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Melmoth the Wanderer (Penguin Classics)

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Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a brilliantly constructed work of gothic fiction. One hundred years after Jonathan Swift, Maturin takes up his Irish predecessor's gift for harsh, even malevolent satire against any and all offenders - organized religion, government, lovers, warriors - even making broad, devastating comments on humanity in general. Maturin and his characters are quick to point out that this is not 'Radcliffe-romance' gothic, in the direct style of works like "The Mysteries of Udolpho". They are right. Rather than the seemingly landscape-obsessed, rationalistic Radcliffe, Maturin takes his direct gothic influences from the claustrophobic psychological terrors of Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Lewis' "The Monk," and M.W. Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Unlike "The Monk," however, Maturin's novel does not rely heavily on Lewis' supernatural machinery (ghosts, demons, bleeding nuns, etc.). Instead, he offers several apparently unconnected stories that concentrate on families in desperate straits and individuals in extreme crises, pushing the limits of man's inhumanity to man. The connecting element, the wild card with the wild eyes, that pops up just when the characters most/least need him, is Melmoth the Wanderer.

"Melmoth" also draws heavily from Cervantes' "Don Quixote," which provides a great point of comparison for the main character. Where Don Quixote was a wandering knight, pledged to help the helpless, Melmoth is a wandering agent of evil, whose mission is to prey on the helpless. Melmoth has 150 years to tempt the indigent and desperate into selling their souls for wealth, power, or simple relief, and trading places with him.

Again looking backward to "Quixote" and forward to Stoker's "Dracula," "Melmoth" is also heavily concerned with it's own construction as a text. The various stories are pieced together by eyewitnesses, interviewers, and ancient manuscripts, often at several removes from their originals. There is even one gentleman in the novel who is collecting material to write a book about Melmoth the Wanderer.

This is not a book for everyone. Maturin often provides almost excessively long preludes before any action occurs in his nested narratives. The traumas he inflicts on Melmoth's targets can drive you to the point of insanity yourself. However, if you are a admirer of the psychological thriller without all the show of your standard gothic-terror text, "Melmoth the Wanderer" is sure to keep you busy for days, if not weeks.

Written by a man who assumed his brother's debts and apparently went out of his mind trying to write himself out from under this monetary burden; a man who wore a wafer pasted to the center of his forehead while writing, and who fancied the ballroom and dancing just as much (or maybe more) than the pulpet;--Melmoth the Wanderer is simply the oddest and most delicious concoction of mad prose this side of Abiezzar Cope. The story is a vertiginously creaky assemblage of vignettes that spiral in and out of each other in a bewildering--and sometimes belabored--manner. We often wish we could rip out 50 or so pages of purple prose here and there and throw them into the mouths of the nearest BLACK DOGS from Hades, but we must restrain ourselves enough to follow Melmoth (the chuckling friend--or should we say fiend?--of John Dee and Edward Kelly it turns out)--to his ultimate damnation. Scattered throughout the text are poppies of arcane lore--the very kind of volume that Poe would have had in his hands when the Raven came tapping at his chamber door! Not only did Poe love this book, but so did Doestoyevsky, Balzac, Lautreamont, Oscar Wilde, Scott, and hoards of other literary greats! Hey--add your name to the list!

Published in 1820, Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is usually named as the last of the Gothic novels. Gothic here implies the incorporation of Burke's elements of the "sublime", wherein terror and sorrow invoke in the reader a heightened sense of empathy with the events unfolding in the narrative. Maturin pulls out all the stops of his time in creating situations of hopelessness, fear, and both religous and social sadism. Melmoth himself has sold his soul to the devil (will these people *never* learn? ;-) and attempts over the course of scores of years to find someone so desperate that they will take this "bargain" off his hands before the devil comes for his due. The novel is constructed of tales-within-tales, depicting the awful conditions the people Melmoth seeks out find themselves in. For example, the "Tale of the Spaniard" is told by a prisoner of the Inquisition (although this tedious tale takes over 120 pages to even GET to the Inquisition), whose life is still not so horrible that he would willingly trade place with the wandering Melmoth. The narrative is infuriatingly slow and convoluted, and only a perseverance surpassing the average will reward the patient reader with the creation of atmosphere that keeps this book on the "must read" list of true afficiandos of the supernatural. A minor note: Patrick O'Brian pays tribute to the author by naming one of contemporary literature's most well-known characters after him: half of the "Aubrey/Maturin" team of O'Brian's 19th-century novels of naval warfare.

