Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore

From the Publisher

In Christopher Moore's ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor faÇade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.

Publishers Weekly

A people-eating demon threatens a sleepy California resort town in Moore's offbeat, witty debut. (Nov.)

Kirkus Reviews

Good-natured, often funny, but excessively complicated tale that matches a people-eating demon against his reluctant master and the citizens of a small California town. First-novelist Moore throws in more plot twists than the Pacific Coast highway has curves. He obviously knows and is amused by the flawed but feisty denizens with which he inhabits Pine Grove, south of the Big Sur wilderness area. To this tourist town comes Travis O'Hearn, a 20-year-old who, 70 years before, got saddled with a demon, Catch, who gave him eternal youth plus problems. Catch is sometimes under Travis's control but often not, particularly when he's hungry. Travis wants out, namely by finding an incantation that will return the demon to Hell. On Travis's side are the King of the Djinns and August Brine, Pine Grove's purveyor of bait, tackle, and fine wines. Others who swell the cast past overflowing include waitress Jenny and her estranged, alcoholic husband Robert; tough old Mavis, who owns the Head of the Slug bar (it had been Head of the Wolf until animal-rights activists leaned on her); retired woodcarving codger Effrom and his wife Amanda; hotel night auditor Billy Winston, who flirts with other males by computer modem while wearing red silk panties; once-battered Rachael, who runs a coven to empower women through worship of the Goddess; and Detective Sergeant Alfonse Rivera, who fears he will end up bagging microwave burritos at a 7-Eleven unless he nails down a case. The author's youthful high spirits, insight into small-town people, and comic brashness help to overcome the fact that too many characters jump through too many hoops with too much unnecessary hocus-pocus.

What People Are Saying

Carl Hiaasen
Christopher Moore is a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.

Robert Bloch
Practically perfect...one of the few and special novels that conveys the sense that the author had as much fun writing it as his audience will have reading it. I can hardly wait for the next one -- the Moore, the merrier.

Product Details

• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Discover Chris Moore's ingenious debut novel, in which we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the faux Tudor façade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion.

The winos, Neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose ...

Topics for Discussion

1. Travis O'Hearn is given immortality at a very high price. Would you make the trade-off? Would you be able to resist the power that Catch affords to his master? What would the best thing be about immortality? The worst?


2. Each person in the book sees Catch as what he or she believes him to be (e.g., Howard sees him as one of the Old Ones, Rachel sees him as an earth spirit). Are people's preconceived notions of how the world works an asset or a liability in the face of adversity?


3. Practical Demonkeeping refers to Pope Leo 11th as having been involved in sorcery. There were eleven Popes in history who were tried for sorcery. Does this reflect the superstitions of the time, or were these witch trials used to shift power in the Church? Do you believe that religious leaders can abuse their power?


4. Muslim legend tells of a race of beings that was created to walk the Earth before man (the Djinn), yet they believe thatthe Old and New Testaments are valid holy books as well. Is there a chance that there are parts of the creation story that were left out of the Bible?


5. Augustus Brine has resolved to live out the rest of his life pursuing simple pleasures, without strife or anxiety, yet his philosophy is dashed to pieces when he is called to fight the demon; is the "Epicurean" way of life, "simple pleasures tempered by justice and prudence" possible? What would it take to live the Epicurean lifestyle in our society?

About the author

Christopher Moore is the author of Fluke, Lamb, Practical Demonkeeping, Coyote Blue, Bloodsucking Fiends, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The Breeze

The Breeze blew into San Junipero in the shotgun seat of Billy Winston's Pinto wagon. The Pinto lurched dangerously from shoulder to centerline, the result of Billy trying to roll a joint one-handed while balancing a Coors tallboy and bopping to the Bob Marley song that crackled through the stereo.

"We be jammin' now, mon!" Billy said, toasting The Breeze with a slosh of the Coors.

The Breeze shook his head balefully. "Keep the can down, watch the road, let me roll the doobie," he said.

