The Exorcist... No Spoilers - semi review

[garyinhere]

I just started reading it today and got pretty far. The sentence structure is a bit odd, but I expected oddities with a 70's book.
So far so good, I'm getting through the basic character backgrounds and foundation for the story. It's taking me a while because Blatty's writing style is kind of new to me. I took my time and am powering through but I am still getting hung up on some of the verbiage.
I will post more as I go along.

 

[garyinhere]

Well another day has passed and I'm just a little bit past halfway through. I'll admit that Blatty's writing style slowed me down. It seems that some of the references were from the seventies and I just didn't understand due to lack of context.
Now that I'm in the meat of the story, things have gotten pretty tense. I've adjusted to how he writes and reading it is going smoothly now. He is tying the story together very nicely. Even by today's standards it is pretty gorey, I could only imagine the impact this novel would've had back in the 70's.

 

[DATo]

I enjoyed this book a lot when I read it. Could you give some examples of Blatty's writing that you find confusing? I don't remember having any difficulty with any of it. Keep in mind that this story has many references to the Roman Catholic Church so perhaps the terms you are having trouble with are simply esoteric to that religion. I was raised in that religion and maybe that is why I had no difficulty understanding everything he wrote. If you are referring to Blatty's style of writing I am even more interested in what you find confusing. As you can probably tell from my picture I am no spring chicken so I was around back in those days and maybe this is why the writing style appears seamless with present day presentation.

 

[garyinhere]

Mostly it was his use of single word sentences. He would write a sentence and use a one word sentence and then another one word sentence to emphasize the first. Plus he seemed to be a big fan of semicolons. It seemed that he only did this in the first part of the book where he was setting up the story. It stopped whenever the book progressed... but maybe I just got used to it and just didn't notice it after a while.
I finished the book and I have to say it was that it was very good.

 

[DATo]

Thanks for the info. I never noticed those things when I read it. I have the book around here somewhere and I am going to have to give it another look with your views in mind.

I'm glad you liked the book. It was enormously successful when it first came out as was the movie. If you haven't seen the movie I would encourage you to pick it up. It was very faithful to the book and the acting, in my opinion, was excellent. I particularly liked the actor who played Fr. Karas. He did a great job - they all did.