James Hogg: The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner

[Heteronym]

This is one of the most fascinating novels I’ve read in recent times. It deals with Calvinist predestination, fanaticism, demonic possession, insanity, the nature of good and evil, and the power of religion over individuals.

Robert Wringhim is the unfortunate result of a marriage torn apart by religion. Reared by a devout mother and named after her guardian, the Reverend Robert Wringhim, the child grows up hating his father, a man who had little patience for religion, and brother, who lives with his father and is due to inherit all his fortune. Assured by the Reverend that he’s one of God’s chosen people for salvation, as set forth by Calvinist doctrine, he wonders if such a person can commit sins and whether sins can affect at all his state of grace. For is it not written that he’s predestined to go to Heaven?

Under this belief he befriends a mysterious man who has a striking resemblance to him. Together they discuss theology and slowly Wringhim allows himself to be convinced that he could do God’s work by killing sinners and people predestined to Hell. He believes his friend to be Prince Peter the Great of Russia, walking anonymously through Europe, and having chosen Wringhim for important deeds (this should convince anyone Wrinhgim isn't the sanest person in the world). In fact the man calls himself Gil-Martin and from enough hints throughout the novel one can surmise he’s the Devil, or a demon sent to tempt the young man.

Whatever he is, he begins influencing Wringhim’s life until he decides to kill his brother, and things only get better from there.

Written in 1824, it could easily be described as a Gothic novel. Gil-Martin is a clear example of a doppelgänger, following Wringhim everywhere as if he were his own shadow. And the structure of the novel comes from the genre, purporting to be a manuscript found and published by an editor. Said editor adds a preface that gives a lot of background information but is later contradicted. So the novel can’t be fully trusted. At times it’s a psychological novel, as Wringhim questions whether he’s not just insane. Every once in a while he seems to forget whole periods in which things happen that people accuse him of. So either someone is taking his place or he’s just blocking memories. But the editor's narrative confirms Gil-Martin, or someone close to Wringhim, really existed, so it can't all be delusions. This novel is a lovely conudrum that doesn't explain itself; fortunately this isn't a novel that needs much of an explanation, its strenght being in the ideas explored.

As I read it, I remember thinking this owed a lot to Crime and Punishment until I realized it had been written forty years before. As a study of guilt and the belief that moral superiority frees a man of all laws, Hogg’s novel is on the same level as Dostoevsky’s. James Hogg, from what I understand, is an obscure writer and this remains his most popular novel, only rediscovered in the last decades. But it’s a work that grants him a place as one of the most interesting writers ever.

[Mirabell]

oh, 'tis a great, great book. I came to it via the grand Samuel R. Delany's novel Hogg. I think there is a study waiting to be written on those two novels, no?

[Heteronym]

I'm not really familiar with Samuel R. Delany's work. What is the novel about?

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

I'm not really familiar with Samuel R. Delany's work. What is the novel about?

I think we've discussed it at the woods. here's the wiki on hogg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel)

[hdw]

Far from being "an obscure writer", Hogg is currently one of the most intensively studied of Scottish writers, up there with Sir Walter Scott and R.L. Stevenson, and there are academics all over the world making a living out of him.

The James Hogg Society was founded in 1981 and it holds bi-annual international conferences devoted to the writer. In Spring 2006 they met in the States at the Mississippi University for Women. There is at least one academic journal of Hogg studies that I know of, perhaps more.

Check out the (Stirling University-based) James Hogg Society website at James Hogg Society

Harry

[Colette Jones]

This sounds good, thanks for the recommendation.

[Max Cairnduff]

It's a great novel, isn't it?

I would say Hogg is an obscure writer, in the sense that outside academic circles few now have heard of him. He is also, however, in a sense the father of much Scottish literature. Muriel Sparks owes him a big debt, as most famously does Ian Rankin who cites this as his most important influence.

But in terms of the general public, he's not well known at all, which is a shame because not only is it an important novel it's also a very entertaining one. I was delighted to see it reviewed.

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by hdw

Far from being "an obscure writer", Hogg is currently one of the most intensively studied of Scottish writers, up there with Sir Walter Scott and R.L. Stevenson, and there are academics all over the world making a living out of him.

The introduction to my edition must be out of date then. I'm glad he's so intensely studied after all. He certainly deserves all the attention he gets.

[MarkDP]

I've just started a Scot Lit module at the UHI and this is the first prose book we're studying. Until now I'd only heard of the work.

It was interesting to discover the thread of admiration running from Robert Fergusson to Burns to Hogg himself, before R L Stevenson citing Confessions... as the inspiration for Jekyll and Hyde. Even though most never crossed paths, the respect is clear from my early stage of research.

["James Kirker"]

Hello,

Likewise a favorite of mine, and also evocative of Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer and Wieland by Chas. Brockden Brown, and for some reason, Dostoevsky's marvelous eerie tale, "The Double" --

That Hogg's work was also initially presented via a rather elaborate hoax makes it even more appealing...in a wicked way (:-) !

However, there is a distinct species of gloom pervading the work by Hogg...I don't know if it may be characterized as 'Scottish' in any specific sense, but it seems to me one may also find faint echoes of it R. L. Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher" as well...