Pictures of Scotland.org Canadian Amazon Store

There are the usual bits of Scottish dialog rendered in pseudo-phonetics, but not as egregious as in other novels of the sort. In spite of being set in the early 1700s, it generally comes across as a description of a Scotland that hasn't changed much in modern times, with parallels to football hooligans and drunks and debauchees, plus an innate puritanism and political extremism -- the more things change, the more they say the same.

Structure of the plot is clever: a 90-page summary by the "Editor" based supposedly on publicly available details, that lays out the bare bones of the story in a very journalistic (I mean news-in-depth) manner, followed by the revealed Memoirs, where of course the narrator is naive enough to display all of his faults as supposed virtues -- although he finally catches on at the end. Hoary plot device, but it works very well. This presages JEKYLL AND HYDE, which, knowing now of this book, I can see was influenced by it (well, Stevenson was a Scot too, and would have known Hogg, whereas the rest of the Eng-Lit world only paid attention to Sir Walter and Burns in his whimsical vein in those days). Basically, it is a story of a man who murders his older brother to inherit his lairdship and lands, although he is of a type who would never admit to such a base motive. He goes on to do even more horrible deeds (maybe!). The protagonist is a snotty, ugly little twerp, even as he portrays himself and as he is portrayed by others. This paradoxically adds a bit of fun to this dour book -- the author was one of the radical-poet circle of his times, so he could indulge in an unusual level of cynicism for the period. There is a lot of irony and satire in this, conveyed in a wry way that is almost uniquely Scottish (closest to it is Yiddish).

The familial situation is rather odd, consisting of an old-fashioned huntin' drinkin' laird, his mistress/housekeeper, his older Tom Jones-ish son, the Blifil-ish Sinner, the laird's pious and prudish wife (whom he rapes on their wedding night rather than kneeling down for some wholesome prayer), and her spiritual adviser Wringhim, who 'adopts' the younger son in time (or is perhaps his father, but not likely, this being a novel of people looking like their role models, like dogs are supposed to resemble their masters). Wringhim, while not a 'sinner', is a perfect ass, and is responsible for educating his snot-nosed ward into his perception of personal infalibility.

After all this, it turns out to be a Faustian story, because the Devil went on vacation from his other duties just to have fun playing with this particular victim. After all, how could he resist leading to depraved evils a person who believed through his Justified Religion that he was predestined by God to be one of the elect in Heaven no matter what he did on Earth? Satan, in this story, is a marvelous invention in that he takes on the features and character of whatever/whomever he is being seen by at the time -- for the most part, your own image as you perceive yourself to be, or if you're thinking of Jesus, he'll look like Jesus, or of Ringo Starr like Ringo Starr, etc. (At one point, the protagonist thinks, "I had no doubt now that he was Peter of Russia.") Naturally, Satan leads on the Justified Sinner to commit murders and despicable acts that the 'hero' thinks he can't be damned for since he's been predestined for heaven. (An alternative reading is, of course, that Colwan is paranoid/schizo, and this devil is his own delusion.)

Edinburgh setting: there is a fine and scary scene that takes place on Arthur's Seat, which you will appreciate all the more if you know that city. The end of the story is a phantasmagoria, magical events and all. Here, the devil in the new Laird Colwan's guise commits seductions, frauds, and murders of a despicable nature (including matricide: "she had by this time rendered herself exceedingly obnoxious to me"), driving our 'poor hero' into a state of total schizophrenia (he believes or doesn't that he really did these things, and maybe he did). Dirty trick follows dirty trick, to excess -- and maybe that isn't fair, considering how the book went before. For the devil to implement rather than instigate is of dubious orthodoxy, yet there is some doubt as to what really happened. When Colwan finally tells his friend to 'begone', he replies: "Our beings are amalgamated, as it were, and consociated in one, and never shall I depart from this country until I can carry you in triumph with me." (Guess that finally makes the situation clear.) "If this that you tell me be true," said I, "then it is as true that I have two souls, which take possession of my bodily frame by turns, the one being all unconscious of what the other performs; for as sure as I have at this moment a spirit within me, fashioned and destined to eternal felicity, as sure am I utterly ignorant of the crimes you now lay to my charge."

Colwan's adventures, when he goes on the lam, pursued by the obligatory mob (as in the movie versions of the contemporary novel FRANKENSTEIN), will be omitted here -- discover for yourself! (Well, he does get all tangled up in a miller's loom, and ends up in Edinburgh as a typesetter's apprentice -- hence 'justification' for the existence of the Memoirs.)

This is a very fine book, and I'll leave off now (as it is, this summary ended up being a lot longer than I intended).


The Devil Made Him Do It?   November 5, 2003
This book is genuinely creepy. Basically, it tells the story of a soul destroyed by a fascination with the doctrine of Predestination-Or, is that all there is to it?-It is a study in the psychology of one Robert Wringhim and the malicious form of insanity that a fervid belief in such a doctrine can inspire in a human heart.-Or is that quite all to be said here?-As a Twenty-First Century reader, one is tempted, if I may use that word anent this book, to see things in this purely "psychological" light. And, clearly, this perspective is spot on for the most part. Robert's world is obviously increasingly inhabited by the projections and personifications of his delusory mind. But one never quite knows in this book where the boundaries are between what might be called the purely endogenous functions of his mind, and what is, well, real, or if indeed such a distinction is meaningful. -It is well to bear in mind that all this is real to Robert. How are we to judge? Should we try?

The only comparable book/story I can think of in English Literature is Henry James's The Turn of The Screw, where James, it seems to me, clearly meant for the psychology of the governess to be the key. While I don't think James believed in ghosts haunting the cliched manor, I'm not so sure that Hogg did not believe in the Devil (in some form), embodied in the darkling wastes and dank, baroque towns of a religiously fervid and superstitious Scotland. To cut to the chase, to call this book MERELY psychological is to miss something here. It becomes a dismissive term, dismissive of the dark haunts and mysteries of ourselves and of our world that we have not fathomed. Ideally, this book should give us an eerie pause to stare into those depths without recourse to clinical terms such as "psychology" and "projection" and reexamine where certain boundaries lie in the murkiness of our own individual worlds - And, to shudder.


What fun!   June 1, 2003
1824, Scottish, a cross between Faust and The Invisible Man, critiquing Calvinism, AND it's funny! What more can you ask? (As a friend of mine said, with a description like that, the book has to be anticlimax; but he's wrong.)


A pain in the arse.   February 12, 2003
From and anonymous reveiw printed in the "British Critic" for July 1824 on Hogg's "Confessions": "There are three good reasons for reading books: first to be instructed by them; secondly to be amused; and thridly, to review them. The first does not apply at all to the tale befor us; as to the second, there are but few whose taste it will suit...;the third carried us through with that proud conciousness of martrydom for the public good, to which we are but too much accustomed when labouring in our vocation."

I encountered this novel in an intermediate composition class. The instructor of the course was apparently a Doctoral Candiate specializing in Narrative Form. To this day I have not forgiven her for making me read this incredibly ill-concieved book. While Hogg's shifting narrative may entertain those with a taste for narrative complexity, the resulting lack of clarity may prove this book to complete waste of time for anyone looking for a meaningful text. It is a wonder that it has survived this long.