Charles Robert Maturin
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
The Wandering Narratives 2 out of 5 stars.
9 of 24 people found this review helpful.
Simply put, this book is a tedious, crashing bore. It might do as an example of how NOT to write a book, but there is really no redeeming value otherwise.
The greatest problem with the work is the "nested" narratives, as one reviewer refers to them, that comprise the book. First, a shipwrecked ex-monk begins to tell Melmoth's descendent his (long, tedious, uninteresting) story. Then, fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition and hiding in an underground series of caverns, he begins to translate a book. The narrative then shifts to said book, where we begin the "Tale of The Indians". In the middle (more or less) of this tale the narrative shifts once again to Melmoth The Wanderer himself who tells the story of "The Guzman Family" and "The lovers' tale". Finally, the "Tale of the Indians" reaches its conclusion after these drawn-out interruptions. Subsequently-you guessed it-the narrative shifts again (it's not clear at this point if it's back to the book (which is never mentioned again) or to the narrative of the ex-monk. Then, we have a sort of anticlimactic conclusion. The great problem in all these narratives is that the authorial voice NEVER CHANGES, not one scintilla. It's still Marturin telling the tale, without even an attempt to alter the style or voice of the telling to the series of changing raconteurs.
Marturin supposedly started this work as an extension of a sermon he preached. I think that is the only way to understand it or appreciate it, (if you're given to such things) as an anti-Catholic, anti-free-thinking screed against all who aren't devout (non-Catholic) Christians. If you truly believe in the Lake of Fire and the damnation of souls for pursuing knowledge.- Instead of seated on a prayer stool, where one obviously ought to be-this is the book for you.-Heretics need not apply---Otherwise, for the sane reader, a colossal waste of time and attention.
Let me aver here (and commend to same sane reader) that the truly great and classic novel of this sort is James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: A truly eerie account of religious obsession, with profound and haunting psychological/spiritual insight, that will leave even the most modern reader chilled and thoughtful.
Editorial Review:
Part Faust, part Mephistopheles, Melmoth has made a satanic bargain for immortality. Now he wanders the earth, an outsider with an eerie, tortured existence, searching for someone who will take on his contract and release him to die a natural death.
With its erudition and wit, and its parody of arcane learned manuscripts, this Gothic masterpiece-first published in 1820-follows in the tradition of both the classics of its genre and the works of Cervantes, Swift, and Sterne. Some of its many admirers were Sir Walter Scott, Honoré de Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe, and Maturin's great nephew, Oscar Wilde. This edition includes a critical introduction, explanatory notes, and suggestions for further reading.
