What I'm Reading: The Exorcist

I don’t love the idea that The Exorcist (1971) by William Peter Blatty is the first book I’m highlighting at this rejuvenated Quivering Pen blog on Substack, but yet here we are on this post-election Friday when half the country seems to have lost their minds, possessed by external forces that have taken up residence inside their bodies. So, yeah, an aging novel about a demon-wracked girl seems entirely appropriate right about now.

I picked up this Harper Perennial edition of Blatty's classic horror novel with the perfectly creepy cover at the Barnes and Noble in Sioux Falls, South Dakota early last month, thinking it would make for some good Halloween reading. Little did I realize, it would also become a chilling meditation on the state of America in late 2024.

Frankly, I might not have picked up the book if it weren’t for the grab-you-by-the-(eye)balls cover design by Milan Bozic. The pea-soup green, the high-contrast eyes and mouth, the font configuration into a cross: it’s the visual equivalent of icy fingers down a spine. “Buy me, Pathetic Mortal!”

I have an interesting history with The Exorcist (the novel), dating back to 1979 when I picked up the original classic purple cover with a blurry photo of what looked like a tormented woman. I think I plucked it from the free paperback books rack at my local library. I was 16 and on the edge of teenage rebellion; in fact, this may have been my shining Rebel with a Cause moment. As a shy preacher's kid in my small Wyoming town, reading The Exorcist was my middle finger to conformity. I didn’t drink or swear, but I could read subversive adult books. In fact, I very purposefully read The Exorcist in public, holding it in front of my face like a billboard advertisement for depravity.

And that's when things went south for me.

At the time, I was in the cast of the community theater production of Hello, Dolly! (I played one of the waiters in the restaurant Dolly frequented). About a third of the cast were members of my father's Baptist church and I could see them giving me side eye as I carried around “the devil's book.” We were in dress rehearsal one night and during my downtime backstage in the dressing room, I sat there alone with the paperback, hoping to finish a chapter before I had to go on stage. In the hush of the dressing room, it was just me and the Devil, surrounded by the cloying scent of the pancake makeup on cheeks and the waxy feel of eyebrow pencil on my forehead. The turn of a page sounded like the hot breath of a whisper in my ear.

I hadn't seen the movie yet (that was still a few years down the road), but I knew enough about the plot to know what to expect. As Regan, the young girl at the center of the story became less and less of herself and was “filled up with the Devil,” my own heart started up like it was in a drum circle. I was halfway through the book when I heard my cue and knew I needed to be back onstage soon. I set the book facedown on the counter in front of the mirrors and lights, then went out to sing with the other waiters.

When I got back to the dressing room fifteen minutes later, I found the book had been torn in half, with the second part of the novel gone. Back in the 1970s, ripping phone books asunder was one display of manly strength, so it was probably nothing for someone to come along and, hands grasping opposite sides of the book, divorce it from itself in one determined yank. I imagine there was a flood of self-righteous heat spreading through the book-ripper’s blood in that moment.

I was shocked, hurt, and confused. Then I got a little mad (I guess the Devil stirred my heart). Obviously, some busybody do-gooder didn't like my choice of reading material and decided to send me a message.

I got the message all right.

And, as a people-pleasing preacher’s kid, I backed down. Disheartened, I never picked up the book again until now, 45 years later. I blame the pea-soup-vomit cover. Or, maybe the Devil made me do it.

I'm still halfway through (guarding this green edition carefully), and am finding it to be pretty decently written, despite its age. Sure, for every scene of limb-twisted, obscenity-spewing horror, there are an equal number of bland pages full of 70s psychobabble that drain some of the book’s tension. But overall, there’s still enough here to frighten and shock.

In particular, the bedroom scene where Regan sits up in the nest of her fetid bedsheets, takes the crucifix, spreads her legs and—

Well, if you’ve seen the movie or read the book, you know what happens. Decorum holds me back from fully describing the scene, but if you know, you know….Some images are burned in the brain forever.

This week in particular, I can’t help but read The Exorcist as political metaphor and how America has been similarly assaulted by the cross in the hands of those who are determined to reverse the moral clock of this country. I’m shocked, my father is shocked, I hope we’re all shocked. Where is the Father Karras who will save us? In the novel, he’s skeptical and slow to act, even when presented with Regan’s obvious demonic possession (“Hey, Faddah, watch me bounce this bed!”). And so it goes from bad to worse for Regan. I worry that it’s already too late to exorcise our political demons. (I myself went half out of my mind this week, posting things to social media like “My anger is burning a hold in my pocket and I have to spend it.”)

One thing’s for certain: like Regan, we’ll never be the same again, even if we drive the demons into pigs and send them hurtling into the ocean. We will be forever haunted by what infected America’s heart in the 2020s.

What else am I reading this week?
Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray
The Arches Reader, edited by Jeffrey D. Nichols
How the Canyon Became Grand by Stephen J. Pyne
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift