The Devil and Daniel Silverman [Paperback]

The big problem is the characters-the problem being that there aren't any. All that fills these pages are unpersuasive caricatures. There is not a scintilla of genuineness hovering about anyone in this book.

This problem is compounded by the fact that the college is question is drawn not so much as a college as a cult lacking any sort of believability.

This is doubly disappointing as Roszak has a fairly engaging wiring voice and a nice ear for dialog. Unfortunately, given that none of his "characters" really has anything remotely interesting to say, the latter skill is pretty much wasted here.

I really liked the premise of this book and the come-on description on the back of the book caught my fancy-I wanted to really like this effort. In the end, it was all I could do to finish it. I didn't even bother to ditch it by giving it to the local library-I simply threw it into the recycling bin for the garbage men to pick up.

Give this one a pass.

This is the kind of contemporary novel that should be part of our popular fiction today. It deals conscientiously with important social issues but it's full of humanity and it's very entertaining, with elements of suspense, humor, and refreshly honest intellectual debate.

Sure, there's enough irony and puckish literary allusion for David Lodge fans, maybe even for devotees of Delmore Schwartz. But even the fundamentalist characters have dimension, life and a weird sort of sympathy. The all-too typical bicoastal portrait of the frozen and hearty Midwest, and all those tall, toothy folks who actually say, "you betcha," yields after the first pages to a more nuanced though no less paranoid portrayal. It's just that the paranoia gets more and more justified, even as the characters get more and more human. The exegesis of fundamentalist beliefs is thorough and thoroughly frightening, but Silverman's suppression of hysteria for an anthropological analytical calm is both effective in engaging these doctrines, and funny in a spooky, edgy way, so as readers we may find ourselves freaked by our own suppressed hysteria.

A couple of Roszak's previous novels have been opted for film and you can see why---even in this era when it's extremely hard to get a good script made, especially if it's about contemporary American reality not involving serial killers, his writing is cinema-sympathetic. And in this novel there's a terrific central scene that plays awfully well in the cinema of the mind.

Anyway, there should be more novels like this one, and this one should be read. Now I am going to read previous Roszak novels? You betcha.

1) You have an open mind
2) Homosexuality is acceptable between consenting adults
3) Women should have control over their own bodies
4) Evolution is an incontrovertible, scientific theory
5) The Bible was written by men

If you are not comfortable with these ideas as well as the idea that men and women should lead joyful, spirited lives filled with compassion with others, then I am afraid this book will disturb and anger you. As for me, it is good to know that I am not the only secular humanist left in this country.