Me and the Devil

So I read this book...
The cover intrigued me - a super-imposed double of a leopard's face in lurid colours against a sea of black. The title intrigued. It's an old blues song, isn't it? The dust jacket was so weighted down with critical plaudits that it damn near doubled the weight of the novel.

Johnny Depp assured me from the back cover that it contained 'words of wisdom that I will carry with me into the fucking dirt'. Or something like that anyway. Keith Richards was also a fan and felt that author Nick Tosches was one who knew of whom he spoke with regard to the Devil.
From the blurb I could tell little more than that here was a dark prince of literary badassness; a black-hearted man of poisoned letters; a transgressive novelist in the vein of Burroughs, Thompson and the rest of the old, dead madmen.

The author photo was a fascination in itself - there was Tosches, dressed in a fine suit and smuggled in shadows. He had a sour, misanthropic scowl and John Hurt's eyes. The author blurb told me nothing, reveling in the mythology it hinted at: apparently Tosches is 'uniquely acquainted with the half-lit world in which this novel is set'. Or again, something like that; the book has gone back to the library now and no longer haunts my apartment.

In a bold move Tosches had made himself the protagonist (though the character's last name is never given) or at least himself incarnated as an embittered and ageing author, too crook-backed under his own weariness and misanthropy to write any more. It is, yes, another novel about a novelist.
Write what you know, I guess.

I sincerely hope that the novel is strongly fictionalized and the character of Nick is intended as a caricature of the real Tosches, but...hell, I just don't know. What it feels like is the work of a tired self-obsessed old man desperate to mythologize himself in the most lurid and inflammatory way possible. It's also rife with racist slurs, misogyny and anti-Semitism, so yeah, I really hope it's intended as caricature.

But anyway.
Novel-world Nick is a fatigued, bitter old dude with an impressive literary back-catalogue and a mouthful of plastic teeth. He finds himself longing for the youth he always cynically pretended he didn't have (Tosches has played the bitter old man card his entire literary life, apparently, even when he didn't have the years on him to match the world-weariness). He is wealthy and casual with his cash but can now take no real pleasure in fine food or the company of women.

Then he takes Sabine home; she who allegedly 'likes to be raped after bathing in warm, scented water and brushing out her hair' (or yet again, something like that - Tosches uses the exact same phrase about four or five times throughout the novel but I'm still not sure I'm quoting it right). During a sexual act Nick sinks his dentures into the trembling delicacy of her inner thigh and drinks her blood. This act of communion awakens a rush of fresh life and desire in him - he learns that he is able to literally consume youth. He begins to revel in all the luxuries that he had previously abandoned and thus we are treated to a rich, endlessly descriptive cavalcade of fine meals and carnal encounters - all described in lurid, lavish, pornographic detail (and that's just the food).

Apparently Nick, despite all evidence to the contrary (and pick-up lines that include 'can you change the tides by the crossing and uncrossing of your legs?' and 'do you like to watch old men masturbate and know that they too were once young?') is utterly irresistible to extremely young women (the book implies he's in either his late fifties or early sixties; the oldest of his conquests is twenty). Before you know it he has two extraordinarily beautiful and utterly devoted young women willing to let him lap at their sanguinary exultations.
Okay, they let him bite or whip them until they bleed. He then consumes the blood and grows ever more godlike (yup, Nick believes himself to be transforming into a new, bacchanalian god).

Did I mention that one of the young women has elaborate rape fantasies (leading to an extensive discourse on what one might refer to this fetish as in Latin terms) that Nick is all too willing to indulge and the other likes to don a transparent raincoat (and nothing else, of course) and be crucified and whipped. Or that Nick also strikes up a tumultuous sexual relationship with the former's stockings. I can't accurately remember either of their names - but I figure that's okay as Tosches doesn't give a toss about them anyway. Neither are any more than half-written ciphers whose sole purpose in the narrative is their beauty and their devotion to the masterly Nick. They are no more than blank-eyed sex dolls - an onanistic fantasy conjured by the novelist. When they speak it is with no more than his voice.

