I'm a great admirer of Nick Tosches. More than any other living author, for me he defines erudition. He is, without doubt, one of the great prose stylists of the English language. His artistry and craftsmanship, the astounding depth and breadth of his intellect, is unparalleled.

So how is it that I come to rate Me and the Devil a paltry 2 stars?

Because it's disappointing. It still has all the style and intellect I expect from Mr. Tosches—his typical hallmarks are as much in evidence in this work as in any of his others.

But I walked away from this book asking the one question I've never asked about any of his work before:

What was the point of all this?

Me and the Devil ultimately had little effect on me whatsoever. Far worse than if I'd actively disliked this book, I find myself indifferent towards it. And that's just about the worst thing anyone can say about a Nick Tosches book. I wish I could love this book, I wish I could outright hate it.

I wish it could be anything to me other than... meh. Even with his stylistic accomplishment and intellectual fireworks, it's still just kinda... meh.

Like his previous novels, Me and the Devil is a compelling mix of fiction and autobiography, a narrative world in which the reader can never be certain how much is true and how much is imagination. The distinction between the main character and the author is deeply obscured.

There is about this book something which feels to me disjointed. Compared to his previous works, this one seems to lack focus.

There's too much navel-gazing going on here, and not enough storytelling. Not that his previous works don't contain plenty of navel-gazing, but telling the story always came first.

In Me and the Devil the story feels secondary. I'm not entirely sure he ever really figured out what the story was even supposed to be.

One of the most impressive aspects of Mr. Tosches' body of work is the depth of learning on display. He's strikingly well-educated and his understanding of classic literature, history, philosophy, and Christian theology is astounding. Intellectually, he's the kind of person all traditionally well-educated people aspire to be.

Of particular note is the breadth of his reading. The man is voracious—he has intimate and detailed knowledge of the entire corpus of the Western Canon at his fingertips. His literary alter-ego, who populates all of his works of fiction, is characterized by his ability to reference any and all of the foundational works of our culture, as appropriate.

Reading Nick Tosches is a crash course in Western intellectual history. This is a man who has devoted his life to studying it.

For the first time, though, in Me and the Devil, I wonder if, perhaps, in the end, his admirable learning isn't much more than merely parroting the wit and wisdom of those philosophers and writers who came before him. As eloquently as he expresses himself, as thoroughly as he displays his knowledge of their work, I'm not sure there's much of anything in this book that isn't just him regurgitating the ideas of his predecessors.

So it's not that his great intelligence isn't still fully on display, and it's certainly not that his incredible depth of learning isn't still breathtakingly impressive. But in this book, it feels like showing off has become more important to him than actually saying anything of substance. It starts to feel like a gimmick, a stale parlor trick.

Another defining characteristic of Mr. Tosches' fiction is his brutal self-criticism. He's merciless in calling out his own hypocrisy and tallying his personal failures.

I find, now, that I no longer have much patience for his crap. His constant contradictions of himself, his undercutting, his abrupt tonal shifts, his innate contrariness, no longer come across as honest and insightful, but as a dodge.

Like his myriad literary allusions and philosophical references, his self-criticism now feels formulaic. It feels like Nick Tosches trying too hard to do Nick Tosches.

Through both his fiction and nonfiction writings, Mr. Tosches has established himself as one of our harshest and most incisive cultural critics. It's an understatement to say that he takes issue with much of what he sees in present-day society.

I used to find such a dark delight in his evisceration of modern culture. And while I still agree with many of his individual criticisms of, and disappointments in, our present-day world, for the first time I find his tone of superiority far more grating than insightful.

Honestly, despite the sheer beauty and power of his prose, he's beginning to sound more and more like a crotchety old man yelling for the damn kids to get off his lawn.

It's beginning to smack not just of his usual superiority, but almost of desperation—a desperation to believe in his own continued relevance in a world that has become increasingly alien to him.

A desperation to believe that his hypocrisy can be transubstantiated into something admirable simply because he names it hypocrisy.

A desperation to believe that the life he chose to live was, in fact, as great and glorious, as brutally honest, as significant and filled with power as he wanted it to be.

