Leonard R. N. Ashley

There is a lot of trivia in this work about demons and devils, and a handful of scholarly bits, but to get the good parts you have to put up with the author's posturing and pontificating, and determining who, if anyone, gets to call themselves a Satanist or whatever. He accepts the reality of devils and demons - or does he? He appears to be trying to walk both sides, whether because he doesn't want to annoy potential believers who might read the book, or because he feels embarrassed at belief in the event that non-believers might read his book, it's impossible to tell. Some of the things he proposes fly in the face of scholarly work, and some of them take the reality of literature surrounding devils and demons as proof that such beings exist, while explaining to us why everyone (nearly) is wrong about who/what/where they are and how they look/act. Overall, a disappointment, though there were a lot of fun bits, as well. It is scattershot, just little bits and dribs, without any obvious systematic approach, so if you want encyclopedia or scholarly examination, look elsewhere. This is by no means a "complete book" and it is frustrating to read because from time to time you manage to find the pony in the manure, but you have to look through quite a bit of manure to do it.… (més)

Dear Mr. Leonard R. N. Ashley, who wrote "The Complete Book Of Werewolves":

You invited people to talk about your book on the Internet, so I think I'll take you up on it.

While I generally agree with you about the terrible state of the American educational system today, I have some objections to your statement that American schoolchildren ought to "tackle Henry James' The Turn of the Screw instead of reading Alice Walker's The Color Purple and other politically correct assignments."

Speaking as a young(ish) American who tackled both of those books in school (though neither as an assignment), Turn of the Screw is not actually a particularly good novel. It is, in fact, a fairly standard Gothic novel that has had all of the actually interesting elements of Gothic novels taken out, so that it can pass as proper men's literature. If you would like to read some good, serious gothic novels that are stylistically excellent, fun to read, and have serious things to say about both the genre and the state of humanity, I recommend Austen's Northanger Abbey or Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Oh, wait, those were both written by women, so I suppose that would be too "politically correct".

As for The Color Purple, I will grant you that, particularly in terms of pacing and structure, it has a certain lack of polish. On the other hand, it's an absorbing book that takes risks, tries things that had almost never been done before, says things that nobody else was trying to say, speaks to people nobody else was speaking to, and does it all very, very well, if not perfectly. I am sorry if there was not enough girl-on-girl, racism and gore in it for your tastes (per your previous recommendation of Moon Dance*, with its lesbian cowgirls and savage Sioux tribesmen.)

Also I am not entirely sure why you felt the need to make that comparison in the middle of what was ostensibly a survey of werewolf literature, but I am sure you had your reasons.

Kisses,
Melannen… (més)

Dr. Ashley makes an attempt to explain how name meanings (surnames, forenames, place names, honorifics, nicknames-you name it...) go through trends, what these trends mean about the people, and how they differ regionally and across cultures. Frequently, he does this. More frequently, however, he puts lists in strange places, doesn't follow a thesis to a conclusion, and jumps around in a dizzying un incomprehensible pattern.

I would love to see this book updated (I read the 1991 version) and better edited. I loved the author's informal tone-most of the time. However, it seems he went for such a conversational tone in the writing, he forgot he wasn't suppose to be writing in a stream of conciousness.… (més)