James Hogg was born near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770. In 1824, he wrote The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner which Ian Crichton Smith considers, “a towering Scottish novel, one of the very greatest of all Scottish books.” This metaphysical thriller is the first psychological novel written a century before the genre became popular. It is a terrifying account of a psychopathic killer who abuses the Calvinist doctrine of predestination wherein God’s elect can do no wrong. Are God’s elect to live as they please as this character does?
Read the book if you can find it. Is it in your public library? It’s not in mine (I have my own copy, however). This is what happens to books when no one reads them. The Scottish literature and Scottish culture fades into the mist. One more book for the BookWraith.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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