A Marriage Made in Hell – Clive Barker and Faust
This week’s blog is not for the faint-hearted! Alan delves into one of his favourite horror novels, The Damnation Game by Clive Barker.
When Clive Barker’s debut novel The Damnation Game was published in the mid-1980s, expectations were high. By 1985 Barker, who hails from Liverpool, had already accumulated a distinguished body of work. He was co-founder of the theatre group The Dog Company and had written a number of acclaimed plays such as Frankenstein in Love, Subtle Bodies and The History of the Devil.
Barker’s plays included such diverse plots as the Devil pleading his case in court for a return to Heaven, and Queen Elizabeth and the poet Ben Jonson travelling in time to find themselves among the denizens of a deprived area of 1980s Liverpool.
He had also penned the first three volumes of the Books of Blood, acclaimed collections of short horror fiction (three more volumes would later follow). These collections proved to be landmarks in the field of horror literature, revolutionising the genre and moving Stephen King to describe Barker as “the future of horror”.
Also a daring and accomplished artist, Barker’s arresting and visceral paintings graced the covers of some editions of the Books of Blood.
In common with the works of his fellow Liverpudlian- the celebrated horror writer Ramsey Campbell, Barker’s tales occurred in a modern setting, featuring realistic and recognisable situations inhabited by ordinary people which are invaded by the fantastic and the monstrous. A blackly humorous vein often laced the terrors of these stories.
After already establishing such a formidable reputation at a young age (Clive Barker was then thirty-two), there was considerable pressure on his first novel to be something special, and Barker did not disappoint.
Given his background in theatre, it is perhaps not so surprising that Barker’s debut novel was influenced by the Faust legend (the German tale of he who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge).
The Damnation Game opens in the hell on earth of Warsaw during the immediate aftermath of World War II. A character named only as ‘the thief’ wanders through a landscape populated by the mutilated, the insane and the dead. The litany of grotesque situations he encounters include a cup-and-ball game which utilises a baby’s head.
The thief seems untouched by the suffering all around, concerned only with seeking out a gambler named Mamoulian whose ability at cards is rumoured to be uncanny, but whose reputation is also ominous. He finally meets Mamoulian, led to their game of cards by a woman whose lips have been sliced off.
The novel then updates to 1980s England, where we meet another gambler, Marty Strauss. After gambling debts led to his involvement in a botched armed robbery, he is now serving a prison sentence. A chance for freedom presents itself when reclusive businessman and billionaire Joseph Whitehead seeks a new bodyguard from among the prison population, under a special parole scheme. Strauss succeeds in being chosen and soon finds himself in a world stranger and more dangerous than any prison.
Despite his wealth and power, Whitehead is a haunted and frightened man, pursued by a mysterious figure known as the Last European to whom he apparently owes a great deal (though what, exactly, remains ambiguous), with hints of a past supernatural bargain between the two men. Strauss finds himself caught between his duty to protect Whitehead, who is loath to pay whatever it is he owes, and the Last European (known also as Mamoulian), a being with apparently supernatural powers, including the ability to raise the dead. Indeed, he is served by the repulsive Anthony Breer, the “Razor-Eater”, a serial child-killer whom he has resurrected.
Strauss finds a companion in Whitehead’s isolated and heroin-addicted daughter Carys, and together they must negotiate their way through the cataclysmic struggle between Whitehead and the Last European, a struggle which has its roots in their fateful meeting four decades earlier.
The Damnation Game is a brilliant variation on the Faust legend, but one where the demarcation between good and evil is ambiguous. Both Whitehead and Mamoulian are ruthless men. And while Mamoulian unleashes evil powers and is responsible for dreadful atrocities in the pursuit of his aims, he ultimately only seeks that which was agreed upon as his due, many years earlier.
Marty Strauss, the main protagonist of the novel, is also a flawed character, lacking in self-control, indulging his gambling habit to an extent which damages his marriage, and is willing to engage in violent crime to pay off his debts. Indeed, Barker has commented that in The Damnation Game everybody is tainted.
Barker’s debut novel is also far more ambitious in scope than most horror stories, rising beyond its superbly executed suspense and grotesqueries to engage in metaphysical speculation. Indeed, in the years following the publication of The Damnation Game, Barker would move on to toil in the field of dark fantasy and to cast his tales on a broader canvas, penning such masterpieces as Weaveworld, Imajica and Sacrament.
Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental that, for a novel which appeared at a time when Britain, then in the grip of Thatcherism, was a very polarised country with an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and rising unemployment and discontent, The Damnation Game regarded the very different worlds inhabited by the powerful, the poor and dispossessed.
Whitehead controls an empire and lives a luxurious existence, far removed from the struggles and hardships of modern society. His power and influence also allow him to conceal his sins and failings, such as a withdrawn daughter in thrall to a drug addiction, and a past of probable moral dubiousness.
Mamoulian too has immense powers to call upon and the means to coerce others into serving his needs, whatever the consequences to themselves and others.
Marty Strauss, a man without any of the advantages enjoyed by his employer, cannot flee the consequences of his trespasses and finds himself in a prison cell as a result of his involvement in crime.
In Barker’s tale, corruption and moral failing do not only exist within the characters and their actions, they are embedded in the society within which these characters live. If Whitehead, Mamoulian, and Strauss are morally compromised, to whom or to what can they look to as an example of an acceptable ethical standard? They are lost in a wider world which seems shorn of any aspiration to a higher good.
In the midst of the incredible and the fantastic, Barker also manages to never lose touch with an essential humanity. Some of the more subdued scenes of the novel are also the most touching, such as Marty’s heartbreak when he visits home to be with his wife after their period of enforced separation and she rejects him, simply no longer able to love the man who could not resist the lure of chance, which wrecked their marriage.
The growing love between Marty and Carys also serves as a counterpoint to the vengeance and carnage engulfing them, as each provides for the other a lifeline, a reason to endure and hope.
Also noted in the many glowing reviews was the mastery and beauty of Barker’s command of the English language. His horrors are revealed in an elegant and fluid prose and certain passages soar with a luminous grace.
The Damnation Game was published to great critical and commercial success, with horror legends such as James Herbert and Ramsey Campbell unanimous in their praise. And Barker continued to be a hugely significant figure in the field of horror literature, publishing three more volumes of the Books of Blood and, in 1987, writing and directing the legendary horror film Hellraiser, which gave to horror cinema one of its most iconic figures, Pinhead.
And it still retains its status as one of the greatest debut horror novels ever written, a novel which transcended genre and truly announced the arrival of a formidable talent. Given that it resulted from the influence of a seminal legend upon one of the greatest artists of our time, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the result was so extraordinary.
Alan, Fingal Libraries
The Damnation Game is available to borrow from Fingal Libraries. Click here to view the catalogue.