I dare you to read it. The Demonologist might just scare the lit out of you.Well, I got the free sample bit of it onto my Kindle -- and it made me laugh. But then I'm easily amused.The demonologist -- who doesn't think of himself as one, but as a man who "reads dead white guy poetry and undergraduate papers for a living" has come to the end of Paradise Lost with his class. He asks them a Deep Question: "Where will you go now that Eden has been left behind?"
An arm almost instantly shoots up. A kid near the back I've never called on, never even noticed, before now.
"Yes?"
"Is that question going to be on the exam?"He's an expert on religious narratives without believing in any. He says they "bear meaning, culturally speaking, without actually existing."
His thoughts and words on the way back to his office show a healthy respect for the sixth commandment and a desire to be worthy of the fourth, anyway. If the events of the book, which involve a child being terrorized, change his mind about the reality of the other world, I'm not going to crow over him.
I'm not even sure I'll ever read the book. I don't feel the need to scare myself, and besides, someone's always trying to do it for me -- the headline writers at the women's magazines if no one else. But I'll admit to wondering what happens in it -- and whether I'd get any more laughs out of it.
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