Devil’s Tor

by David Lindsay (1932)

1/10

A Voyage to Arcturus is one of my three favorite books in existence. I also really liked The Haunted Woman. This book is not only not nearly as good, but it’s so bad that it actually retroactively diminishes my admiration of Arcturus. It has me doubting my own previous judgment of a book by the same author.

The premise is actually unique and compelling enough – Lindsay’s typical combination occult mystery and spiritual treatise – that you could get over the egregious bloat, if not for that pesky white supremacist race science. And oh lord is that race science right up in your face for most of the novel.

It starts out forgivable, something you can pass off as “just a product of his era” casual white supremacy: passing references to Nordic lineage, a weird insistence that a character’s similar bone structure to an ancient Roman general means he must be noble of spirit. This “just a product of his era” label is what I’d apply for instance to his casual sexism throughout, any time he starts bloviating about feminine v. masculine natures.

But unlike the sexism, the eugenics-lite bilge becomes an actual important plot point, as apparently our Great Mother came to earth from the stars to create a new, advanced race. But not just advanced, but also blonde! All large, fair-skinned blonde people are her descendants (and responsible for all of the great advances in civilization). All of the smaller, dark-skinned/-haired people descended from savages and, while Lindsay’s gracious enough to acknowledge they have contributed to civilization, he is careful to point out that all contributions were more “communal” in nature (as opposed to “individual,” which is just plain better, because… reasons).

So now, because our female protagonist has very evident Nordic lineage, she is to become the Great Mother incarnate and usher in a new era of super-humans with the help of her Roman General-jawed sperm donor. I’m not exaggerating here. It really is this ludicrous and blatantly Nazi-esque. The publisher even seems aware of it, as the back cover’s synopsis acknowledges that it is “at times irrecoverably tangled in the attitudes of its day.” That’s like saying McDonald’s is irrecoverably tangled up in the obesity crisis. Even “irrecoverably” is bizarre word choice for those paying attention (i.e. for those who don’t simply perceive it as “irrevocably,” as I first did). if it’s “not recoverable,” why did you “recover” it by, you know publishing it for mass consumption?

Lindsay has always been an author who wears his beliefs on his sleeves, i.e. he doesn’t even bother to mask his own spiritual beliefs as exposition that his characters are working through. It’s pretty disturbing to be reading his characters pontificate about the “noble race” and realize that this is what Lindsay actually believed. As I alluded to above, whenever I read Arcturus again, I’ll inevitably be seeking out these sentiments there as well. The experience of one of my all-time favorite novels has now been “irrecoverably” tainted.

I’m about done here, but I will circle back to that bloat I mentioned just as a night-cap. Probably a full third of the book could have been cut, if not an entire half: 1/10 of it is race science; 1/5 of it is characters thinking about what other characters must be thinking, when we already know what those characters are thinking (it’s apparently important for Lindsay that we see his characters working it out on their own); and at least another 1/5 is characters conversing circuitously around their actual desires, while distracting themselves (and us) by reading ulterior motives into each others’ statements.

So yeah. It’s bad. I wish I hadn’t read it and I don’t think anyone else should either. On the plus side, I can confidently do some paring of my to-read list, by removing The Violet Apple and The Witch.