"Melmoth the Wanderer" is a tour de force of Gothicism, however, the psychological profundity of each character distinguishes this novel from typical examples of the genre. The multi-layered narrative, while occasionally confusing, is worth the concentration as Maturin weaves a complex and gripping tale. Of particular interest is the Tale of the Indian, which is concerned with the influence of Melmoth over Immalee, an innocent girl, alone on an Indian island. The description of her innocence is magnificent in its simplicity and effectiveness. An absolutely astounding, challenging and exciting book.

Maturin's novel relates the story of Melmoth, a scholar who traded his soul to Infernal powers in return for answers to all of his questions about the Universe. He has 100 extra years to live; in that time, if he can find someone to volunteer to take his place in Hell, he is free. Otherwise, at the end of the 100 years, Melmoth will be damned.

Melmoth the Wanderer is a Gothic novel in the highest tradition of the Romantic period. It's structure, however, makes it unique. It folds in upon itself, beginning with the present and ending with the future, but somewhere in between moving progressively backwards as the narrator tries to unlock the secrets of Melmoth's life, just as Melmoth tried to unlock the secrets of the Universe.

The characters, Melmoth, Emmalee, the many Jews who help Melmoth, are beautifully written and engaging. The novel is worth reading for Maturin's virtuoso touch with structure alone, but also for the wonderful touches and passages, particularly where Melmoth struggles with his conscience and reveals that even fiends have a soul. The novel questions what it means to search for knowledge, to have a family, to be in love, and to accept responsibility for your own fate. Melmoth the Wanderer asks questions about why mercy is so hard to find, why supposedly pious people often cause the most suffering, and what it might take to redeem a minion of Hell. An ambiguous ending caps off the novel and allows you to answer these questions for yourself.

Among the many Gothic novels of English literature, "Melmoth the Wanderer" would require considerable patience on reader's side. Not that Charles Maturin's book is very boring; each of the stories in the long narrative per se is interesting, often intense and even funny. But unlike Gothic novels written by Ann Radcliffe or Matthew `Monk' Lewis, the book's unique narrative method is not for everyone's taste. In short, it never goes straight. Maturin gave the book this title -- `Melmoth the WANDERER" -- and his title is an apt one..

The novel (published in 1820) begins with an episode in 1816 when a young student John Melmoth (not the titular Melmoth) visits his dying uncle, and there he finds a manuscript in which a strange tale is recorded about one Stanton who lived in 17th century London. You might expect the real story begins with this manuscript, but things are not so simple. Maturin gives twists to this typical narrative device by not directly following the story of Melmoth, a man who traded his soul with ... well, you know what.

Unlike Radcliffe's "The Italian," you don't find a traditional, linear narrative here. The manuscript and the other characters narratives after that are frequently interrupted by blotted out spots or another story, which begins without picking up the threads of previous narrators. The book looks like pieces of stories put together like "The Arabian Nights," and you have to wait for Melmoth who always appears at the crucial moment of the life of the narrator or the protagonist of the narrative.

So we read terrifying stories about the shipwreck, Spanish Inquisition, impoverished family in Madrid or Immalee, beautiful innocent girl living alone in India, but of them are directly related to each other except the presence of mysterious Melmoth who offers something to those who suffer. Some stories are embedded in another story and at times you are reading a story-within-story-within-story (like Jan Potocki's amazing "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.") The narrative structure is not an easy one to grasp and sometimes we don't know where we are now. But that is exactly the point of the book.

The character of Melmoth is also very enigmatic. He is given many chances to speak, and he speaks pretty much, but what happened to him or why he has to wander is not explicitly told by anyone. He doesn't speak, but whisper evil words. He remains in the shadow, but we sense his accursed presence. We come to know him by putting together various narratives. The process is toilsome, but rewarding in the end.

