Product Description

In the early years of the 18th century, Scotland is torn by religious and political strife. Hogg's sinner, justified by his Calvinist conviction that his own salvation is pre-ordained, is suspected of involvement in a series of bizarre and hideous crimes. A century later his memoirs reveal the extraordinary, macabre truth. The tale is chilling for its astute psychological accuracy as it illustrates, with power and economy, the dire effect of self-righteous bigotry on a fanatical character.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3497 in Books
• Published on: 1997-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Duncan Wu, St. Catherine's College, Oxford University.
"Adrian Hunter's thorough introduction and detailed annotations make this an essential edition for all students of Hogg's great novel."

Peter D. Garside, Cardiff University
"Hunter's introduction is well-informed in terms both of the novel's intellectual context and current critical approaches."

Simon Kövesi, University of Dundee
"Hunter's edition of Hogg's Confessions is simply the best paperback edition currently available."

Customer Reviews

An unexpected treasure
I picked this book up more or less at random, never having heard of it or Hogg before. Havng read it, I can't believe it doesn't have a higher profile as a classic of British literature, because it is one of the most startlingly original books I have ever read, and was well before its time in terms of structure and themes.
The book consists of two parallel narratives. The first is of an editor, who comes across the strange tale of a murder over 100 years after it occurred. The story is that of two estranged brothers, George Colwan and Robert Wringham. George is the heir to a lairdship, while Robert and his mother are thrown out of the estate because of her religious zeal and the possibility that Robert was fathered by another man (the sinister religious tutor for whom he is named). Burning with hate, Robert stalks George and a series of unpleasant episodes ensue which culminate in George's murder, and the disappearance of Robert and his mother. This is all told as a dry legal matter. The second narrative is Robert's diary, retelling the same events but with a decidedly supernatural twist. It is a brave move by the author to make the least sympethetic character in the book its narrator. Robert's actions are explained because he is morally unconstrained, because he has been told that his place in heaven is assured. As soon as he becomes aware of this, the stranger Gil-martin appears at his side, persuading him to do evil acts in the name of goodness, including the murder of his brother and his eventual flight and suicide.
There is so much to enjoy about this book. It is ostensibly an attack on predestination (the religious view that some people are chosen by God for heaven before they are born, and that nothing that they can do on earth alters this destiny). Gil-martin's identity remains ambiguous: he encourages Robert to use this freedom to commit acts that people who need to curry God's favour cannot, and it is strongly hinted that he is the devil, though Robert never proves this to himself, and Hogg avoids being explicit about his identity. Thus the book anticipates later existentialist literature, by asking how a man with no moral boundaries should behave in the world (much the same dilemma faced by Dostoievsky's Raskolnikov or Camus' Meersault). If Gil-martin is the devil then Robert has chosen poorly, but it is just possible that he is actually an avenging angel, using a newly freed Robert to cleanse the world of evil in a way that one constrained by the need to attain heavenly favour could not do. It is the maintenance of this moral ambiguity that is unexepected in a book written in 1824.
Furthermore, there are elements of both whodunnit and horror. The whodunnit stems from the murder itself, about which we are given no detail until George's adoptive mother turns sleuth, although we always know that Robert is the likely suspect. But the motive isn't explained until the second narrative, which develops the supernatural theme with the introduction of Gil-martin and continues with Robert's flight, followed all the while by demons. This does become genuinely spooky, and the imagery of Robert turning into some ghoulish spider after becoming trapped in some yarn being spun is cinematic in the extreme.
But the real joy in the writing is the ambiguity that Hogg maintains throughout. Initially he sets the story up as being historically true, being the result of legal documents and a found diary. We are then forced to question Robert's perception of events. His diary clearly lies in places (e.g. how George was killed), and the reader is left wondering if we can trust anything he says. Gil-martin takes on different facial features constantly, evidence to Robert of his supernatural powers, but evidence to us, perhaps, that there was no Gil-martin (he is not mentioned in the first narrative) and that all the people he mimicked were real and the devilry came very much from Robert. Was Robert visited by the devil, or was he just trying to hide his own evil, somewhat like Anthony Perkin's character in 'Psycho', who transferred all the blame for his acts by dressing up as his mother when he did them? Unlike that film, this is never resolved in the book, but is a wonderful example of psychological fiction. The ambiguity doesn't stop there though, as we are told that the whole story comes to light through the reminisces of a local shepherd who is shown to be a notorious liar, and his name is...James Hogg. So we have the very Borges-esque theme of the novel as a lie, the retelling of a lie by a liar, but presented as the truth. This is beautifully clever and the novel is brilliantly crafted to retain its plausability.
I suspect that the book is so obscure that very few people will read this review. If you come across it, like I did, by accident, then use it as an opportunity to read one of the most unique books I have ever read. It is superb, and deserves greater attention.