He's becoming a bit pathetic. He's beginning to wear thin. And his brutal, unflinchingly self-critical honesty, while still admirable, is no longer enough of a virtue to make up for that. ( )

I seriously couldn't get into it. I was waiting for a climax and it never came. I was reading the words of an alcoholic just rambling on. ( )

At points loathed & loved this book, can't decide what to think ( )

Aging writer Nick is witnessing the decline of civilisation. One night he meets a provocative young woman in a bar that surprisingly offers to go home with him. This one night unleashed an unholy desire within him. Unable to control his primitive desires, Nick finds his thirst getting strong. His desire for blood quickly becomes the driving force in his life. However, has he just found the key to mortality or has he just unknowingly made a deal with the devil?

Reading Me and the Devil, I notice right away that Nick Tosches is playing with the vampire genre; the idea of old men drinking the blood of young women to gain extended morality. Turning it into a sexual perversion, blood play works really well as a device to explore the vampire mythology. The story basically follows a young nineteen year old in an unhealthy relationship with an older man. It is basically Twilight, exposing many of the problems with the relationship of Edward and Belle.

Although Nick Tosches does a much better job with the relationship, exploring a darker and more brutal nature of an unhealthy relationship. His writing is beautiful and is often compared to William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski. I love that gritty nature of the novel and surprising beauty in the language. When it comes to talking about food, Tosches is very detailed and I found myself getting hungry at the food imagery.

Besides the vampire angle, Me and the Devil is a story of a grumpy old man that is angry with the changing world. Interestingly enough that the main character is named Nick Tosches, making this anger autobiographical. If you look at Nick’s website, the ‘about the author’ section simply says “Nick Tosches lives in what used to be New York.” This is a representation of how the character viewed New York, always talking about the old days. When you had little deli’s and mum and pop stores. The quality of the food was so much better back in the old days.

I feel like there is a lot to say about this novel but it would require spoiling the plot and I really think this is a book that deserves to be experience blind. Since Nick is a writer in the novel there are heaps of literary references to obscure and cult classics, which I appreciated. I loved Nick Tosches writing style and need to read more of his books. He is mostly known for his dark and gritty music biographies Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story and Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (Dean Martin) and I am interested in reading those books. Tosches also explores a lot of religious themes so I am excited to experience more of his novels. This is the type of author that you will either love or hate, luckily for me, I have found a new favourite.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/literary-fiction/me-and-the-devi... ( )

In Me and the Devil Nick Tosches may have been attempting to push the envelope with his utterly unlikable main character – an alcoholic, pedantic snob with brutish sexual proclivities. He instead succeeds in disturbing and isolating readers with the aging author’s obsessions and navel-gazing. With its exacting descriptions of food, alcoholic benders, sidebars about Greek and Latin grammar, diatribes against societal milieus that do not fit his standards, and most importantly its questionable main character who may or may not be fantasizing the entire plot, Me and the Devil novel feels like a wannabe Bret Easton Ellis plot (see American Psycho). Unlike Mr. Ellis’ novels though, there is a rage within the main character that antagonizes a reader more than it intrigues.

Too much about the novel leaves the reader wondering why Nick acts the way he does. The questions get to the heart of Nick’s character, and answers would go far in creating someone that readers could at least understand. Instead, readers are left with a shell of a main character with no clear understanding of his goals, drive, or motivations that cause him to act in such a grossly offensive manner. Yes, suave and psycho Patrick Batemen is more sympathetic than this old man.

There are many authors out there today who specialize in the shock and awe factor with their novels, who actively write about characters who buck societal norms – Dennis Cooper is the first one that comes to mind. Me and the Devil is an attempt at the same but one that falls short. Yes, everyone has their own penchants, but Nick’s turn towards blood play is so sudden and so unexplained that it remains all but inexplicable. Compounding the problem is his unreliability as a narrator due to his drinking. The entire novel has a tired, repetitive quality to it that fails to shock and awe readers as much as it annoys and drives one to put down the book.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to NetGalley and to Little, Brown and Company for my review copy!