Robert Olen Butler will delight Jacksonians on Wednesday, September 30, at 5:30 p.m. when he reads from his new release Hell. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for the short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1993), Butler has accomplished quite a prolific list of published works: eleven novels, five short story collections, and a book on the creative process.
If there is one reading that Lemuria readers should attend this fall, this is it! How many opportunities does a person have to hear a Pulitzer Prize winner read? I really believe that this new release Hell will win another major award!
As this current novel Hell opens, the reader, who just thought he left Virgil and Beatrice in Hell in Dante’s “The Inferno”, is surprised as the two old friends appear again in well known territory. However, this novel is not a continuation of Dante’s classic…..far from it! The protagonist, a nightly news broadcaster named Hatcher McCord, who is a new arrival to Hell, is eager for an interview with the Devil with whom Hatcher will converse about his idea of roaming through Hell to interview celebrities.
There is one question which Hatcher can not seem to answer for himself and one which none of his interviewees can answer either, “Why are you here?” The reader quickly discovers that there is no end to the number of people who make their homes in Hell, and commit, of course, the same sins they were capable of on Earth. Pain and torture know no boundaries, the trick being that author Robert Olen Butler gives the devastation a comic flare. This book is not one, however, for the faint of heart. Explicit descriptions of all sorts of earthly sins appear and are described in x-rated detail, all serving to make the idea drive home: this is Hell, and to be avoided at all costs!
Hatcher’s girlfriend the ever popular beheaded Anne Boleyn, who often misplaces her head, invoking a sense of sadness and ennui when Hatcher arrives home and finds her headless once again, introduces the reader to the comic relief present throughout the novel. In fact, there were very few pages where I was not laughing out loud or reflecting on the incredibly talented use of irony. Some of the people whom Hatcher interviews, including Bill and Hillary, George W. , and Henry VIII, among many others, give both hilarious and mournful interviews, all coordinated by the manager J. Edgar Hoover.
Robert Olen Buter writing Hell
Some of the favorite spots in Hell like the famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, or Starbacks, or McDonald’s add interest for the reader and give a way for the introduction of writers such as Hemingway. The quick paced action speeds the reader along is made even quicker by the absence of true chapters, for why in the world, or in Hell, would there ever be such organization? Once the reader catches on to the fact, that specific, unadulterated symbolism in many venues reigns in this novel, then the flow and the magic start to happen and don’t stop. In fact, the reader can barely hang on with the fast paced action at certain points.
As the protagonist eagerly awaits the next “harrowing” and a chance to escape Hell, the reader gets caught up in this optimistic endeavor. The ending, not one to be let out of the box, I postponed and savored until I was ready, by saving the last ten pages until I could stand it no more. Never would I have guessed this ending, and yet, when I closed the book and reflected for a few minutes, I realized the unparalleled poignant close of this, one of my new favorite literary novels. This is a brilliantly written novel, and one of the funniest I have ever read. For a true look at the nature of mankind, this is it. Now I have another “hell” book to add to my list which includes Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Dante’s “The Inferno,” Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and many others. Robert Olen Butler’s Hell may very well become the twenty-first century’s answer to this genre.
-Nan
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