God head
By: Leonard Cline
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: DeKalb, Illinois
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780875806754; 9781609090333
Subjects: Finns; Fiction; FICTION / General; Superstition
Description: "Lavished with praise at the time of its 1925 publication, Leonard Cline's phantasmagoric God Head  is being republished so a new generation of readers can marvel at its  dark magic. Cline's mesmerizing debut follows the journey of Paulus  Kempf, a fugitive labor agitator who takes refuge with a colony of Finns  on the remote shores of Lake Superior in the upper peninsula of  Michigan. Kempf, a former surgeon, poet, writer, sculptor, and  hyper-intellectual, is at first deeply impressed by the folklore and  traditions of the quiet, gentle Finns, not to mention their generosity  and hospitality. But he soon begins to play upon their superstitions and  exploits their kindness through the power of his cunning and  imagination, manipulating them into seeing him as a kind of a god. As Cline's novel hurtles toward its unforgettable climax, Kempf's  capacity for compassion or mercy swiftly falls to the wayside as he  seduces his host's wife and then murders the man in cold blood. Soon  thereafter he carves a giant God Head into the side of a nearby  mountainside, which the villagers look upon with awe and fear, held in  the thrall of Kempf's mysterious intimations of its malicious power.  Having achieved complete domination over the Finns, Kempf ultimately  tires of their gullibility and returns to civilization, his quest for  self-mastery complete. God Head's descent into the dark void of the human heart  will thrill modern readers who are sure to cherish this lost literary  artifact from the shadow canon of American fiction"--
Notes: Originally published: New York : The Viking Press, 1925.