Book Review & Analysis: Falling Angel by William Hortsberg

Falling Angel

by William Hjortsberg

It’s midtown Manhattan, 1959. A private eye is called to a meeting with an elegant and mysterious man to search for a singer who disappeared after returning from World War II. The detective’s name is Harry Angel, the man who hires him is Louis Cypre, and the missing musician is Johnny Favorite. The names themselves should give you enough to think about. While William Hjorstberg’s Falling Angel is written with the elements of a neo-noir thriller, the underlying theme is that of a search for a lost identity...maybe. Possibly it is more of a search to lose an identity.

The literary trick that Hjorstberg plays is to give away the solution to the mystery at the beginning of the story. The discerning reader should have no trouble figuring out that Louis Cyphre is Lucifer, otherwise known as Satan. Harry the Falling Angel is an all too obvious reference to Satan, the falling angel in Milton’s Paradise Lost (that epic poem that foreshadows almost every literary theme that has been explored since the 18^th century). Johnny Favorite references Milton too since Satan was God’s favorite angel before he got kicked out of paradise for not staying in his place and trying to usurp the throne of God. Combining the names “Favorite” and “Angel” should provide a huge clue as to where this mystery is headed. So should the fact that Johnny Favorite fought in Algeria during World War II, received a facial injury that required plastic surgery when he returned, was committed to an asylum, and then was taken away. Harry Angel also fought in Algeria during World War II and had plastic surgery to repair his nose. There are further clues all throughout the book indicating the relationship between the two.

Angel’s whereabouts after returning from the war are barely mentioned. Cyphre sets him the task of finding out what happened to Johnny Favorite after he was taken from the asylum. The surface mystery of the plot is solved for any reader who can put two and two together. That is deliberate. Hjorstberg wants that part to be obvious because Harry Angel’s investigation is about a deeper issue.

Angel’s hunt for Johnny Favorite starts as standard noir detective work. Each character he encounters gives him a new piece of the puzzle and the people he encounters become more colorful as he goes along. He starts by questioning the morphine addicted doctor at the asylum where Johnny Favorite lived. Then he meets with a pianist in a blues band that once played in Favorite’s band before the war. This leads Angel to an Obeah cult led by the manbo Epiphany Proudfoot, the light-skinned daughter of Evangeline Proudfoot who was Johnny Favorite’s Afro-Caribbean lover. Epiphany’s light skin is of major importance. Figure it out for yourself.

On the caucasian side of town, Angel pays a visit to Margaret Krusemark, the one time fiancee of Johnny Favorite. Margaret is an astrologer and practitioner of black magic. She is also a key character in understanding why Favorite was taken from the asylum and what happened after he left. Just as important is Margaret’s father, Ethan Krusemark, who is the CEO of a maritime shipping company with an office on the top floor of the Chrysler Building.

The characters who provide Angel with the most information about Johnny Favorite all get murdered in brutal ways. Note that none of them recognize Harry Angel when they meet him even though, knowing the secret of his identity, they probably should. Other people that Harry Angel questions are mostly musicians who played with Favorite before the war. As minor characters, they have less to say and likewise end up surviving.

Harry Angel’s detective methods are creepy but standard for noir fiction. He impersonates people, he lies, he breaks into homes and offices, and he spies on people by watching them through windows or eavesdropping. He also shows up, secretly and uninvited at an Obeah ceremony and a black mass a la J.K. Huysmans’s La Bas. Is he just a curious voyeur or is he unwittingly being summoned by the cultists? Harry Angel also spends a lot of time in the lower sections of New York, going to bars, visiting Coney Island in the off season to talk to carnies and sideshow freaks, patronizes Epiphany Proudfoot’s herb shop in Harlem, and watching Louis Cyphre perform a magic show at the legendary Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus on 42^nd Street (the space is now occupied by Madame Tussaud’s wax museum). It’s almost surprising that Herman Slater’s Magickal Childe book store is never mentioned, though I suppose it didn’t exist in 1959 when the novel is set. These dwellings contrast starkly with Angel’s luncheon with Cyphre at an upscale French restaurant and Ethan Krusemark’s corporate office at the top of the Chrysler Building. Remember the title is Falling Angel in reference to Satan’s fall from paradise. Also don’t forget that Milton portrayed Satan as a sympathetic character in Paradise Lost.

