'I, Lucifer' by Glen Duncan

Since finishing the Bible I've read quite a few books which play around with Biblical mythology in some way: if the Apocrypha and Talmud form the primary level of the Bible's expanded universe (EU), these more recent works form its secondary level. Some of these books are sympathetic towards Satan, the Adversary, the Prince of Darkness.

This tradition (probably) begins with Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), a cinematic poem (it features montages, epic battles, giant monsters, a sex scene, etc: it is a cinematic poem) retelling the War in Heaven and Creation myths. Satan is the poem's anti-hero protagonist, on a vengeful quest against a tyrant God. Milton, a Protestant Christian, was a republican who supported Cromwell & Co against King Charles I in the English Civil War; consciously or not, Milton's political views were channeled into his portrayal of Satan the freedom-loving rebel, making him the most endearing character in the poem. 

Milton's Satan is tempting because he is well-drawn and understandable, but his evil nature - he is supposed to be the personification of evil, after all - is not well fleshed out. He is evil because he opposes God, because the narrator repeatedly insults Satan and tells the reader that he is evil, and because he makes an evil speech worthy of a cartoon villain:

'Doing or suffering: but of this be sure,

To do ought good never will be our task,

But ever to do ill our sole delight,

As being the contrary to his high will

Whom we resist. If then his providence

Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,

Our labor must be to pervert that end,

And out of good still to find means of evil'

The poem is ambiguous over who the reader is supposed to support: we are drawn in to the questing and characterization of Satan the Protagonist, even though he is supposed to be the bad guy. A Satan character only works when he is a genuinely tempting figure: an obviously wrong Satan would never have convinced enough Angels to side with him in the Heavenly Civil War, etc. Here, as well as in many other areas, Paradise Lost succeeds.

The Revolt of the Angels (1914) by Anatole France recasts the fallen angels as somewhat comically inept radical revolutionaries trying to start a second rebellion against a tyrant God ("we shall carry war into the heavens, where we shall establish a peaceful democracy"). France's narrative is not ambiguous over who the reader should be supporting: the Fallen Angels are the good guys, God the tyrant is the bad guy (France was an atheist socialist). Satan's appearance is only brief: the novel follows angel and human characters in early 20th century Paris. Four middle chapters tell the history of Heaven and Earth from a fallen angel perspective, with the rise of Christianity being a very negative event ("The Christians burnt books, overthrew temples, set fire to the towns, and carried out their ravages as far as the deserts"). The novel is a wonderful satirical fantasy of war, politics, and religion.

To Reign In Hell (1984) by Steven Brust is an intensely irritating retelling of the War in Heaven myth. The plot is carried by a series of frustrating misunderstandings; the characters are poorly developed, and have annoying gimmicks; the dialogue is shit; it feels like a high school drama which happens to set in Heaven at the beginning of time. 

Michael Moorcock's The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981) has Satan send a mercenary (The War Hound) on a quest for the holy grail, which could be used to cure the world's pain: Satan hopes this benevolent act will earn him God's forgiveness. Other fallen angels are not too keen on the idea, and oppose the War Hound's quest. I actually read this quite a few years ago, so it is not fresh in my mind: I remember finding the idea more interesting than the execution: it is not one of my favourite Moorcock novels.

And then there's I, Lucifer (2002) by Glen Duncan: a novel told from the Devil's first-person perspective. He's been offered a deal: swap his life as a Devil for a life as a human and get a chance at redemption, Heavenly re-entry, with a month's free trial to help him decide. A month's very debauched free trial. The story alternates between the present day (the month's free trial) and Lucifer recounting past exploits (War in Heaven, Garden of Eden, the Crucifixion, the Inquisition, Nazi Germany, etc). 

Duncan's Lucifer is, like Milton's, very tempting: we can sympathize with his point of view. He is a libertarian Devil celebrating freedom from God's authority, but he is also horrifically evil: he celebrates genocide, torture, rape, paedophilia, etc. He is a thoroughly unpleasant, genuinely terrifying personification of evil. And yet he is tempting and seductive and understandable. A very successful characterization of the Devil: evil and charming, seductive and terrifying, horrible yet tempting. 

I found it hard to put this book down: to me it was one of those books that illustrates the Reader's Paradox: I wanted to keep reading, but I also didn't want it to end. The horror and the humor, the Biblical retellings and the modern day debauchery, it was all so mesmerizing. I don't think it would have worked if was just Biblical/historical Devil anecdotes, or just the modern day narrative: either of those would probably have been boring on their own. The novel's two alternating aspects are needed to keep it interesting and fresh.

