The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore

Source of book: I read this one on the Kindle app.

 

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. I’m not really much of a horror reader, so nearly all of our annual “Spooky Lush” books have been ones I would not have otherwise picked up. This is definitely one of them. Unfortunately, my overall impression of this book was pretty meh. 

First, a bit about Guy Endore. “Guy Endore” was one of two pen names for Samuel Goldstein. The other, “Harry Relis,” was the one he used after he was blacklisted by Hollywood for his involvement with the Communist Party. (Also, it was a name borrowed from his wife’s sister’s husband…) Back in the day, of course, having an obviously Jewish name was pretty much death to one’s career, both as an author of fiction and as a Hollywood screenwriter - which was his other job. 

 

Endore’s childhood was pretty bad. His mother committed suicide when he was four. His father couldn’t handle the kids, so he dropped them off at an orphanage. Later, after an invention paid some dividends, he sent them off to Vienna for an education, but when the money ran out, they were returned, and pretty much fended for themselves by necessity. He had his first big writing hit with The Werewolf of Paris, which led to opportunities to write similarly lurid horror screenplays. Although he never was called to testify at the McCarthy hearings, he was later blacklisted, and struggled to find work for a while, until the craziness blew over. 

 

Despite its significant success in the 1930s, I thought the book suffered from a number of flaws. The main one, and one we discussed extensively, was the flat characters. It really felt like there was little internal or emotional drama in any of the characters. It was hard to like any of them, and they never really seemed to change. Thus, the drama all had to come from the plot. Well, that and the sex and violence. 

 

The other issue, for me, was that there was way too much grafted on to the story. So, you have first the framing story: an anonymous American grad student is doing research, and has this bizarre episode where he buys a manuscript from garbage pickers, which happens to be the rest of the tale. Oh, and he is also solicited for sex by a woman who may or may not be a prostitute - and has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the story, except some reference to nymphomania. 

 

Then, we get the history of the Pitamont families, which involves a deadly feud, imprisonment in a dungeon, and the prisoner being fed raw meat. Which might be the origin of the family lycanthropy. 

 

Finally, we get into the story itself, which starts with the rape and impregnation of a 14 year old girl by a priest who happens to be a Pitamont. She becomes a nymphomaniac during the pregnancy, before she gives birth to the werewolf character, who then grows up before going on to terrorize Paris. 

 

And then, we also get a bunch of stuff about the Franco-Prussian War, and the Paris Communard - that period of time when the Communists briefly made a play to govern Paris. All this is eventually mixed in with the werewolf plot, and there is an attempt - a clumsy one in my opinion - to elevate what is to that point a sex-and-violence drenched lurid horror story, and make it into a political statement on how capitalism and war make the real werewolves out of us all, and….well, yeah, it fits with his Communist leanings, but it didn’t feel like an integrated whole to me at all. 

 

Also, before I forget, there is also the scene at the end in a mental asylum that appears to be a social statement about the state of mental health treatment. Oh, and that digression about the sexless marriage of the female love interest’s parents, and a few other rabbit trails that seem to have very little to do with anything else. The book really is all over the place.

 

I also thought the book was gratuitously lurid. Don’t get me wrong: I have no objection to sex or its presence in books. (Although good lord, a lot of otherwise great authors can’t write good sex scenes to save their lives.) The sex in here just felt, I’m not even sure how to explain it. The initial rape, for example, followed by the young girl fucking every male she can find, was gross and yet apparently intended to be titillating. There is little sense of the psychological trauma for the girl, and she seems there to further the plot. Like the later scene where her son has sex with her - probably rape as well. And then the violence toward prostitutes. And the masochistic sex the werewolf has with his lover - she offers her blood to him to keep him satiated. 

 

To be fair, I have to admit that I am not really a fan of this sort of book, so perhaps it is hard for me to judge its relative merits. But I can’t help comparing really good horror books with this one. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for example, which has a lot more depth. Or Dracula, which was a similarly foundational book for the vampire genre, but felt far more nuanced. 

 

I also want to mention the best part of the book, which, again, seemed mostly unconnected to the rest of it. The uncle of the werewolf, who is trying to track him down after his escape to Paris, ends up at a dinner party of this club that believes in eating all the different animals. The episode would have made a good short story, although I think Neil Gaiman’s version is better. 

 

Anyway, while I wasn’t impressed with the book, we did have a good discussion as usual. 

 

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You can find the entire Literary Lush list here. At least the ones I read since I joined the club.