The Pilgrim of the Absolute Paperback

I would speculate that to many the writing of Leon Bloy will be rather like Marmite, you’ll either love it or find it unbearable. I have for several months been dipping into Bloy’s magnum opus, his novel ‘The Desperate Man’, which in places I find rather challenging and dense, though it is ultimately very rewarding. This collection of excerpts from his wider portfolio of works is much more approachable and easier to read.I was introduced to his work on the basis that his style had similarities with another one of my favourite authors, a onetime friend of Leon Bloy; J.K Huysmans. There are some pleasant commonalities between the two authors. I’m informed that Bloy was a very difficult man to get along with and was known as “the hurler of curses”, and this comes through in his narrative, but the sharpness of his tongue in places and occasions of harshness against those who’ve earned his scorn is only a small aspect of Bloy’s writing (though at times a rather amusing one). To my mind the thing that comes through most strongly is his strength and conviction in his religious views. I think that Bloy is a thoughtful and deeply caring man who is profoundly compassionate to the poor and needy, I don’t think that he’s alone in his feeling that modernity is wildly out of step with objective truths as revealed by the churchBloy cleaves strongly to the purity and beauty of older classical tradition in the face of modernity. In the increasing secular post-modern world we inhabit, the voice of Bloy is vindicated more so than in his own time, distant but still very poignant and relevant.

David Bentley Hart's introduction in his usual obnoxious and self-righteous pomposity almost made me want to put this book down.I'm glad I didn't. Léon Boly's beautiful and soul-stirring prose is not comparable with anything else and perhaps will never meet a rival. A man filled with Sorrow, Passion, Love and also Spite. It is this combination which creates not a level-headedness, but explores the depths of the Human Soul and God. And brings tears to ones eyes. A forgotten writer whom everyone should read.

didn't like it.