Another Faust Book

Usually I don't write reviews, but I was genuinely shocked by how low the ratings were for this book, so I had to throw my two cents in. First of all, if you are expecting a run-of-the-mill teen fiction book with a flashy story and a happy ending, this is not the book you should be reading. Second, this is not a love story or even really a story about someone triumphing over odds. This story is about human failure. Faust is a completely different genre of fiction than most present-day teen literature. Faust is a morality tale about a dude who basically sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and worldly pleasures, makes a bunch of really stupid decisions, and then regrets ever dealing with the devil in the first place when he's on the verge of dying and realizes the eternal consequences of his misadventurous life (in some versions of the tale, Faust repents at some point or other and God saves him from eternal damnation...in others Faust doesn't repent and he is ultimately damned). Most teen fics these days are predictable stories about awkward teenagers who find love or win in some circumstance despite the overwhelming odds (like Twilight, for example); these stories usually end happily, triumphantly, or at least with the "good guy" winning (not really the case with Faust, it's more like the good guy is neutralized at the beginning). As you can see, there is a definite difference in substance and general trajectory of these two different kinds of stories. I like to think that the mediocre ratings people gave this book came from unmet expectations regarding its genre rather than judgments on the actual quality of literature, clever reproductions of the original Faust theme, and truthfulness of story (although I was a little disappointed with the un-Faustian ending. It left the reader with too much hope in human nature, the destruction of which was one of the main points of Faust to my mind. Then again, realistic views of human nature don't sell well these days, especially to the crowd teen literature is marketed for, so I don't judge too harshly although I do think it could have been true to the original and still maintained its form. Selling out to pop-culture makes me sad, especially when authors have a chance to shed light on pivotal but under-emphasized influences on Western literature, philosophy, and theology. Faust is all of those. *steps off soap box*).

That said, I was pleasantly surprised at the overall depth in this book. It is a very condemning and pessimistic, but ultimately true commentary on human nature (until the end, that is). It reminded me of C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, to a certain degree, where we get a glimpse into the workings and machinations of the devil. From the perspective of religious morality, it gave me a lot of bits to mull over about greed, lies, ambition, sacrifice, relationship rifts, and also how human weaknesses and "little sins" are so easily manipulated and twisted into giant webs of chaos and destruction. If we're all honest with ourselves, we can see the truth of this in our own lives where we've "sold" ourselves (to some degree or other) for what we perceive to be better circumstances that are ultimately destructive not only to ourselves but to the people around us. The authors captured human nature pretty well, to my mind. In our post-modern psychological entanglement, we're all too willing to believe that people are good at heart and that every human action is ultimately justifiable and that rainbows, puppies, cupcakes, and unicorns orbit the relative perfection and enlightenment of the human race (barring a few evil people like Hitler, Che Guevara, Ghengis Kahn and other "really really bad" people, of course). The point of Faust is that there are evils and weaknesses in all human beings, not just the "really really bad" people. Faust wasn't a bad guy at the beginning of the story, he was a paragon of virtue and scholarly wisdom. If a man like Faust can fall to temptations and the wiles of his nature (if children like Victoria, Belle, Bice, Christian, and Valintin can fall to temptations and the wiles of their natures), the rest of us can too. It left me examining my decisions and my weaknesses, which, I suppose, is the ultimate aim of morality stories such as these.

( Here's pretty much the bare bones of what you should know about the Faust mythos before you read this book to better appreciate what these authors have given you. I can't recommend enough that you read at least one version of Faust at some point in your life just to better yourself, if for nothing else. Faust is almost as foundational to Western literature as Dante's Inferno, the Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Yes, old dead-guy books are not the priority for most teenagers, but if you really want to understand the undercurrents of Western thought and literature and what people actually mean when they write -and if you want to understand yourself better and why you think the way you do- you have to be familiar with the foundational pieces of your culture, otherwise you will spend your time guessing randomly about what things might mean instead of having a reference point for your ideas. While uncertain meanings are appealing to the Postmodern mind, there will come a day when we will grow up and wish to know what things mean with certainty.)