And so the reader is treated to a never-ending series of transgressive sex scenes (which wouldn't be erotic even if you didn't wind up picturing the guy from the author's photograph engaging in them). This in addition to a never-ending parade of lavishly-described luxury items (Nick has quite a thing for artisanal knives) and fine dining (seriously this frequently verges on food-porn). It is very clearly the work of a man reveling in his own wealth, infamy and imagined debauchery.
Oh, and there's no narrative drive between the endless descriptions and deliberately arcane language.

I read on. Waiting for the descent that I was certain must come. I knew that the narrator - Nick - must one day pay the price of this deviltry, and he keeps buying those damn knives... Even Keith Richards warned him against drinking blood and taking power from it (apparently it's way more addictive than heroine and Richards had seen 'things come out of people').
Oh, I didn't mention it. Keith Richards cameos in the book. He has a couple of dinner scenes. They're pointless but I figure Tosches wanted to make sure that the reader knew that he and Richards were pals - he's met Depp too and makes a point of putting that in the novel (which makes those sleeve quotes seem a trifle biased).

*SPOILER ALERT* (umm, maybe)
To an extent the descent does come. Black-outs sweep down upon Nick - consuming entire months of his life. It's also very likely that he butchers Sabine and her female friend at some point - slashing their throats and drinking their blood, obviously. Nick then meets the Devil while vomiting ghost-rats in his grimy apartment. They chat. The Devil likes high-quality socks and fine corduroy.
This lasts for about twenty pages. Nick is hospitalized, recovers. Starts going to the gym. Leaves his girlfriends. Then the book comprehensively sets about dismantling what little plot it has already established - abandoning the most interesting developments (Nick's changing blood-type, for instance) in favour of shakily ambling to it's vague and pointless conclusion. And he easily shrugs off any concerns he might have about y'know, probably murdering those women.
* END SPOILERS *

I kept reading; hoping for those words of wisdom that Johnny Depp promised me I would be taking to my grave. I never found a single damn thing. It actually left me wondering about Depp. As a novel it's plot-less, purposeless, pointless and hollow. Everything is overwritten and over-described (I know, I know...pot...kettle...black). The endless parade of luxury and debauchery is wearying (it's not cleverly satirical like Bret Easton Ellis' 'American Psycho' - speaking of Ellis, if you want to read a supernatural yarn that mythologizes the author read his novel 'Lunar Park').

Then there's the racism. It seems Tosches is working this anti-PC/shock tactic thing but the way I see it is if you're an old white guy and you're not starring in a Tarantino-scripted Blaxploitation/Western you really, really shouldn't use the N-word. As I mentioned before; he doesn't like Jewish people much either. And yes, to keep his bases covered, there's lots of misogyny too.

It's an adolescent wannabe-shocker. There's no wisdom. No real cleverness. Just bitterness and a definite masturbatory vibe. It even fails as a parable of addiction - as vampirism is a very easy-to-quit addiction, seemingly. However, there is something oddly, horribly compelling about it (and Tosches is quite a fine writer somewhere in there). The greatest enjoyment that I think can be gained from it is to pretend that Tosches saw the popularity of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and the whole vampire-porn genre (which, God knows, is plenty extensive) and decided to write his own contribution. Why he made himself the protagonist is beyond me - self-aggrandizing, definitely.

So there you have it; if you're looking for a rather tedious, self-congratulatory tome of Literary Professor-porn (with added vampirism and bondage) that nevertheless involves some nice descriptive language (although way, way too much of it) - then dive in, pal.

And last but not least; the human mouth is full of bacteria. A deep enough bite from another person; one that breaks the skin and potentially damages the tissue (at one point Nick accidentally bites through a young woman's femoral artery) would almost certainly become infected. Blood poisoning is a genuine threat. At one point Nick even sort-of (but utterly, horribly wrongly) ponders this - thinking that with the deep crevasses and pouches around his few remaining teeth it's fortunate he didn't contract any disease from his victims' blood. Other way around, buddy. Other way around.