There are familiar Gothic themes in "Melmoth the Wonderer" - Inquisition, subterranean passages, imprisonment, etc. Maturin is good at using them, but his book's strength lies in the gripping descriptions of dark sides of humans, and the character of wild-eyed Melmoth who derides and tempts the hearers in agony with a sinister voice. If you're interested in Gothic novels and characters like Faust, "Melmoth the Wonderer" would not disappoint you.

Let's dispense with the formalities. Melmoth the Wanderer is a really long, really verbose book. However, it is a MASTERPIECE of gothic literature. Its best parts (and there are many) surpass Poe's nightmarish tales for sheer paranoia and fear, but the inordinate amount of time Maturin takes to reach the next denoument in the story took away from my overall perception of the novel. Very long, and gothic to the point of absurdity. (you'll love it!)

I am new to Gothic literature. I recently read "The Monk," and enjoyed it so much I decided to try some more. I liked "Dracula" but Radcliffe's sobbing Emily in the "Mysteries of Uldopho" left me cold. So I tried the Melmoth. This book has everything. It stars Melmoth the Wanderer who made a deal with the devil and wanders the earth looking for someone to take the bargain off his hands. The protestant anti-catholicism that runs through the Monk is twice as entertaining in Melmoth as in "The Monk" and the depictions of depraved clergy are even better. Some of Melmoth's screeds against, Catholicism, Christianity itself, and all human endeavor sounded too sincere for me to believe that it didn't come from some dark place in the heart of the apparently religious author.

I thought the nested stories would annoy me, but they didn't. The stories are not hard to follow, although as others have noted, Maturin can go on a bit. They say this is the last of the Gothic novels. I can see why. Melmoth killed the genre. After Melmoth, there was nothing left to say.

This book is not for the faint of intellect. It is the most challenging book I have ever read. I never thought I'd ever read a more difficult book than "War and Peace" but it was a breeze when compared to Maturin's heavily laced oblique referencing and sub-sub-subplots. This took me a year to read because each chapter would leave me feeling dizzy in trying to comprehend the storyline. The book wasn't at all what I had expected (a linear Gothic thriller). Nevertheless, the book was the most edifying experience I've had in reading a fictional novel. Maturin takes you to the Spanish Inquisition, the Great Fire of London, the craggy shores of Ireland, and to remote desert islands. At the same time he tells you an extensive history of each time and situation. I wish that more horror authors were as dedicated as him in creating eccentrically elaborate plots with extensive research invested into the story. Maturin's research makes the novel incredibly rich in realism and his characters are very believable. My only complaint with the Penguin edition is the thick section of explanatory notes at the end of the novel. I like to get as much as I can out of the text by reading commentary and notes but it was annoying how many times I had to flip back to the 50 page section of notes. Most of the references I didn't really care about or see how they were relevant to understanding the storyline. I can understand why some of the references are there, but for the layman they are mostly unnecessary. Read the references if you're the "scholarly type", otherwise skip them. This book is a challenge. Read it if you like challenging plots. Don't feel bad if Maturin's narrative makes you sleepy. This is far from a page turner. It is a thriller, and terrifying, but not while you read it. It will sink in on a subconscious level and will linger with you for years, even if it takes you years to finish.

I found the introduction extremely informative and helpful, and well structured with "chapter headings". Sage's learned and informative frequent footnotes are also extremely helpful at all times, the fruit of his own extensive research into this landmark work, the motherlode of so much that follows up to our fallen post-literate times.

From the start you can see the heavy influence this work had on so many later Irish and English novelists, and yet the author died in grinding poverty and rejection (hey, so did Joyce and other IRish novelists who CREATE a new form of writing).

It is amazing to read this novel and see how very much Maturin influenced so many other supposedly more modern writers, and what a delightful and complex writer he is. You will not put this enormous book down. It is a joy and a fiery flame. It has much to say about how our institutions, including religious, kill, and even speaks to the current fashionable dehumanization of Islam.

An amazingly brilliant and "modern" work only two hundred years old and still living large and hard! Looks like this novel made the same deal with the devil! I only wish his other brilliant works, like the Wild Irish Boy trilogy were still available, and Bertram at an affordable price