On a side note, there is a subtle anti-racism theme in that Harry Angel mixes freely and comfortably with the African-American characters who are also portrayed almost entirely in a positive light. The police following Harry Angel are also bigots in an ugly way and are just as offended by Angel’s sexual affair with the mulatta Epiphany Proudfoot as they are with the homicides they investigate. And Louis Cyphre gives a sermon to an all-Black congregation of Pentacostals while Harry Angel sits unnoticed in the audience.

If Harry Angel is searching for Johnny Favorite he is also searching for the identity of Louis Cyphre. The surface connection of “Louis Cyphre” and “Lucifer” may be obvious from the start, in fact so obvious that’s it’s hard to understand why Harry Angel never makes the connection, but a deeper semiotic unpacking of the name reveals more. In cryptography, the word “cyphre” or “cipher” means a key that unlocks a code. It translates a scrambled coded language into a decoded language that is understandable, hence the word “decipher”. So understanding Louis Cyphre’s identity and the role he plays in Angel’s life reveals what the dilemma is all about. Looking deeper into the name, “cyphre” is a French word derived from the Arabic al-sifr. In old Arabic, this word means “emptiness” or “nothingness”. Note that when Cyphre addresses the Pentacostal congregation he appears under the name Al-Sifr while wearing an Arabic style turban. When applied to a person, a cipher can also be an unimportant person or a person of no consequence, a persona non grata. Yet Louis Cyphre seems to be the deus ex machina, the puppet master, of the whole story. So what does it mean if the puppet master is a nobody? Hjorstberg appears to be telling us that Louis Cyphre isn’t real; in other words, he is an imaginary projection of Harry Angel’s darker motivations. Harry Angel, in his inner struggle of good against evil, believes Cyphre is killing the associates of Johnny Favorite and arranging circumstances to implicate him. But if Cyphre doesn’t exist, it must be Angel doing the killing and tricking himself into thinking he is innocent by displacing the crimes onto an imaginary antagonist. Or maybe Harry Angel actually knows what murders he is committing and Louis Cyphre is a symbol of his sadistic impulses he is unable to control.

So if Johnny Favorite became Harry Angel after the war, as Ethan Krusemark explains, and Louis Cyphre is a disassociated projection of Angel’s evil urges, what exactly is Harry Angel searching for? He probably isn’t searching for anything but an escape route from his past. Johnny Favorite sold his soul to the Devil for fame and success then he thought he could trick the Devil by transferring his soul into the body of Harry Angel. He succeeded to the point where the people who know the most about him are unable to recognize his current form as Harry Angel. So Angel has to murder them to erase any last traces of memory attached to Johnny Favorite. But Angel can’t escape from Louis Cyphre because Cyphre is an aspect of himself. But if this interpretation is wrong and Cyphre literally is Satan, where does that leave Harry Angel? The hapless detective is little more than a marionette being manipulated by Cyphre to do the Devil’s work without realizing it. But in any case, Harry Angel is a man trying to leave his past behind. At the age of 39, he is entering into a midlife identity crisis while trying to come to terms with his past by eliminating anybody he was connected to in a meaningful way. In this endeavor, he fails. Once you’ve sold your soul there is no escape. Maybe there is no cure for evil. Maybe Harry Angel is an embodiment of Satan himself. Maybe he has too much pride to repent.

How can we be sure any interpretation is correct? We can’t. William Hjortsberg has given us what I call a Devil’s Ending. When the first and second layers of the mystery are solved, we are left with a deeper mystery that can’t be resolved. The deeper certainty is in territory that is too murky and so far beyond our grasp that we can only shoot in the dark when trying to solve it. You can twist your mind into knots trying to make sense of it all, but there can never be any closure. The Devil’s Ending is a good literary device that, when used effectively, makes a book stay with you long after you finish reading it simply because it leaves some questions open ended.

