ILLIAM PETER BLATTY, in his end W acknowledgements to The Exor- cist, thanks the Jesuits for teaching EXORCISING him how to think. And in a recent in- THE EXORCIST terview (New York Times, August RAYMOND A. SCHROTH 15) he states that the primary pur- pose of his coming film from his book is "to persuade those who do not be- lieve that there is a case to be made for the supernatural and to offer the Part commercial gimm.ick.shocker, " part problem of evil think=piece, -~l~,~Ll~_~. possibility that there is a supernatural part old=fashioned Christian apologetic ~-~-- force of evil in the universe whose game plan is to convince us that he does not exist." Film director William ral" explanation. It resembles the and heave him out her bedroom win- Friedkin, although he believes in "God-of-the-gaps" proofs for the ex- dow? "something unknowable," is not inter- istence of God, that he must be, in Regan's protectors strap her io her ested in theology, but simply in the some way, the Answer to any number bed where she fouls the room, and film's visual impact on its customers of mysteries we do not understand-- screams her obscenities in many voices --as his "The French Connection" rather than the Lord and Father re- and strange languages; and her atheis- testifies. But Blatty claims he is at- vealed to us in the self-emptying love tic, but desperate, mother turns for tached to the church as to a woman of Jesus. help to Damien Karras, the Jesuit psy- by whom he has had a child (Times, Blatty's implication that those who chiatrist who has problems of his own. August 27). With these statements in choose not to believe in Satan (and Karras is torn with guilt over neglect- mind, it seems time to take a close Blatty's story) have fallen for his ing his mother, and he also doubts look at The Exorcist, novel and film- game plan of convincing us that he the real presence of Jesus in the host to-be, to see where Blatty's "thinking" does not exist has the same logic as at Mass. would lead us. the argument during the Red scare of The mother reasons that if her I am afraid that Georgetown gradu- the 1950s that the first thing a real daughter simply imagines she is pos- ate Blatty may have set out to write Communist learns is to deny that he sessed because she may have read a a part commercial gimmick-shocker, he is a Communist. Besides, if Blatty's book on witchcraft, then perhaps a part problem-of-evil think-piece, and devil really wanted to lay low the last mock rite of exorcism will release her. --with the encouragement of good thing he should do is take over the But eventually the once skeptical ra- priest friends--part old-fashioned Chris- daughter of a beautiful movie star tionalist Karras becomes convinced by tian apologetic. But he has brought making a film on location surrounded his conversations with the "demon" forth--along with a commercial suc- by Georgetown Jesuits. that a distinct howling monster really cess--a piece of Catholic nostalgia of Consider the plot, allegedly based exists within the child. Old Father more service to the cause of supersti- on a similar case in Washington in the Merrin, a Jesuit paleontologist obvi- tion than to true religion. 1940s. Regan (Blatty makes several ously patterned on Teilhard de Char- The story takes place in the present. references to King Lear), the twelve- din, is brought in, with Karras' The campuses are in turmoil, astro- year-old daughter of the divorced star, assistance, to perform the exorcism. nauts are on their way to the moon begins to act strangelynurinating on a In a concluding scene that is both and hippies prowl Georgetown's Wis- rug at a party, shouting obscenities, horrifying in its description of the consin Avenue. But the church he etc. at the same time that nearby Holy girl's cursing and vomiting green on portays is the church of the 1940s, Trinity Church has been desecrated a flying, stinking bed, but disgusting with the preoccupations and thought --the Blessed Virgin statue has been in its cheap sensationalism, one priest patterns of the pre-Conciliar culture. painted like a whore, the Latin altar keeps pumping her with librium while Blatty's 1970 priests still say Mass in card has been rewritten into a Latin the other intones the exorcism prayers. Latin, chat clerical banter at George- lesbian joke! When the older priest drops dead of town cocktail parties, and surprise Regan's condition gets worse and a heart attack Karras, in a burst of otherwise sophisticated people when the secular scientists exhaust them- pious machismo, challenges the demon they wear informal clothes. selves diagnosing her nervous dis- to take him onnthen crashes out the His line of reasoning in favor of orders and confidently prescribing window to his death! Did the emotionally exhausted priest- diabolical possession is almost pre- cures that do not cure. A British movie psychiatrist--like Regan, a split per- Enlightenment: that bizarre phenom- director friend of her mother dies in sonality-simply crack under the ena which, /or us, have no known a drunken fall; or did Regan, with her weight of his and the little girl's explanation, must have a "supernatu- new Satanic strength, break his neck

