Of Infernal Desires and Oneiric Machines

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
by Angela Carter

I don’t often do book reviews (though this little affirmation is open to debate, since all or most of my academic essays can be said to border on book reviewing), but since the term is over, and I (finally) got the chance to finish reading a most wonderful novel, I’ll indulge in the sweetly perverse pleasures of telling the world about Angela Carter’s “The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman”. Firstly, though, I should probably mention that the book is surprisingly hard to come by. Amazon UK lists two different editions of the novel as “not in stock”, though available second hand from different sellers (from admittedly surprisingly low prices). I wasn’t able to find it in book stores for a long time, but I eventually stumbled upon it in Waterstone’s (the one where I found it had only two copies on sale, one of which I purchased; even the cashier pointed out she’d never seen/heard of the novel before, though she liked Angela Carter). This was a bit of a disconcerting situation, since I’d noticed a sustained tendency, as of late, to promote Angela Carter’s writings. So why was/is this particular novel largely overlooked? (Won’t even attempt to answer this question, though; it was simply surprising, that’s all).

The novel in itself is absolutely stunning, the best I’ve read by Angela Carter so far. The plot is woven (and I’ll beg you to excuse my Gothic simile) like an intricate arabesque with interconnecting designs and spread in concentrical circles. It is, in fact, a bit like this, if I may relate to a concrete visual reference. But also, in a sense, like this (yes, I just had to link it to something that’s displayed in a fascinatingly decadent Transylvanian museum). The plot summary, as it appears on the back-cover of my edition (Penguin Books, USA, 1994) goes as follows:

After a Long Absence…

She planned her funeral carefully. My instructions were to read Marvell’s poem “On a Drop of Dew”. This was a surprise. The Angela Carter I knew had always been the most scatologically irreligious, merrily godless of women; yet she wanted Marvell’s meditation on the immortal soul – ‘that Drop, that Ray / Of the clear Fountain of Eternal Day’ – spoken over her body. Salman Rushdie’s words from his Preface to Angela Carter’s Collected Stories. As I was reading this some weeks ago, on the plane, on my way back home – or, rather, back to one of my many homes, supposing that there indeed is a place in this godforasken world where I do belong – I thought that writers and their writings are very much incongrous. I thought that from the perspective of the writer and instructed reader. Because I feel, somehow, that one’s art is, in a way, beyond the artist, stronger, more daring, more defiant. The artist is, I believe, never to seldom truly deviant. Not in his or her own inner eyes. Queer, is it not? That one should try so hard to be what one always wanted and only achieve it in one’s blood-smeared work. Possibly at the cost of one’s life.