“Dimiter” by William Peter Blatty, $24.99
In the annals of demonology, William Peter Blatty falls somewhere between St. Augustine and Joss Whedon.
He isn’t the first person who’s ever written about demons and demonic possession, but he has provided us with one of the genre’s most memorable novels, 1971’s “The Exorcist.” There had been disturbing stories before, but nothing — especially when Blatty teamed up with director William Friedkin for the 1973 screen adaptation — so terrified audiences about the possibilities of the diabolical in ordinary people’s lives.
For Blatty, though, the story’s success remains beyond his wildest expectations.
“I honestly thought I was writing just a one-shot,” the 82-year-old author said in a recent phone interview from his Maryland home. “At the time, comedy writing was over for me, and nobody would hire me to write anything dramatic. What I had left to write was the idea for ‘The Exorcist.’ I never imagined what would happen.”
What happened was a mega-best-seller: More than 13 million copies, according to some estimates, have been sold in the United States alone. Several more novels — and films — followed, giving Blatty more opportunities to explore the workings of divine redemption and demonic evil.
His new novel, “Dimiter,” is similarly preoccupied with good and evil, with the mysterious and the miraculous, although it is also something of a departure.
Set in the 1970s, “Dimiter” introduces us, in a riveting opening scene, to an enigmatic inmate in an Albanian prison during the gray days of Enver Hoxha’s regime. The man coolly withstands unbearable torture and then escapes, vanishing like a phantom … only to later turn up in the Holy Land.
He becomes a shadowy presence in the lives of several people, including an Arab Christian police officer and a Jewish doctor, both of whom puzzle over several mysterious deaths somehow linked to this figure, who is named Paul Dimiter.
If you look more closely, the story also makes a sly, theological nod to the essential mystery of the Gospels: the Resurrection. Blatty has taken a message of religious faith and enfolded it within a fast-paced plot for a basic reason.
“I had to make a page-turner,” he said, “or else who would want to read it?”
The demonic is a hot commodity today, but don’t try to credit Blatty as the elder statesman of this surge in horror movies, books and TV shows. He wants no part of it.
“When I look around the culture, it makes me want to projectile vomit,” he said, recalling that infamous moment in “The Exorcist.” “The more blood, the more chainsaws, the better. The studios have so debased the tastes of kids that that’s all the kids want now.”
This might sound strange coming from the author of a novel renowned for its creative — and harrowing — use of puke, spinning heads and a crucifix, but Blatty’s brand of horror has always been about more than shock effect. Characters wrestle with metaphysical doubts even as the bodies pile up.
Some people forget the philosophy, just as studio execs forgot Blatty’s abilities as a comic writer after “The Exorcist.”
“Their eyes glazed over when I pitched comedy ideas. It was as if I had done nothing else before ‘The Exorcist,”’ said the man who wrote the screenplay for “A Shot in the Dark” and other film comedies. “It was as if I had landed on this planet just with that book under my arm. It made me insane.”
Blatty’s voice is warm and generous — it’s easy to catch the inflection of the New York streets where he was born, the son of Lebanese parents. He’s passionate about his Roman Catholicism: It has carried him through many personal trials, including a bout of cancer 15 years ago and the loss, in 2006, of his 19-year-old son, Peter, after a sudden illness. “Dimiter,” in fact, is dedicated to him.
Today, Blatty’s faith is, to use a familiar religious adage, rock solid.
“I don’t think I’m on a search anymore,” he said serenely. “I’ve come to virtually a complete rest in my faith.”
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