I, Lucifer reminded me of Money (1984) by Martin Amis, who Duncan cites as one of his influences. Money's hedonistic protagonist, John Self, narrates a series of debauched anecdotes about him getting drunk, womanizing, wanking, eating unhealthily, taking drunks, and generally being an unpleasant person. I found Money entertaining for a while, but it didn't have enough variety to keep me reading. After about a hundred pages I found myself losing interest, thinking Alright, I get it, he drinks a lot and has problems with women, and wants to make lots of money. I decided to abandon it.

Duncan built on Milton's Devil, making him genuinely terrifying as well as relatable, and on Amis' unreliable hedonistic narrator, adding fantastical elements and a huge backstory (thousands of years), to break up the debauchery and keep the narrative interesting.

Lucifer knows an awful lot about being the Devil, but very little about being human - from our perspective - when he starts his free trial. Over the month he learns a lot about human nature and experience, which he tries to interpret from his earlier angelic perspective. Duncan took the story somewhere I was not expecting, and I'm glad for that.

(There is a story from an old Jewish source about a Rabbi having a friendly conversation with Satan - who in Judaism is a servant of God, not a Fallen Angel. The Rabbi chastises Satan for his harsh judgement of humans, arguing that if he were a human and not an angel, he would struggle to cope with human nature and experience. I'm sure that I have this story in one of my books, but I'm not sure which one.)

I haven't mentioned Duncan's prose yet. It's delightful and witty.

On the London Underground:

'The London Underground depresses God. The Paris Metro is rescued by bubbles of romance and intellectual flimflam (He can tune in for ten minutes and get something); the New York subway is a toilet, obviously, but it looks like the movies, you know, hip, famous, cool; Rome's Metropolitana - well, Rome's got a special dispensation, not surprisingly - but London, the London Underground gets Him down. The Lloyd-Webber ads; the cadaverous drivers with their deep-sea eyeballs and miles of unfulfilled dreams; the Lloyd-Webber ads; the puking office juniors and passed-out tramps; the death's-door beggars with their raw ankles and shat pants; the Lloyd-Webber ads; the buskers; the evening's fractured make-up and the morning's frowsty breath; all this and more - but chiefly the surrender to despair or vacancy the rattling tube demands, chiefly the tendency of London's human beings to collapse into a seat or hang from a rail in a state of bitter capitulation to the sadness and boredom and loneliness and excruciating glamourlessness of their lives. The only thing He sees on the Underground that cheers him up is blind people who have friendly relationships with their guide dogs.'

On Archangel Michael:

'He's might fond of his own name, needless to say, which he translates at parties as 'who is like God'. I wonder the Old Bugger lets him get away with it, since the correct - and far less flattering - translation is a rhetorical question: 'Who is like God?' Used to piss him off no end in the old days. Every time someone said, 'Er, Michael?' I used to cut in straight away with, 'Me.''

On smelling a bathroom for the first time:

'A lawless horde of smells: soap, chalk, rotting wood, limescale, sweat, semen, vaginal juice, toothpaste, ammonia, stale tea, vomit, linoleum, rust, chlorine - a stampede of whiffs, a roistering cavalcade of reeks, stinks and perfumes in Bacchanalian cahoots... all are weeyulcum... all are weeyulcum... Yes, they certainly were, though they fairly gang-banged my virgin nostrils. I sniffed, recklessly, the draughts long and deep; in went Gunn's Pantene for fine or flyaway, wreathed with his shit's ghost-odour, veined, too, with faded frangipani and sandalwood from ex-girlfriend Penelope's incense sticks he burns bathside as pungent accompaniment to the pain of remembering her.'

I should mention a negative. While Duncan's prose is fun and witty, it can sometimes be wrong: grammatically incorrect, with a comma missing or a comma in the wrong place, etc. A few times I had to re-read the sentences a few times to figure out what he was trying to say. He could've done with a better editor. These errors did not detract much from my overall enjoyment of the book though. I intend to read more of Duncan's novels, when I have read enough of my current to-read pile that I can justify buying more books.

If you're unsure whether you want to read it, here's the opening paragraph to, er, tempt you:

'I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell, Lord of the Flies, Father of Lies, Apostate Supreme, Tempter of Mankind, Old Serpent, Prince of This World, Seducer, Accuser, Tormentor, Blasphemer, and without doubt Best Fuck in the Seen and Unseen Universe (ask Eve, that minx) have decided - oo-la-la! - to tell all.'