Customer Reviews

Hogg: A Novel

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

 

 

yet he seems to be giving accolades to most everything these days so we'll discard that.

I view it as an endurance test that is heavily laced with black humor. Yes, it is a sign of the times and a reflection of the cutlture that produced it, yet Delany knew this would be said of the work when he was writing it. Next. We have four paid-for-hire rapists that committ any and all acts within the slim volume. By the end we have a serial killing spree that blows Ellis' AMERICAN PSYCHO clean out of the water. In between we witness a character urinating upon another's leg. When the latter inquires what the formering is doing, he replies, "Pissin' on ya' knee." Simple enough. This along with the title character going throughout the course of most of the novel with only one shoe--remember he's involved with vile killings, heavy ethical philosophizing, and sodomistic acts.

To end, I must quote the librarian whom I returned the text: "It's like a car wreck, you can't help but look," as she flips through the pages while eating a candy bar.

A literary professor declared it the most shocking book of the 20th century. Another amazon reviewer claims it blew American Psycho clean out of the water. Those high praises persuaded me to include it on the recommended list, and after reading the book, i must say that Samuel Delany is a great writer, for his meticulous attention to detail firmly establishes a powerful, stylish narrative that is also very flat and cold, almost dispassionate and quite amoral. While the book is truly moral, for it does consistently test the conditions of morality, it does not demand a moral judgment from the reader, because the true testament of a writer's skill is the ability to present a story without prejudging it for the reader.

The book itself is, in a word, relentless: it spares nothing in its brutal portrayal of a nameless, silent, 11 year old protagonist whose experiences with the scum of the earth (pedophiles, rapists-for-hire, crooked cops, remorseless pimps) illustrate the unsightly underbelly of our culture. The boy's silence signifies his powerlessness, yet however, it is not a symptom for those without power demonstrate their rebellion by a complete refusal to speak.

In essence, if i am permitted to espouse essentialist overtones, the book is little more than a love story, where the man meets the boy, falls in love, loses the boy, and finds him again. And this 'man' is Hogg, a disgusting sadistic misogynist whose articulate insights belie his apparent one-dimensional raison d'etre. Hogg is the "nightmarish Other" who embodies the irrational truths of the world.

This is, without a doubt, Delaney's greatest sexual work. It is hard to say whether it surpasses Dhalgren, which is probably going to be remembered as his best and probably is, but Hogg, overall, is the purest expression of his exquisite sadean heart. If you liked The 120 Days of Sodom, then you will love this!!!

Well, I first heard about Hogg via a friend, during a discussion about the Anne Rice "Sleeping Beauty Trilogy". If you thought SBT was extreme, nothing quite prepares you for reading Hogg. I was disgusted with the characters, but felt that he did a good job in portraying their personalities in a very direct and unapologetic way. I was fascinated by the extreme violence and sex, and by how such a story could be told in such graphic detail. It's an excellent example of story telling....but definitely not for the sexually weak of heart or sensitive.

This book goes far beyond anything I have ever read by Delany. It deals with the issue of pedophilia in a very graphic and disturbing way. Knowing that not everyone is aware of of the inclinations of the author, it might be fair to warn readers that unless they have a fairly strong stomache, they should pass this book by. It isn't that he deals with a new concept here, he has used this imagery before in books like Equinox, and the Neveryon series, but that he concentrates the whole of this book on it. I buy anything that I can find by him, but would say this is only for that singular researcher trying to complete some project related to Delany's life. TRY SOMETHING ELSE!

was completely drained by the end of this novel. One must posses incredible psychic strength (no not Jean Grey strength {she was kind of weak anyway], but the strength of mind to be able to handle radical information) to simply process the level of detail Delany goes into. This book was randomly thrown my way as a recommendation and I thought "I read Palahniuk's 'Guts' without fainting, I can handle anything." While I may not have fainted during "Hogg", I could not keep from squirming through every brown stained scene.

But I never stopped

The reader becomes so horrified that it begs for more attention. I found myself getting bored when there wasn't a rape going on because when the mind gets that enveloped in such bizarre scenes (The girl in a wheelchair....really?!?), everything else is just noise. Books rarely have such profound effects on me, but "Hogg" is one I will never forget. While I may not recommend it to every reader, I really want to talk about it with someone. Like returning from war, I just want to swap stories. Hmm, maybe swap isn't the right word....