Speaking of writing style, this novel evokes the sensations of Art Deco in its use of language and story telling. Without a doubt, New York is the greatest city for Art Deco architecture in the world. Art Deco has smooth and shiny surfaces, sharp lines, bold curvatures, and planes of flatness that are layered to create the illusion of depth. It draws you in by suggesting the presence of something hidden beneath the surface. It uses occult motifs borrowed from astrology and Pagan pantheons. It is a style that reaches back to the ancient statuary of Babylon and the angularity of Egyptian hieroglyphics while maintaining the slick appearance of an eternal modernity. The author tells this story in a way that reflects this Art Deco attitude. It is hard to explain why, but his sentences are short, sharp, simple, and direct. The plot flows smoothly like steely water, turning sharp corners, rounding bends, and moving in and out of layered facades. And those surfaces are turning grimy from all the exhaust and smog coming from heavy traffic. All of this is like a chrome plated urban environment, a setting for living, breathing human beings of flesh and blood. William Hjorstberg really captures a slice of New York City’s soul in both the style and substance of this novel.

Enough can’t be said about all the clever details in Falling Angel. It is also impossible to ignore that it is just plain fun to read. It will probably be worth reading again. But that all depends on how long the Devil lets me live. That shouldn’t be a big problem though since I’m certainly not an angel, falling or otherwise.

 

Book Review & Literary Analysis: The Wolves of Paris by Daniel P. Mannix

When left alone in their natural habitat, it is rare for wolves to ever attack humans. Most often, such attacks happen as a result of people naively trying to keep wolves as pets. Medieval French history books provide us with an outlier though. If scholars of these texts are to be believed, then a wolf led a reign of terror on Paris in the mid-15th century. The cult author Daniel P. Mannix tells this story, embellished with his own imagination, in his novel The Wolves of Paris.

As a young pup, Courtaud is introduced as a hybrid between a dog and a wolf, housed in the cellar of a citadel during the 100 Years War between England and France. The mutt is being raised to be a hunting dog in a team owned by the baron of the estate. One day, a band of Roman brigands breach the rubicon, enter the castle grounds, and slaughter all the people living there. They also kill most of the livestock and Courtaud is lucky to be spared as he escapes the violence before all the others dogs he knows die. Courtaud may be an animal, but if you think your childhood traumas compare in scale to his, you might want to reconsider.

During the winter, as the solitary Courtaud wanders alone in the Ardennes, a hunter comes after him, but after getting crushed in an avalanche, Courtaud samples his flesh, getting his first taste of human meat. This is a decisive moment in this soon-to-be outlaw’s dietary habits.

After wandering for some time in the northern mountains of France, Courtaud encounters a pack of wolves. He has to fight for his place in the pack and finally proves himself worthy after several scraps with the leader. He keeps fighting and eventually forces the alpha cane lupo to abdicate and Courtaud becomes the lord baron king of the pack. Along the way, he falls in love with a saucy young she-wolf named Silver and a wolf romance ensues. Although Mannix uses human traits to described the wolves’ behavior and point of view, there isn’t any gender identity crises here. This pack is made up of masculine men and effeminate women, by ferocious wild animal standards, without the gender confusion issues of 21st century America poisoning their thoughts. Otherwise, this section of the story goes into the lifestyles, habits, and behaviors of the wolf pack. It is almost like reading a script from a TV show on Animal Planet, but is also serves the purpose of developing Courtaud’s character.

The next big turning point comes when a band of hunters invade the forest where Courtaud and company live, hunting all the deer out of existence in order to stock their castle full of venison in preparation for the coming winter months. Since the deer are the wolves’ main source of food, the pack is brought to the brink of starvation and begin preying on people in a village to feed themselves. As horrifying as this may seem to members of the human race who don’t ordinarily think of themselves as a meal, it is clear to see that they are the cause of their own problem. Not respecting the wolf pack’s boundaries and killing off all their food results in the wolves’ retaliatory transgression into human territories as a last ditch attempt at survival. You may feel justifiable empathy for the victims, but Mannix shows how it is the human’s ignorance of nature that leads to their own demise.

