[Marxism] Fw: Dennis Wheatley

["Graham M." <gkmilner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Graham M. 
To: Socialist Alliance 
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 10:53 PM
Subject: Dennis Wheatley


Dear Comrades,

   Several years before I became involved with the socialist movement in the 
early 1970s I had been a keen reader of the British writer Dennis Wheatley's 
novels.   Throughout the first decade of my socialist activism I tended to 
despise Wheatley as being expressive of the conservative values I had rejected 
(I had been radicalised by the anti-Vietnam War movement, the anti-apartheid 
movement and more generally by the radical youth culture of the early 1970s).

   In the early 1980s, during a lull in my political activism, I re-read, or 
read, most of the 'occult' Wheatley stories, as well as quite a few of his 
other novels.   I found that I enjoyed his books just as much as I had during 
my teens.   A while ago I wrote to a friend about Wheatley, and attempted to 
make an assessment of Wheatley's writing from a generally socialist 
perspective, and I am appending the letter here.


                                  In solidarity,


                                         Graham Milner

********************************************************************************************************************************************************

   I think the first thing that has to be said about Dennis Wheatley (who died 
in 1977) is that he was among the most popular of novelists (in English) of the 
20th century.   His books (and he was a prolific writer, producing scores of 
titles) have been translated into nearly thirty languages.   Tens of millions 
of copies of his books were sold during his lifetime.   Wheatley could probably 
best be described politically as an 'unreconstructed reactionary', but that 
doesn't help to explain his success and popularity as a writer.

   Some brief biographical details: Wheatley was the grandson of self-made 
businessmen and the son of a Mayfair wine merchant.   He served during World 
War One as an army officer on the Western Front and was gassed and invalided 
out.   He took over the wine firm from his father, but was forced to sell it 
during the Depression.   Thence he turned to writing, and found immediate and 
lasting success as a novelist in the thriller genre.   Wheatley's first book, 
'The Forbidden Territory', features the Duke de Richleau and his circle of 
friends, and is set in Stalin's Russia.   The novel went through several 
reprints in a few weeks.   Wheatley worked on Churchill's Joint Planning Staff 
as an RAF Wing Commander during World War Two.   He was widely travelled and 
claimed that the first-hand knowledge of places thus secured provided him with 
the background for many of his novels.

   The first novel of Wheatley's that I read was 'Strange Conflict'.   I read 
it in 1967 - it belonged to my sister.   I was greatly moved and intrigued by 
this story of occult battles on the astral plane, set against the backdrop of 
the Battle of the Atlantic in World War Two.   A critic I read some time ago 
maintains that 'Strange Conflict' holds up badly against other occult stories 
by Wheatley (especially 'The Devil Rides Out') and is let down by racism and 
right-wing political rantings.   But I would have to say that these faults are 
evident in 'The Devil Rides Out' too.   'Strange Conflict' is actually in many 
ways a sequel to 'The Devil Rides Out', and the group of lead characters in the 
two novels is developed well.   Apparently Wheatley read a lot about the 
occult, satanism, etc, and met and spoke with adepts like Aleister Crowley.   
Wheatley's 'credo', expressed in 'The Devil and All His Works' (a non-fiction 
study of the occult), and in the Duke de Richleau's expositions of the 'Old 
Wisdom' in 'Strange Conflict' and 'The Devil Rides Out', is a semi-Buddhist 
view, with elements of Zoroastrianism and strong undercurrents from the 
Judeo-Christian tradition as well.

   The characters who make up the leads in the majority of the Wheatley novels 
I have read - the Duke de Richleau, et al, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook - 
are all politically right-wing.   Richleau is a French royalist emigre; Sallust 
is a British secret agent at war with the Nazis, but quite prepared to 
gratuitously shoot dead a Soviet soldier (ie. an ally) in the closing scenes of 
'They Used Dark Forces'; Brook is Pitt's secret agent at war with the French 
Revolution and Napoleon.

   But to my mind one of the best features of Wheatley's stories is their 
depiction of friendship networks: for example, the group composed of the Duke 
de Richleau and his associates Richard Eaton and his wife Marie Lou, Rex van 
Ryn and Simon Aron - these friends show loyalty to one another, courage, and 
devotion to their cause while often under stress, and work together as a team.  
 Sallust works together closely with his Russian friend Stefan Kuporovitch, in 
'They Used Dark Forces', and the alliances between the group of friends living 
and working together in 'Black August' during a time of trial is well drawn.   
'Conky' Bill Verney, the detective in 'To the Devil a Daughter' (who also 
appears in 'The Satanist') is another good character, and works well with Molly 
Fountain - the novelist who is the other main protagonist in 'To the Devil a 
Daughter'.

   I don't believe that Wheatley's novels will ever be regarded as 'great 
literature' (and here I beg to differ with Hal Colebatch's and Rod Moran's 
contrary assessment of Wheatley's novel 'They Found Atlantis' in 'The West 
Australian' some years ago).   Some of the worst of the novels, such as 'Star 
of Ill-Omen' - a poor attempt at science-fiction clouded by Cold War 
preoccupations, or 'Such Power is Dangerous', which purports to explore the 
world of high finance and the film industry in the 1930s (and which is a 
self-confessed pot-boiler) are best forgotten.   But the 'occult' novels are 
still in print even today, and may well preserve a niche as classics of the 
fantasy/horror genre.   That is the opinion of a critic I read recently in 
'Horror and Fantasy Writers'.   The occult stories indeed don't date too badly. 
  As for the racist and reactionary content - that reflects Wheatley's politics 
and does grate on a contemporary reader's sensibilities.   But the same critic 
I read in 'Horror and Fantasy Writers' wrote that in matters of sex, at least, 
Wheatley was ahead of his time, and allowed his female characters considerable 
freedoms in this respect; cf. Mary Mordern in 'The Satanist'.

    Dennis Wheatley well knew how to tell a good story and that skill, I 
believe, is at the root of his popularity.   His right-wing politics 
undoubtedly compromise his novels, but the books are nevertheless often fun to 
read.   They can be exciting and they keep the reader's attention, and the 
value system at the basis of them, while flawed, is perhaps not totally out of 
order.



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