The Devil's Pleasure Palace Read Online Free Page A

creation lies at the center of the human experiment, in just about every facet of study, whether called religion, philosophy, science, or art. It sits at the heart of every human culture, no matter how primitive or sophisticated. Indeed, cultures at the fringes of each extreme resemble one another in at least one salient way: They reject other forms of knowledge in an attempt to believe in something . A cargo cult on a remote Pacific island bears a very close resemblance to, say, the global-warming cult of the Western sophisticates; both believe passionately in simplistic cause and apparent effect, and neither wants to hear contradictory evidence, even of the plainest kind.
    Nor is it any accident that the quest myth is basic to every society, whether told around tribal campfires or in Hollywood tentpole movies. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell limns the universal “monomyth” (what I am calling the ur-Narrative) this way: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” The quest has many apparently different objectives, but in reality there is only one: salvation.
    The quest for the Grail—the chalice that held Christ’s holy blood, the physical manifestation of the sacrifice on the cross and the redemption of God’s promise—is the theme of one of Western civilization’s most venerable narratives, essential to every redemptive fantasy. Whether it is a physical object or an abstract idea, a thing or person—and it is instructive that Parsifal asks Gurnemanz “ Wer ist der Gral? ” or, “Who [not what ] is the Grail?”—the Grail is that which may be sought but never fully understood, a goal receding at speeds faster than light the closer we approach it, a secret knowledge that can be revealed only at a later time, often at the price of the hero’s own personal sacrifice, in the imitation of Christ.
    But there is another important aspect to Campbell’s heroic quest, the obstacles that the “fabulous forces” of darkness must throw at the hero inorder to frighten him from his mission. From the time of Aristotle, the quest has been expressed in what Hollywood today calls the three-act structure, which I might summarize thus: The hero is called away from his normal existence, usually against his will or despite his unworthiness; he encounters all manner of setbacks, dangers, and temptations, which imperil him so greatly that it seems to the audience he can never escape; and, finally, he overcomes, accomplishes the mission, and returns as best he can to the status quo ante—but he is irrevocably changed.
    (It is instructive to note that the tale of Christ’s Passion conforms exactly to this structure: the entry into Jerusalem to confront his destiny; the Agony in the Garden and the Crucifixion; and, at last, the triumph of the Resurrection.)
    One of the Aristotelian conditions of storytelling is that the story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This arc is so fundamental to the Western way of design that the entire history of drama and literature is unthinkable without it. Obviously, such is not the case with the ongoing struggle between Right and Left, but that is only because we are experiencing the story as it is occurring, having been born into it, and we will almost certainly depart from it before the outcome is clear. We are merely the Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns of the plot. But outcome there must certainly be.
    A good example of this structure from the Homeric era is the figure of Ulysses. In love with his wife, Penelope, he (in the non-Homeric versions of the story) feigns madness in order to escape his call to duty in the Trojan War (Act One). When that fails, he fights bravely and victoriously