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

A powerful, provocative, and at times, funny story about a city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines. Desiderio, a city employee, has fallen in love with Albertina, the doctor's daughter. But Albertina, a pretty maiden made of glass, will only appear to him in his dreams. Desiderio confronts a host of cannibals, centaurs, and acrobats, and even grapples with warped time and space to be with her. Meanwhile, under the doctor's influence, the city spirals into a maelstrom of madness, crime, and sexual excess. Two favorite quotes from this book:“Some cities are women and must be loved; others are men and can only be admired or bargained with.”“With that, the poignant charm vanished. Inside the fifth machine, all was rampant malignity. Deformed flowers thrust monstrous horned tusks and trumpets ending in blaring teeth through the crimson walls, rending them; the ravenous garden slavered over its prey and every brick was shown in the act of falling. Amid the violence of this transformation, the oblivion of the embrace went on. The awakened girl, in all her youthful loveliness, still clasped in the arms of a lover from whom all the flesh had fallen. He was a grinning skeleton.”The novel is a meta-narrative. The narrator routinely interrupts the story to comment about the past, the act of writing, and anything else that occurs to him. While the writing is gorgeous, I couldn't connect with the characters. At times the novel is tedious and difficult to read, but it is worthwhile.

Too verbose and metaphorical for me. I did like some imaginative elements but the metaphors get tiring. The best way I can describe this book is that it is a stew of Candide, Gulliver's Travels and The Tempest with a sprinkle of world philosophy (though this addition was rather superfluous and pretentious and did not contribute to the overall story).

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.

A fantastic feminist sci-fi epic. So many references to modern culture even though it was written years ago. You just have to give in and enjoy the crazy story and epic vocabulary as you let your brain make the connections and process as much as you can. This book brings to mind the writings of Gene Wolf but with a different agenda. There were also hints of The Night Circus. Like Desiderio in the story, who was non-plussed with the unraveling of time and space, I was unimpressed with the ending. Perhaps that was the point of the entire story...

--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 have never read this before then it is perhaps wise to read Ali Smith’s introduction as you could find it helpful. Here we are presented with the memoir of Desiderio who is considered a hero, and here he recounts why that came about. When he was twenty-four, he was sent by the Minister of Determination to thwart the diabolical plans of Doctor Hoffman, as the doctor wages a reality war on humanity. Ali Smith reminds us in her introduction that we do have to deal with an unreliable narrator, as Desiderio tells us in his introduction that he clearly remembers everything, and then somewhat contradicts this in the opening to the first chapter.First published in 1972, to be honest this could only have come out of the mind of Angela Carter as it shows her literary knowledge and experiences in journalism, as well as the subjects that she was interested in. This is something that cannot be clearly pigeonholed as it takes in so many genres, as well as being highly surreal, which has probably put many off from reading this over the years. Often then overlooked this although not a particularly long read does cram a lot into its pages, and there is philosophy, meta-physics here along with symbolism, metaphor and similes. This is also in some ways an odyssey, and there are allusions to Greek mythology in many places.With the current cover on this Penguin edition, and the title I am sure that it will be no surprise that this takes in love and lust, along with Sadeian episodes taking in perversions and rape. By the sound of it you are probably thinking that this is something that you would not touch with a barge pole, but you could very well find yourself being surprised if you do decide to read this, as the world that the author creates does come to life quite vividly in your imagination, thanks to Carter’s writing skills, and you soon find yourself caught up in the story and going with the flow.If you are one of those people who have to read this for study, then I would recommend that you first read it without analysing the text. If you do this certain themes and elements will spring immediately to mind, and along with that on your second reading you can start to unpick this in greater depth. At the end of the day this is one of those books that often gets overlooked, due to people either never having heard of it before, or being put off by the blurb or a synopsis you may have read somewhere. If you just go with it though you will find it a painless read and quite modern in our perceptions of the world. Here we see illusion being tackled, from the special effects in films and the stage, to how the media, both in print and visually can manipulate our perceptions of things that affect us or are going on around us, and along with virtual technology, and what are called deep fakes, these are only going to increase over the years, especially when it comes to politics.

This book is strange, unnerving in places, and sometimes a bit "out there" but I cannot emphasise enough how much I loved, loved, LOVED this book. Angela Carter's prose is like ice water tinkling over a crystal stream - it is sharp and enervating and makes you question everything you thought you ever knew about humanity.There is so much going on in this book - at face value it is a series of picaresque incidents which lead the hero, Desiderio "The Desired One", a man of lowly social status to save society from Dr Hoffman's infernal desire making machines. Of course, the machines only produce what men desire themselves - and they have some very strange desires - which almost leads to the annihiliation of the "city" from which Desiderio emerges. Just bubbling beneath the surface of the story is a palimpsest of so many texts from which Carter has obviously taken her inspiration - right from Chaucer through Swift (and a very racy interpretation of the Houhynhms), Pope, Milton, Bronte and beyond. Because it has its roots in 18th century literature, it does that thing that 18th Century literature does, which provides space within the fiction to question the nature of the society we as the readers are situated within. I had a moment of epiphany whilst reading the following: "...our very spirits were tormented without cease by deceiful images springing from that dark part of ourselves humanity must always consent to ignore if we are to live in peace together;..." p. 251 - when I realised that as people it is impossible to achieve all of our desires and live in peace together. Living in society necessitates a sacrifice at at least some levels for every single person who participates within it.Carter is such an inspirational writer - this book will seize you by your vitals and drag you on a rollercoaster ride of enlightenment. Don't miss it.

I'm a massive Angela Carter fan and anything she's written is worth reading. However the plot here was rather erratic, and while i felt she was trying to make some kind of philosophical point, I didn't quite grasp it. Frankly based on the description I was expecting some more fanciful and enjoyable smut, but found it lacked Carter's usual sensuality. Having said that I'd urge you to ignore any reviews claiming it is disgusting and offensive etc.

a great book

It's like an pair of shoes.I never tried from reading this book it 's become part of me well worth anyone's time five in and enjoy