The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (Penguin Modern Classics) Kindle Edition

My friend Susan introduced me to "Heros and Villians" by Angela Carter back when I was 17 or 18. I didn't quite know what to do it. I was still young enough that reading anything transgressive was both alluring and deeply embarrassing. The experience reminded me then of how I felt reading "Flowers in the Attic" when I was 12 -except the material was disquieting and powerful enough that I didn't rush out to read every Angela Carter book I could get my hands on. In fact, I didn't read anything by Carter till more than a decade later.I read "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman" while I was traveling alone in Eastern Europe. I ended up leaving my copy with a fellow traveler I met in Budapest. I think he and his girlfriend were Australian. In any case, they were such icons of the classic eco-friendly, organic eating, and occassional pot smoking back-packers I couldn't help myself. I wanted them to experience the imagery that was rich enough, lush enough, and dizzyingly enough to force some awe into their complacency.Interestingly enough, when I read the Amazon reviews for "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman," I was surprised by the comments about the book's explicit sexuality. I'm sure it's there, but I don't recall any of it other than the premise that Doctor Hoffman's machine was powered by the orgasms of coupling lovers. The artistry of Carter's language neutered the scenes of physical penetration so all that I was left with was a phantasmagorical quest fueled by love.

--Angela Carter has made of this novel her own infernal desire machine, assembling it from influences one can still easily recognize, including Sade's "Juliette," Lautreamont's "Maldoror," Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," and Voltaire's "Candide."--If those influences are to your liking, then there's a better than average chance "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman" will work for you.--It worked for me more times than not, but I appreciate the richly crafted, highly metaphoric, baroque writing style Carter employs. It isn't a quick read and isn't intended to be. These are sentences that exist for their own sake, as things of beauty, and not simply to move the story along. They will seem tedious and over-written to many who are accustomed to reading novels for "what happens."--"What happens" here is that an old man is recounting his picaresque odyssey as a young man in a long-ago war: a war to defend reality as we know it from the onslaught of villain who wanted to liberate it from all limitations, a.k.a., Dr. Hoffman.--Basically, we follow our hero (Desiderio) as he makes his way through increasingly bizarre manifestations of "reality," warped in great part, by his own unleashed unconscious, as well as the unconscious of the woman he pursues, desires, and must ultimately confront in an erotic showdown--the beautiful, ever-changeable Albertina, who happens to be Dr. Hoffman's devoted daughter.--The novel takes the form of Desiderio's adventures among one society of people (and creatures) after another, each living a different version of reality, as he gets closer to the source of the chaos: the castle in which Dr. Hoffman's infernal desire machines produce waves of disruptive energy generated by the most basic drive of all...human copulation.--Aside from the dense and elliptical style, the deliberate and sardonic obfuscations, the allusions and philosophical asides, this is not a novel for prudes, the faint of heart (or stomach), or for the politically correct. If you are uptight about anything, this is a novel you need but probably shouldn't read. Carter has a tendency not only to slay sacred cows but to grind them up for use in comic meatball fights.--There are times when the narrative sags, the invention flags, and it all seems rather tiresome and arbitrary, but there's always something just around the bend that lures you back inside this phantasmagoric novel. This is definitely one of those novels that you read for the journey more than for the destination, where the whole may be less than the sum of its parts. In that way, among others, the novel may be like desire itself.--As a breed, this novel is a relatively rare creature: a book that actually has something important to say by an author with the artistry to say it. Carter was a thinker as well as a writer with a fierce and fearless imagination. "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman" might be read as a fable of her own search for the wellsprings of creativity, love, and the imagination.

If you sometimes lie awake at night pondering the nature of time and being then this is the book you have been waiting to read all your life without even realizing it. It feels like a cross between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Marquis de Sade and the Marx Brothers, all the "M"s wrapped up like a burrito in a Grimms fairy tale.

This is by far the most bizarre book I have ever attempted to read. I absolutely loved the first chapter. This book does have literary merit. However, the amount of sexual content was too overwhelming for me, and I could not bring myself to finish the book. Had it not been for that, I would have been able to finish and give the book 5 stars. If you ever just want a taste of the book and avoid the sex, read the first chapter, but stop there.

Weird enough to slow down & read. I liked that about it honestly. Got it at a friend's recommendation for something different & it didn't disappoint.

An incredible fairy tale for adults by a master of literary fiction, about a scientist who has the power to reshape people's realities. A disturbing meditation on desire and what it means. Some of the terms used were acceptable in the 70s, but are now verging on slurs.

You are going to need to put on your thickest skin, because she definitely goes there.

Really weird at the begging but great!!! You should read it if you like weird stuff and cool and creepy histories