The villagers then organize a hunting party to track and kill Courtaud, but eventually fail. This passage in the book can be challenging because Mannix introduces a lot of vocabulary related to the niche of hunting for sport in Europe. He puts you through a lot of trouble to learn new esoteric words that you know you will never use again unless you take up further study of the subject. It makes for awkward reading, but doesn’t last long enough to ruin the whole book.

Courtaud and the pack continue wandering in the wilderness, searching for food, until they reach the walls of Paris and occupy the hill of Montparnasse. They eat the corpses of dead bodies thrown outside the walls, attack livestock herders, linger on the sidelines of a battle in a nearby village in order to eat the men slain in the siege, and get chased off Montparnasse after losing a battle with a gang od wild boars. Eventually, they even breach the walls of Paris to find people to eat. It is a very action-driven novel punctuated by scenes explaining the desperation of hungry predators. But these predators are not portrayed as evil. They are simply acting according to their nature.

One of the great things about this novel is the way it tells the story from the wolves’ point of view. If there is any such thing as a charismatic wolf, it is embodied in the lead character of Courtaud. Mannix never overdoes this either. The language he uses to describe his version of events is sparse and simplistic, giving just enough detail for comprehension, but not so much that it becomes overdone. After all, how articulate could your average wild wolf actually be? A proper balance between accessibility and realism is maintained. We also see the human point of view, one which is not entirely unsympathetic. We can understand how they come to fear and hate Courtaud, but we also see how their shortsightedness, superstitions, Inquisition-style religious sadism, and stubborn insistence on continuing the 100 Years War make their situation a lot more dangerous than it needs to be.

Another great thing about this book is the descriptiveness. If you’re a sucker for nature writing, there is plenty to appreciate here. The atmosphere of the Ardennes is well done but the portrayal of shadowy, snow-clad forests and pastoral countrysides is even better. The gory scenes of wolves gorging themselves on deer and European homo sapiens is unsettling enough, but not overly-indulged in to the point of being campy. Again, it is another fine balance that Mannix has struck. Not all the description is great though; the prose starts slowing down towards the end of the story as if the author got tired of writing about one gruesome fight and feast after another. Thankfully he knew when to stop writing because dragging this on for too long would have turned it into a tedious bore.

Despite its brutality, The Wolves of Paris accomplishes what the author intended to do. He creates a sympathetic lead character in Courtaud, making him out to be not so much a villain but more of a force of nature doing what it needs to do out of a will to survive. Writing about a wolf from a wolf’s point of view, especially using human vernacular, is a risky undertaking. It could become pretentious, far fetched, or even cute (meant in the most derogatory sense of the word possible), but it doesn’t. Despite some clumsy and awkward passages, Daniel P. Mannix strikes all the right chords in a finely tuned balance. While not being one of the greatest novels ever written, it is a unique exercise in multiple perspectives. Obscure and underrated, let it remain that and be a secret gem for the few who venture into this territory.

 

Book Analysis & Review: Keeper Of the Children

Keeper Of the Children

by William H. Hallahan

Quite often, horror writers are sensitive to the currents of anxiety that flow throughout a society. And for good reason: in order to write something unnerving they have to be aware of what makes people anxious. William H. Hallahan’s Keeper Of the Children addresses two concerns that American society had in the late 1970s. One was the cult scare that arose after the 1960s when new religious movements, some being authoritarian in nature and often accused of brainwashing,, swept through American society. Groups like the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas, and the Peoples Temple of Jim Jones were thriving and often cast a menacing shadow on those outside the groups. Another fear at the time was the breakdown of the American nuclear family. Divorce rates were increasing and children were distancing themselves more and more from their families, often seeking surrogate or alternative families in other places, some of which were maladaptive. Conservatives blamed the social changes of the 1960s for this, but in reality the rising cost of living contributed more to this than the counter-cultural impulses of the youth since career minded parents had to spend more time at work and less time at home. So the bases of Hallahan’s now overlooked novel were firmly rooted in the fears of his time.

