THE WEREWOLF OF PARIS - GUY ENDORE

WARNING: This book contains depictions of rape (including the rape of a minor) and incest.

I read The Werewolf of Paris my senior year of highschool on a shitty Chromebook for my English Literature class. We had to read it from a PDF (which I will link at the end!) because its pretty much out of print, except for the one $20 paperback copy you can get online, apparently. I love it so much. My teacher had fantastic taste.

To give a basic rundown (without spoilers): we begin with a frame story in which the un-named (pretentious...) narrator discovers "the Galliez report", which is the court report for the main character. Betrand Calliet (the main character in question) is born to a young girl who was raped and impregnated by a priest by the name of Father Pitamont, the source of Bertrand's affliction being the supposedly cursed Pitamont clan and the violent nature of his conception. He grows and begins to start his involuntary werewolf transformations, and after a series of disturbing activities, he flees to Paris, pursued by Aymar Galliez, his step-uncle that helped to raise him. From then on, the backdrop for this book is that of the Franco-Prussian war, where he takes up a role in the national guard and meets his... very... interesting (masochistic.) love interest, Sophie. What follows is a large amount of violence and war, all the while Aymar attempts to track down his nephew.

I'm definitely not saying this is objectively the best thing ever written, or a masterpiece or whatever- but it is genuinely amazing, and difficult to put down. Gothic fiction and historical fiction work fantastically together. Sophie de Blumenberg (the aforementioned masochistic love interest) is exceptionally interesting, a sort of twisted Ophelia, brutally masochistic and absolutely obsessed with death. Bertrand himself isn't exactly attention grabbing for his personality, but he doesn't need to be. We can just watch him do his sick werewolf shit and that is absolutely good enough.

It isn't fair to talk about this novel without talking about the politics behind the whole thing. Guy Endore was a leftist activist and a communist, and this is decently prevalent in his work, where he depicts the cruelty of capitalism in its suppression and killing of the Parisian communards. The titular werewolf is somewhat meant as a metaphor for the politics of the time, but Endore also seemed to really enjoy writing about people involuntarily doing awful things, so who's to say. However, I have to draw attention to a fantastic article by Carl Grey Martin for Le Monde Diplomatique, in which a lot of political themes of this book are truly (and greatly!!) analyzed. I will lift a small excerpt from Martin's article that I find funny, but also very worth pointing out:

"The absorption of the werewolf narrative into the “background” of these groundbreaking events might disappoint Gothic fiction aficionados. On its publication a New York Times critic wrote: “When able to restrain his dislike of the upper classes, Mr. Endore has handled his weird theme very deftly” (9). More recently, Jerry Ball complained “that less than half of the novel is actually about the werewolf” (10). The work is certainly fragmentary, even opaque, and full of references to sources like Vuillaume’s Mes cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune. A reader enticed by the comparison on the back cover of the 1941 paperback—“a horror story to stand beside Dracula”—might have felt confused."

I will give "Jerry Ball" some credit and say that, yeah, it isn't a constant werewolf horror killing spree. There are a lot of moving parts, but I think that makes it all the more interesting. If not for the historical fiction aspect, I don't think this book would be as great as it is. Suck my Jerry Balls.

To wrap this up: please read this book (so long as you can stomach the sexual violence!). It is a great read, a great work of gothic horror, of historical fiction, and I love it the more time goes on and the more I think about it. It deserves more thought and attention, especially because I want to be able to buy a nice copy instead of the really bland ugly one they have now.

PDF

"GUY ENDORE'S DIALECTICAL WEREWOLF" - CARL GRAY MARTIN