The Devil Rides Outside

Overview

No less a critic than Clifton Fadiman called The Devil Rides Outside a "staggering novel." The first novel of John H. Griffin, it written during the author’s decade of blindness following an injury suffered during the closing days of World War II. As Time Magazine described it, The Devil Rides Outside "has some things relatively rare in U.S. letters: energy, earnestness and unashamed religious fervor." Written as a diary, the novel relates the intellectual and spiritual battles of a young American musicologist who is studying Gregorian chant in a French Benedictine monastery. Even though he is not Catholic, he must live like the monks, sleeping in a cold stone cell, eating poor food, sharing latrine duties. His dreams rage with memories of his Paris mistress; his days are spent being encouraged by the monks to seek God. He takes up residence outside the monastery after an illness, but he finds the village a slough of greed and pettiness and temptation. Indeed, as the French proverb says, "the devil rides outside the monastery walls."

Author Biography

Known primarily as the author of the modern classic, Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin (1920-1980) was a true Renaissance man. Having fought in the French Resistance and been a solo observer on an island in the South Pacific during World War II, he became a critically-acclaimed novelist and essayist, a remarkable photographer and musicologist, and a dynamic lecturer and teacher. On October 28, 1959, after a decade of blindness and a remarkable and inexplicable recovery, John Howard Griffin dyed himself black and began an odyssey of discovery through the segregated American South. The result was Black Like Me, arguably the single most important documentation of 20th century American racism ever written. Because of Black Like Me, Griffin was personally vilified, hanged in effigy in his hometown, and threatened with death for the rest of his life. Griffin's courageous act and the book it generated earned him international respect as a human rights activist. Griffin worked with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Dick Gregory, Saul Alinsky, and NAACP Director Roy Wilkins during the Civil Rights era. He taught seminars at the University of Peace with Nobel Peace Laureate Father Dominique Pire, and delivered hundreds of lectures worldwide. Earlier, during a decade of blindness (1947-1957), he wrote novels. His 1952 bestseller, The Devil Rides Outside was a test case in a controversial censorship trial that was settled in his favor by the US Supreme Court. Later in his life, Griffin was also recognized for his magnificent black & white photographic portraits, which were featured in his photographic books A Hidden Wholeness: The Visual World of Thomas Merton (Griffin was also Thomas Merton's biographer) and Jacques Maritain: Homage in Words and Pictures.