpretations of suffering were sufficiently unusual to make this a book, and indeed a perspective, worth looking at.

I loved this book. Butler has written a modern classic. His vision of Hell is unique and very personal. Everyone is there, in one way or another, much like the Riverworld series by Phillip Jose Farmer.
The main character, Hatcher, is believable, likable, and complex. The story itself is intriguing. The Hell of Butler's vision is very personal for each person there. However, in addition to very personal tortures for everyone, there are generic tortures for the masses, such as the sulfur rain, lake of fire, and so on. Some of the specific tortures are indeed clever, funny, evil, and did I mention funny.

Of course, what would Hell be without Satan. This is a Satan that really cares about getting the tortures just right. An example would be the Civil Servants in Hell. Forced to adopt powder blue Jump Suits, try to imagine J Edgar Hoover and the Bee Gee's as disco dancing servants of the Devil.

A truly inspiring novel, Robert Olen Butler has changed his voice once again. Thought provoking and fun, this Hell is able to be read on many levels.

Books of The Times
News at Styx: Who's Hot in Hades
By JANET MASLIN

HELL

By Robert Olen Butler

The fresh hell described by Robert Olen Butler's new novel is crammed with random celebrities. It is plagued by modern problems like four-hour erections and crashing hard drives. Patrolled by Satan's minions (among them, two of the Bee Gees) dressed in powder-blue jumpsuits, it's filled with bookstores that optimistically open with new owners at every sunrise -- only to go out of business by the end of each day. If the books they can't sell in hell are maddeningly uneven, ever bouncing between passable wit and sophomoric giggles. Mr. Butler's slapdash "Hell" deserves shelf space there.

Mr. Butler, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," treats his newest novelistic conceit as an occasion to toss every possible ingredient into a fanciful hellscape and then let these elements run wild. Confident that some of his denizens of hell are well chosen (the inventor of the restroom hand dryer is there, as are book critics who read too fast and miss a lot), Mr. Butler piles on more and more. He shows no sign of knowing when to stop.

Did this book need J. Edgar Hoover in lipstick? It did not. Hemingway in a white poplin dress? No again. Ike Turner forced to listen to Richard M. Nixon's version of "Proud Mary"? Now that's a little better. And it's just Satanic enough to be worth a laugh and to keep readers trudging through the often barren landscape of Mr. Butler's imaginary underworld.

The main character in "Hell" is Hatcher McCord, who was a famous network anchorman while he was alive. After death Hatcher still retains a certain authority and cachet. Even though hell's television sometimes features nonstop reruns of "The O'Reilly Factor," Hatcher has been recruited to do a series of interviews with famous, damned luminaries, asking each one how he or she wound up in hell.

One prospective interviewee is Satan himself, who seems to like Hatcher enough to mock him and at one point even demands a hug. "I've got father issues," Satan tells Hatcher, continuing, "Oh boo hoo." On this book's scale of witticisms, that counts as one of Mr. Butler's better touches.

Hatcher, who was married three times on earth, is now mired in a weirdly dysfunctional union with Anne Boleyn, the beheaded ex-wife of Henry VIII. In hell Anne wears jeans and a T-shirt with a changing message ("Hell is losing your head," it says at one point) and is able to do anything she likes with her severed head. She can put it on a bookshelf or, in one of the novel's more painfully bawdy scenes, attach it to Hatcher and have it threaten to bite. However hard or bizarrely they try, Hatcher and Anne can't make a satisfying sexual connection and continue to be stuck together yet hellishly disappointed.

Somehow, in the course of Mr. Butler's fever dream of a plot, "Hell" also includes Dante's Beatrice, now a film noir dame contending with Humphrey Bogart, who pines for Lauren Bacall; a chorus of singing cockroaches enamored of the phrase "poopy butt"; Michael Jackson, doing a woefully inadequate job of singing Wagner and consigned to "Everland, the densely populated molester estate on the edge of the city"; Bobby Fischer, playing chess with a computer from Hadassah; Jerry Seinfeld, whose jokes all bomb; and Celine Dion, who just won't quit singing that damn "Titanic" song.

There is also an Automat at which Hatcher finds Judas Iscariot with his 30 pieces of silver (in hell they're nickels) and a cheap motel room in which Bill Clinton waits for some young woman, any young woman, to arrive. Also wandering around: Martin Scorsese, madly frustrated because he doesn't have a camera, and this is "so clearly his kind of town." Both Presidents Bush also put in cameo appearances, as does Dick Cheney, who has a chance to compare notes with Beelzebub, Satan's henchman. Their shared question: How stupid is your boss? "I've spent an awful long time already down a drill hole full of boiling oil," Cheney replies succinctly.

On and on it goes, ever aimlessly. And by the time "Hell" is over, there's only one thing that Mr. Butler has really made clear. It's that he likes this world, with its infinite possibilities and surprises around ever corner. He even likes the grisly dismemberings and reconstitutions whereby hell's denizens can be torn apart over and over again, a cycle that this book plays for mindless laughs.

Hatcher McCord winds up liking hell too. For one thing, almost everyone this newsman ever knew in both his private and professional lives has wound up in the same place, so going to hell must be some kind of occupational hazard. For another, it's cozy. And hell turns out to be a great equalizer. Hitler and his great admirer Leni Riefenstahl ("He had me at `Fellow Germans,' " she recalls) are on the same footing with celebrity bloggers.

As for those bloggers, here's what hell has in store for them: They are eternally saddled with the same cellulite and heavy bling that they used to mock. Now and then Mr. Butler's hell is a nice place to visit after all.

I just finished Larry Niven's "Inferno" and "Hell" seemed like a nice follow up. Unfortunately, Hell wasn't nearly as good as Inferno. The biggest problem with Hell was that it was boring. Don't ask me how an author could make a fiction book about Hell boring, but Butler managed to do it. The protagonist was unrelatable, Lucifer was a joke, and nothing much happens at all.

*SPOILER*

The ONLY reason why I gave this three stars was because of a single premise in the book that I found original and compelling: The idea that EVERYONE who has ever lived actually ends up IN HELL. By the time the protagonist makes his way to Heaven(assuming that really WAS Heaven), he realizes that, as great as heaven is, there's NO ONE ELSE THERE. Making Heaven a worse place to be than Hell.

The question left to the reader, obviously, is what really is Heaven compared to Hell. In this book, Hell was the lesser of two evils - but, wouldn't that ultimately make Hell more of a Heaven? If that's true, then what's the point of striving to obtain a place in Heaven? Or are we humans so flawed that Heaven isn't a possiblity regardless. Interesting stuff to think about...

it's funny, insightful, and thought provoking. It's by no means a thriller though, so those with short attention spans have been warned.