the devils walk : why i wrote this book
As with so many first novels The Devils Walk has been coming for a long time. Although it is not autobiographical (I am neither gay, nor an alcoholic, nor am I am a barrister, let alone a High Court Judge) there are, inevitably, parts of Dorrell that are me; most forcibly in the sense that, at the beginning of the book, he has reached an important stage in his life. The discussion he has with Father Ignace in Chapter 1 is a summary of a journey that I have taken from being raised in a religious environment to the recognition that it was all a fairy tale. One that curiously endures long after we accept that Father Christmas was just our parents. Like Dorrell I passed through the classic stages of bereavement – anger, denial, depression to final acceptance.
As Dorrell says:
"Some people however, manage to pass through this phase and to slay the demons of religion entirely. They can say, without a flicker of conscience, that they do not believe in anything that cannot be scientifically proven. Whereas previously they may have flirted with their doubts and tried phrase such as ‘I don’t believe in God but I believe there’s something out there’ or ‘I’m not religious but I’m definitely spiritual’, they can now boldly state with conviction ‘I do not believe in God’. I am one such."
But what then? When you realise that you are no longer immortal and that life has no inherent meaning it is very easy to lose your anchor. You drift along with nothing but cynicism as solace. Again, as Dorrell says, when describing the Evolutionists view of the world:
“Damn it, even love’s not special”
But eventually I found the answer, as father Ignace points out to Dorrell, in the dialectic that is Nietzsche turned Camus; ‘god is dead’ (Nietzsche) – ‘life is Absurd’ (Camus). When you finally realise that life is Absurd, with no inherent meaning, then you can get on and live your life unshackled from the bonds of metaphysics with the sole purpose of giving it meaning. However, it doesn’t often turn out how we plan.
After Dorrell’s first discussion with Father Ignace the Devils Walk is nothing more than an extended essay on what life is to most of us – deeply complicated. As humans our greatest urge is to find order and meaning in chaos around us, from seeing patterns in the clouds to Princess Diana conspiracy theories, our minds will not allow disorder.
We want to believe in Devils and Angels; we have no greater urge than to divide the world into good and bad and, of course, to believe that we always reside on the side of the good. Sadly it’s all nonsense. Leaving psychotic states apart, we are all of us capable of great good and great evil. Which way we turn depends on a number of things, not the least of which are; our upbringing, our genetic inheritance and our circumstances.
We are all pray to the demands of greed, power and lust and by the two unstoppable urges to spread our genes and to be loved. Although we are the most successful social group on the planet we are still, paradoxically, the most selfish of beings. Sometimes enlightened but more often not – especially if the enlightened path stands in the way of our most basic instincts. In Dorrell the conflict between the good and the bad rages unabated throughout his life. His nemesis, Aaron Hampshire has no such difficulties having allowed his self-interest to completely destroy the possibility of any debate. He is focused, single minded and prepared to kill to win. The clash between the two is inevitably destructive and ultimately fatal.
The Devils Walk is about the tyrannies; as Father Ignace points out in the first chapter ‘Freedom is the freedom to choose your own cage’. Dorrell is slave to the tyranny of his sexual proclivities, Hampshire to the urge for power, wealth and recognition and Hogg to the tyranny of his inability to engage socially. In The Turn of the Screw Henry James leaves us with one of literature’s greatest mysteries – just who are the ghosts, are they real and why does Miles die? We shall never know and, in my view, the reason is, rather prosaic; that James recognised that life is just not cut and dried. There is neither ultimate good, nor ultimate bad, neither ultimate happiness nor ultimate sadness. When god is gone there is just the mortal struggle. We are ill equipped to deal with it and frequently make a terrible mess. None of us are above it and none of us should ever be in a position – ultimately – to judge.