Malice
by François Flahault
Translated by Liz Heron
(Verso) $20
Often the best literary criticism can be found where it should not be. The late-modernist novel The Engineer of Human Souls by Czech jazz-head and novelist Josef Skvorecky is a case in point. The novel is clearly about a Czech professor, who teaches American literature at a Toronto university. Inside the prof’s story, however, is the most audacious reading of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. It’s not written as direct criticism, but described during a lecture or class discussion (I’m not sure which, as I read the novel many years ago). Very few actual criticisms about Heart of Darkness are as fascinating as the one unexpectedly presented in the niches of Skvorecky’s novel.
The same can be said about the new book Malice by philosopher/anthropologist François Flahault. This book ostensibly examines the “inner springs of human malice” by challenging the common liberal notion that evil is caused predominately (if not totally) by social factors and so can be uprooted if the social situation improves, if conditions are positive. “Certainly,” Flahault writes, “mutual love and recognition, ‘being enriched by our differences,’ is wonderful. But that does not mean that there are not still times when–not to put too fine a point on it–other people just piss us off.”
The inquiry into the source of malice is interesting, but what really makes this book is its study of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a novel which Flahault loves, and which he spends a great deal of time writing about. Here of all places, in the passages and corners of a formal philosophical book, you will find lively literary criticism.
