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| Reading this on my porch on Easter Sunday seemed weirdly appropriate |
I have an abiding love of the Hellraiser movies (well, most of them) that I've never been able to explain, and I've read a fair bit of Barker's stuff over the years (including most of the stuff with Harry D'Amour and the movie Lord of Illusions, although it's been a few decades). I've been excited about The Scarlet Gospels since it was released several years ago, but somehow didn't read it until now.
I loved-absolutely loved-the first two thirds of the novel in all its gory delicious detail. As the blurb on the cover says, it's Barker "at his most unhinged and indulgent" (and this is intended as the deepest possible compliment). We jump right in with a modern day wizard being resurrected by his acolytes, when who should show up, but motherfucking Pinhead, aka the Hell Priest, everybody's favorite Cenobite. And then we meet a middle aged Harry D'Amour and friends. And of course the Lament Configuration, and all the awesomely fucked up shit from the mind of Clive Barker. Things get mind-bendingly fantastic with a trip to hell described in deranged detail. And it doesn't let up one bit for a couple hundred pages. Just magnificent.
But the last third by contrast felt a bit rambling to me. I don't want to spoil why, but it felt like the main part of the plot was mostly wrapped up and you get about 100 pages that's basically denouement (or maybe I'm missing something?). I didn't mind reading it, but I would have been happy to read several hundred more pages if the wild intensity of the first 200 or so pages had been sustained.
It's not all gore and freaky shit (although Barker definitely has such sights to show the reader). There's a philosophical depth here as well that maybe unlocks some of what I've always found fascinating about Hellraiser and the rest of Barker's work.
The novel begins with an epigraph from John Locke, and at one point Pinhead quotes Alfred North Whitehead on Plato, so we know he's a particularly philosophical Cenobite. In fact, one of the delights of this novel is getting to know the inner life of this character who remains enigmatic in the films (don't worry, he's still a bit inscrutable and delights in causing pain--we don't become sympathetic by finding out that his bad childhood made him this way or anything).
Later in the novel Pinhead, or the Hell Priest as he prefers to be called, laments the fact of death akin to the angstiest existentialist:
"All is death, woman. All is pain. Love breeds loss. Isolation breeds resentment. No matter which way we turn, we are beaten. Our only true inheritance is death. And our only legacy, dust." (p. 188).
Whoa.
The plot line of the journey through hell and the Hell Priest's audacious plan can be viewed as his defiance of death. But another character.... who I won't spoil, even though I really want to... has deliberately chosen suicide rather than eternal life. So is death, rather, a sort of blessing? Is eternal life a gift worth seeking? Or would it be a curse best overcome?
And speaking of all the stuff on pain, I'm reminded of the first noble truth of Buddhism: suffering. Is suffering the primary characterization of sentient life? Is pain always there behind the pleasures we seek? Is that what Pinhead was trying to teach all those poor saps who messed with Lemarchand's Box all along? Are the particularly gnarly ways that Pinhead gets his hooks into these meaty philosophical topics why I've loved the Hellraiser movies and stories so much all these years?
Maybe. But most of all I'm glad that Barker has brought me deeper than ever before into the mind of Pinhead the philosopher!
(Concluding horrific post-script: I recently watched the The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs episode on Hellraiser 2 on Shudder, and Doug Bradley said he would reprise the role of Pinhead if they ever made The Scarlet Gospels into a movie... so let's hope this happens!)
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