The story starts when teenager Renni Benson does not come from school. Her mother Susan and little brother Top begin looking for her, eventually to learn that she and her friend Pammy, who comes from an abusive family, have gotten roped into a religious cult led by a Tibetan monk named Kheim. This monk is said to be an expert in brainwashing, mind control, and occultism so of course, Susan is scared for her daughter’s safety.

That’s when the absentee father, Eddie Benson, enters the picture. Eddie works for a film production company which requires him to spend long stretches of time abroad. On this particular trip, after working for a while in Europe, he returns home to find his daughter missing. When he learns why she is not home, he realizes his duty as a father is to rescue her even though his absence might be a contributing factor to her running away. Eddie also worries throughout the story that his wife is losing interest in him, something he again attributes to his absence. When his company demands that he leave for another lucrative filming job in Africa with a flirtatious and attractive camera woman by his side, he knows he must sacrifice his career in order to save his family from disintegrating.

Eddie gets together with a group of parents whose teenagers have also been led away into the cult; their plan is to find a way to get their children back. But then, one by one, the members of the group get killed in unusual circumstances. The first one to die is murdered by a walking scarecrow that comes to life, descends from his perch in the moonlight, and enters the man’s house to snuff him. The cult leader Kheim is a master of astral projection, so he can leave his body, enter into inanimate objects, and commit acts of violence and homicide in this way.

From there on, we learn about the lives of the other parents in the group and why Pammy so desperately wanted to join the cult as a refuge from her abusive parents. As these others get picked off in a series of bizarre murders, Eddie realizes conventional means of fighting Kheim will not work, so he joins an ashram run by an Indian yogi and learns astral projection himself. Having learned this occult technique, he engages in fights with Kheim in some unusual ways.

The unreal aspects of the story are the most interesting part of the book. Fights and murders happen while Eddie and Kheim are using their astral bodies to animate marionettes, a giant ax-wielding teddy bear, and a feral cat. You might be tempted to read some kind of symbolism into these hand-to-hand battles, but there probably isn’t any there. These fights are done, mostly in the guise of toys to ornament the violence, making it more of an entertaining novelty than a metaphor. Since the story is pedestrian, a father-hero goes to the rescue of his captive maiden daughter, and some elements are given too much description while others don’t get enough, Eddie’s course in the ashram drags on for too long and the activities of the cult are barely even touched on, there has to be something to prop up the story and keep it interesting. That is why these toy and cat fights are given so much attention. They really are the best passages in the book and the main reason it might be worth reading once.

As for the meaning of the story, there isn’t much here. The social themes of family breakdown and the menace of sleazy religious movements are issues addressed, but as for commentary on these topics, Hallahan doesn’t have much to say beyond the idea that families are important, even more important than career advancement, and cults are bad. This is unfortunate because the author has enough talent to inject some meaningful commentary into the narrative, taking it to another level. Instead he declines to use this novel as a pulpit and makes it an almost entirely commercial form of entertainment. There is a catch here though; while Hallahan could be accused of racism or xenophobia by portraying Kheim, the evil Asian occultist, as the adversary of the story, he counters this by portraying the Chinese father of a cult member in a sympathetic light and also turning to an Indian yogi for guidance on how to defeat Kheim. Thus he provides a clear indication that his opposition is to cults of coercive indoctrination and not to Asian people or immigrants.

While Keeper Of the Children does touch on some social issues of the 1970s, it ultimately is a work of entertainment. In that regard, Hallahan mostly succeeds, at least when writing about homicidal marionettes and cat battles. Hallahan could have gone deeper, but he didn’t. As such, it’s a fun read even if it is a bit predictable and basic in its methods. It’s amusing in the way a carnival fun house is. Just don’t expect much if you try to look beneath the surface.

 

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Alfred Hitchcock's Skull Session

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