A little known classic
In this oft-overlooked classic, we are presented with parallel narratives, that of the editor and the 'sinner' himself, Robert Colwan. They tell apparently the same story, although there are elements in the editor's narrative that the sinner has excluded in his and vice versa. Neither narrator is particularly reliable. The supposedly impartial editor's savage bias against Robert is compounded by his certainty that he knows the whole story - when he is in fact recounting the tale from tradition, a notoriously unreliable source of accurate information. Robert is obviously unreliable for being such a vile, lying, duplicitous and religiously hypocritical sneak. His perversion of the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination lends him a superior attitude; something the editor has simply because he tells his version of the tale with all the rational pomposity of an omniscient being.
This makes 'Confessions of a Justified Sinner' an admittedly demanding read, but it is well worth it. We are challenged to accept that no truth can be uncovered in either narrative: the role Hogg gives himself towards the end of the novel allows him to disassociate himself with the editor's quest for the 'truth'. The main question, of course, is whether the Devil-figure, Gil-Martin, is the Devil himself or merely Robert's alter-ego, there to spur him on in to committing deeds his conscience would normally never allow. It should be noted that Gil-Martin first appears after Robert has been assured of his salvation by the abominable Reverend Wringhim. Evidence for and against Gil-Martin's existence appears throughout the novel. But whether he is real or not the point of Gil-Martin is to show that certain, twisted forms of Presbyterianism are sinful - not exactly distanced from the Devil itself, it would seem. The fact we can't pin him down makes his ambiguous brand of evil all the more frightening. That is, evil we normally associate with Satan could be, in fact, coursing through the veins of Robert.
Enough. Read for yourself this well-written, expertly constructed novel and you will understand for yourself what a great book it is. My humble review can only express a fragment of this novel's ingenuity.

High Up on My List of Interesting Fiction
Hogg's novel is about 150 years ahead of its time. Published in 1824, the work has everything readers of post-modern novels could ask for, including clustered narratives, self-reflexive point-of-view, unreliable narrators, unsympathetic-protagonist, etc. Hogg is engaging in a highly playful exercise, yet at the same time the novel can be read as an entirely chilling depiction of what may happen to the human psyche when it is given absolutely free-reign. The story takes place in Scotland in the early 18th century, a time of political and religious foment. It chiefly concerns the religious "progress" of Robert Wingham. Robert's mother is a religious enthusiast who has left the household of her husband, George Colwan, laird of Dalcastle, because he does not meet her stringent standards of pious behavior. Before she leaves, she delivers a son, whom Colwan names after him and names him his sole heir. A year after she has left she delivers another son, Robert, whom the editor-narrator who first tells the story is too polite to say is illegitimate, but it's evident by all appearances and intimations that Robert is the son of Lady Colwan and the Reverend Wringhim, a dour, intolerant, "self-conceited pedagogue," who is the polar opposite of the easy-going laird. Reverend Wingham undertakes the instruction of young Robert and eventually adopts him. Robert, like his father, is a cold fish, who abhors the presence of women and anything else that he thinks will lead him to sin. Young George, on the other hand is naturally open and fun-loving, engaging in the "normal" activities young men of the time preferred. This attitude piques the ire of Robert, who sees any activity that is not directly related to religion as frivolous. He starts showing up uninvited whenever and wherever George and his friends get together. When they try to play tennis, Robert stands in George's way and interferes with the game. The same thing happens when they play a rugby-like game on a field outside Edinburgh. Even after George loses patience and punches Robert , the younger brother keeps on insinuating himself, uninvited, every time George and his friends meet. When the Reverend Wingham learns that his precious boy has been roughed up, he incites his conservative faction to retaliate against the liberals with which George and his friends are in league. A full scale riot ensues, reminiscent of the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet. Neither the editor nor Wingham ever give full assent to the fantastic elements in the story. Events are depicted in as realistic a light as possible, which lends weight to the storyline and keeps things from drifting off into never-never land.
Everything about this novel "works." The editor's framing narrative subverts Wingham's "confession" narrative at just the right points, so the subversion actually adds to the solidity and texture of the work as a whole and adds to its plausibility. The comic characters are wonderfully depicted (including Hogg himself, who puts in an appearance as an unhelpful clod who's too busy observing sheep at a local fair to assist the editor and his party when they want to dig up Wingham's grave). Wingham's descent into fanaticism and his subsequent psychological disintegration is handled as well as it possibly could be. It is also a perfectly drawn cautionary tale about the pitfalls of antinomian religious beliefs. Hogg describes for the reader a splendid representation of just where the path of predestination can lead a susceptible mind. That's where the comparison's to Crime and Punishment evolve. Wringhim, like Roskolnikov, considers himself above the common rung of humanity. Unlike Rodyan, however, Robert never does discover the full import of his megalomaniacal doctrine until it is entirely too late. Readers might be interested to note that Hogg's novel had a direct influence on Stephenson' s Jekyll and Hyde and on Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. Hogg was considered by his contemporaries to be something of a rustic genius, and the poetic successor to Robert Burns. He was known as the Ettrick Shepherd, because he did earn his livelihood from raising sheep and was entirely self taught. He was a friend of Sir Walter Scott. He's still highly revered in his home country. If more readers become familiar with this one-of-a-kind book, he will be revered more universally. It really is that brilliant a novel.