3 November 1972:II0 troubles and attempt to resolve his own tensions in a sacrificial suicide? Or did an objectively existing per- sonal evil force actually abandon one Wanted: victim for another, like the devils in Mark's gospel who, at Jesus' com- mand, leave their victim for a herd Effectiveministers of pigs that plunge off a cliff? Does Blatty care? Is he like Regan's movie mother who, when it is all over, still br contemporaryman. can't believe in God but can believe in the devil? Or, like some products of "Jesuit" education who have used The pertect their years on the debating teams to sharpen their wits rather than their convictions, does he simply enjoy need not apply playing with either possibility? And what point of view will the movie take? At this point I expect that, like The minister who can best commumcate wdh modern man has "Patton," "Bullitt," and "The French hved close to hfe's harsh realities He is, indeed, The Wounded Connection," it will have it both ways. Hea/er, wdhng to admd his own failures and doubts and open h~mself to others Henri Nouwen, priest, psychologist and author How unlike Henry James' The Turn of Creative Ministry, proposes a new approach to help th~s kind of the Screw which, through its in- of minister reach the lonely, ahenated and rootless man of today tricacy, hints of sexuality, subtle sug- Here are sound splntual and psychological insights that make contemporary ministry more relevant and effective gestions, and clues that only reveal themselves after several readings, draws us more and more deeply into THE WOUNDED HEALER its mystery and the ambiguous rela- Ministry in Contemporary Society tionship between the appearance of innocence and the reality of evil. And Henri J.M. Nouwen how unlike other genres--the tales of $5 95 at all booksellersDOUBLEDAY e Faust, Frankenstein and Dracula-- that use the myths of Satan, Prome- theus and vampires to draw our atten- tion to larger themes--man's lust and pride and the power of evil (like All men are created unique. Original Sin) to perpetuate itself throughout generations. As the book develops it is inter- Sowhyare you esting that Evil personified first mani- fests itself in terms of the clerical, a conformist? celibate, and most narrowly religious Because you allow envy, a depersonahzed society and "the pedanhc cultural conceptions of what is "dirty" pretensions" of so-called experts to destroy your mdiwduality Pro- and bad--defecation, sex talk and the fessor Van Kaam, an mternahonally prominent psychologist, shows violations of "sacred" objects. Blatty how to break the conformist mold through the power of self-motwabon He outhnes both the problems and the opportundies of pursuing an has prefaced his book with one page original hfe style, to help you realize maxLmum creativity and originality that mentions Dachau, Communist in today's regimented world torture and the Mafia, as if these were evidence of Satan's power; but they have no real connection with the rest ENVY.ORIGINALITY of the novel. Blatty has chosen to How to Live Creatively in a Depersonalized World awaken us to the force of evil not RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J., is assistant edi- AdrianVanKaam tor of Commonweal and teaches in the Communications Department at Fordham University. $5 95 at all booksellers dDOUBLEDAY