A story involving some of the most depraved things an individual could think, let along write about. Luckily, it's fiction. What it is, I believe, is a statement about censorship, about what "right" and "wrong" means in American culture. Near the end, you will wondering who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist. As it turns out, not everything is so black and white.

This book took so very long to get published that I admire DeLaney's perseverance. Though it describes pure filth, it is definitely an addition to the literary world in that it explores the boundaries of good and evil in a way that a less filthy novel couldn't.

I immediately like a person more upon finding that they've read Hogg. Mostly because if you start it, you might not want to finish it, so finishing it is like finishing a long marathon that you never wanted to do in the first place, but you know you'll be a better person afterward.

This book is definitely not for the average person. ABSOLUTELY NOT for anyone that has had recent trauma, especially any trauma involving incest, rape, gang rape, child molestation, daddy issues... you get the idea. Big trigger warning, folks.

I read Hogg in two sittings at Perkins here in Ames, IA. During the first, a friend sat where she could see me as I read. I kept distracting her with my reactions: most often a look of disgust "as if maggots were crawling out of your book". But occasionally there were those incredibly funny parts...whether intentional or not, generally bits of extreme understatement ("really unhappy" indeed).

In Hogg, you are taken on a journey by another of Delany's silent-observer characters, through the life and times of a rapist-for-hire, Hogg. Hogg lives up to his name, rolling in literal filth whenever possible. In thinking about it now, I'm giving myself occasional heebie-jeebies, but it really isn't any worse than whan you can find on the usenet binaries hierarchy. In fact, I don't recall a single act of bestiality in the book, so Delany really has some more area to work with.

I enjoyed the gross-out factor, I admit. As well, it helps add some more flesh to the subjects that Delany works with. It also explores the regions that many people don't even want to admit exist, let alone think, read, or talk about. For that reason I'd recommend it to anyone with the note that it is not for those uncomfortable with sex at it's most perverse.

Lewd. Lascivious.Vile.Depraved.Graphic rape and violence. This book has it all! The characters are literally filthy, dirty and without one lick of guilty conscience or decent thought in their head! Every act of sexuallity is graphically described in this book except beastiality! Every page has either rape, torture, sodomy or incest. The main character Hogg has not one redeeming feature even going to the point of never changing his clothes even though he deficates and urinates in them. This books is extremely grahpic and [...] to the nth degree! Yet the story moves along smoothy and quickly. Some pages made me gag (eating snot) yet I had to keep on reading! It was fascinating!

Delany is known for his sci-fi/fantasy novels. "Hogg" is about as realistic. In it, a slovenly man (the titular Hogg) is a rapist-for-hire, and he drags around our narrator, a silent 11 year old, from one vile crime to the next, all the while repeatedly having sex with him. His cohorts -- an Italian man and a black man, who are normally referred to only by their race -- tag along raping, killing and having sex with the narrator too. Everyone that exists in this strange world 1) is extremely violent and commits acts of violence without hesitation, 2) has sex with children of both genders, 3) engages, or has engaged, in incest, 4) has a penchant for scatology.

Even the sex in this book seems unrealistic -- like something someone who's never had sex might write.

But more than anything, this novel is just boring. Dreadfully, maddeningly, intensely BORING. The depravity is so redundant it makes your eyes glaze over.

We never even scratch the surface of who these evil men are. We hear more of their genitals than what makes them do these things. Delany never once stops to bring us into his characters' minds. What motivates them? What allows them to rape and kill unremittingly and not even have a pang of guilt?

Much has been made about how "Hogg" was an "unpublishable" novel. You would assume this was because of its content, but I truly believe it was simply because the book is so gravely dull. If you read one paragraph of the book, you don't need to read anything else. It is that repetitive.

Since Delany never bothers to delve even briefly into the reason his characters are who they are, and do the things they do, it leaves the novel as basically violent scenes of rape strung together randomly. Ultimately, what is Delany saying about violence in our society and the exploitation of children? Is he saying anything at all? He doesn't seem to be.

The fact that this novel has managed to generate a certain respect and renown, and be taken seriously, isn't exactly surprising. It's been proven more than once that if you clog something with sadistic, repulsive sexual acts people will find it profound. But as it exists, with no insight into its characters and absolutely nothing beneath its grimy surface, "Hogg" is nothing more than lazily and obtusely written rape-porn.