I wish to give my thanks to Mark Will at Cadmus and Harmony Media for reading and reviewing my Wolfgang: a Werewolf Erotic Horror Novel. Here is what he said about it:
“Stylistically, Wolfgang: A Werewolf Erotic Horror Novel would seem to belong to the transgressive literary tradition of Sade and Bataille. The scatological aspects of the book remind one of both authors, while the sexual didacticism and the cataloguing of perversions, which I often found highly comical, are particularly characteristic of Sade. Rightly or wrongly, I even detected Sadean echoes in the names of the three avenging spirits Sades, Chisad, and Chebirüsad.
“Unlike the work of Sade and Bataille, however, that of Mawr Gorshin is ideologically infused with a sympathy for the wretched of the earth and an outraged sense of social justice. I was impressed by the manner in which Gorshin appropriated the European folkloric motif of the werewolf and placed it within the context of African liberation in order to condemn the slave trade and the capitalistic exploitation of labor.
“At the same time, Wolfgang may be read as parody. The various allusions to the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale are playfully amusing, and the protagonist Wolfgang himself can be seen as a kind of Dracula-Christ with a lycanthropic twist. The doppelgänger motif is also relevant here: the character Renate, for example, is a parodic double of the character Etty (as well as Wolfgang’s mother and wife), just as the character Marko is a parodic double of Wolfgang’s father.
“The Christological nature of the Wolfgang character is emphasized by the themes of crime/punishment, atonement, redemption, and absolution of guilt. These themes are juxtaposed with various Freudian elements: detailed descriptions of erotic dreams, ritualized reenactments of family traumas (with a particular emphasis on the Oedipal), and an implicit association of the superego with good cop/bad cop personae. This eclectic combination makes for a fascinating reading experience.
“Overall, Wolfgang is a book of great subtlety and complexity. I highly recommend it to readers with the fortitude necessary for a foray into the realm of the transgressive.”
Thanks again to Mark Will (whose translation of Aeschylus‘ Persians I wrote up an analysis of) for this wonderful, thoughtful review and analysis!
Infinite Ocean 