Commonweal: 111 through visions of social sin, of pov- Satan on M Street in Georgetown. stayed up all night with The God- erty, or Hiroshima or Mylai, but As a result, one of the most re- /ather, now stays up again. He may through the sufferings of a little girl markable characteristics of Blatty's have begun depressed and confused ~ who---he and his defenders would book is the smallness of his world by the experience of malice and hu- have us believe--was suffering not and the smallness of his questions. If man suffering. As he reads on he be- through anyone's fault nor through the success of the book has any reli- comes as totally absorbed with the the ravages of mental illness but gious lesson it should be seen as a alleged symptoms of diabolical pos- simply because an evil spirit had got- negative sign, a reminder that when session as he was when he first heard ten into her. true religion grows cold and remote, of demons in grammar school----or P6re de Tonquedee, the old Parisian when the Gospel is not preached in a even college, and as the millions of Jesuit, one of the most renowned direct and human way, and when the people who have always been titillated exorcists of recent times, reportedly" church does not understand and con- by voodoo, witchcraft, ouija boards, told fellow-Jesuits not long before his front evil in its social consequences-- the visions of Fatima, or the Loeh death that he had never encountered in war and oppression--people will Ness monster. He finishes as reassured an authentic case of diabolical posses- turn to pseudo-religious substitutes-- as any good citizen in seventeenth- sion; yet Blatty would have us believe drugs, apparitions, glossolalia, violent century Salem that the ultimate source that in 1970 a psychiatrist and a ideologies--that seem to deal with of evil is not the malice and selfishness world-renowned paleontologist could their questions. of the human will but an Outside drive themselves to death encountering The Exorcist reader, who has also Agitator who comes in and takes over,

BOOKS 000000000000000000

Trivial prose masquerading as verse

The Motorcycle Betrayal unrecognized poets across the country, image, incidentally, the motorcycle Poems ranging from the competent to, who seems to contain for Wakoski about knows, the great, who pursue their craft the same raw sexual energy that horses DIANE WAKOSKI in the awful loneliness that is the only had for most of D. H. Lawrence's hero- Simon and Schuster, $5.95 way, and who must wonder, seeing stuff ines, a development that may indicate like this, what chance they will ever the validity of Lawrence's worst fears The East Side Scene: American Poetry, have with the bookmen. Well, I'm no for our age.) 1960-1965 publisher, I don't know what chance Most of the poems are distinguish- they will have, probably Gresham's law able from trivial prose statements only ALLEN DE LOACH, Ed. is becoming as applicable here as else- by the typographical conventions that Doubleday Anchor, $2.50 where; but it is an utterly mistaken make them look like verse. But, here, view that the contents of these volumes these conventions are arbitrary: they MARK TAYLOR represent what is decent or exciting in do not follow from exigencies of meter, contemporary verse. meaning, internal consistency, or any- These dreadful books deserve review The dust jacket on The Motorcycle thing else, but rather from the delusion (if at all) only because two reputable, Betrayal Poems shows Diane Wakoski that the placing of single words or short commercial publishers have seen fit to standing behind a Yamaha. It's an en- phrases beneath each other on the page, stamp them with their imprimaturs, a gaging photograph, but it's one that sometimes making them flush with the rare blessing for a collection of verse motorcycle cognoscenti would view with left-hand margin and sometimes not, is these days, and one which inevitably disdain, for the pictured two-stroke a condition of poetry. Here, for exam- suggests that there is something new or street scrambler, unlike a Norton Com- ple, is the beginning of "Indian Giver": valuable or important about them, that mando, say, or a Triumph Bonneville, "You gave me / this knife / yester- they show what is going on in poetry is what dedicated bikers, Wakoski's be- day / an act / of friendship, / be- now, that they point convincingly to loved Hell's Angels, for instance, call cause / I gave you / part of my lunch, future directions. It is a suggestion that a cream puff. The bike shown, in other / so you wouldn't have to eat / in the demands refutation, as a service less words, bears roughly the same relation- school cafeteria / and miss the hall to truth in the abstract than to the hun- ship to a "real" street bike as most of game .... " And lines from "Letters to dreds, maybe thousands, of genuine and these poems do to real poetry. (As an Shep": "Seldom have women / with as

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