"Sorry, Breeze," Billy said. "I'm just stoked that we're on the road. "

Billy's admiration for The Breeze was boundless. The Breeze was truly cool, a party renaissance man. He spent his days at the beach and his nights in a cloud of sinsemilla. The Breeze could smoke all night, polish off a bottle of tequila, maintain well enough to drive the forty miles back to Pine Cove without arousing the suspicion of a single cop, and be on the beach by nine the next morning acting as if the term hangover were too abstract to be considered. On Billy Winston's private fist of personal heroes The Breeze ranked second only to David Bowie.

The Breeze twisted the joint, fit it, and handed it to Billy for the first hit.

"What are we celebrating?" Billy croaked, trying to hold in the smoke.

The Breeze held up a finger to mark the question, while he dug the Dionysian Book of Days: An Occasion for Every Party from the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt. He flipped through the pages until he found the correct date. "Nambian Independence Day, " he announced.

"Bitchin'," Billy said. "Party down forNambian Independence."

"It says," The Breeze continued, "that the Nambians celebrate their independence by roasting and eating a whole giraffe and drinking a mixture of fermented guava juice and the extract of certain tree frogs that are thought to have magical powers. At the height of the celebration, all the boys who have come of age are circumcised with a sharp stone."

"Maybe we can circumcise a few Techies tonight if it gets boring," Billy said.

Techies was the term The Breeze used to refer to the male students of San Junipero Technical College. For the most part, they were ultraconservative, crew-cut youths who were perfectly satisfied with their role as bulk stock to be turned into tools for industrial America by the rigid curricular lathe of San Junipero Tech.

To The Breeze, the Techies' way of thinking was so foreign that he couldn't even muster a healthy loathing for them. They were simply nonentities. On the other hand, the coeds of S.J. Tech occupied a special place in The Breeze's heart. In fact, finding a few moments of blissful escape between the legs of a nubile coed was the only reason he was subjecting himself to a forty-mile sojourn in the company of Billy Winston.

Billy Winston was tall, painfully thin, ugly, smelled bad, and had a particular talent for saying the wrong thing in almost any situation. On top of it all, The Breeze suspected that Billy was gay.

The idea had been reinforced one night when he dropped in on Billy at his job as night desk clerk at the Rooms-R-Us motel and found him leafing through a Playgirl magazine. In Breeze's business one got used to running across the skeletons in people's closets. If Billy's skeleton wore women's underwear, it didn't really matter. Homosexuality on Billy Winston was like acne on a leper.

The up side of Billy Winston was that he had a car that ran and would take The Breeze anywhere he wanted to go. The Breeze's van was currently being held by some Big Sur growers as collateral against the forty pounds of sinsemilla buds he had stashed in a suitcase at his trailer.

"The way I see it," said Billy, "we hit the Mad Bull first. Do a pitcher of margaritas at Jose's, dance a little at the Nuked Whale, and if we don't find any nookie, we head back home for a nightcap at the Slug. "

"Let's hit the Whale first and see what's shakin'," The Breeze said.

The Nuked Whale was San Junipero's premier college dance club. If The Breeze was going to find a coed to cuddle, it would be at the Whale. He had no intention of making the drive with Billy back to Pine Cove for a nightcap at the Head of the Slug. Closing up the Slug was tantamount to having a losing night, and The Breeze was through with being a loser. Tomorrow when he sold the forty pounds of grass he would pocket twenty grand. After twenty years blowing up and down the coast, living on nickle-dime deals to make rent, The Breeze was, at last, stepping into the winners' circle, and there was no room for a loser like Billy Winston.

Billy parked the Pinto in a yellow zone a block away from the Nuked Whale. From the sidewalk they could hear the throbbing rhythms of the latest techno-pop dance music.

The unlikely pair covered the block in a few seconds, Billy striding ahead while The Breeze brought up the rear with a laid-back shuffle. As Billy slipped under the neon whale tail and into the club, the doorman-a fresh-faced slab of muscle and crew cut-caught him by the arm.

"Let's see some I.D."

Billy flashed an expired driver's license as Breeze caught up to him and began digging into the pocket of his Day-Glo green surf shorts for his wallet.

The doorman raised a hand in dismissal. "That's okay, buddy, with that hairline you don't need any."

The Breeze ran his hand over his forehead self-consciously. Last month he had turned forty, a dubious achievement for a man who had once vowed never to trust anyone over thirty.

Billy reached around him and slapped two dollar bills into the doorman's hand. "Here," he said, "buy yourself a night with an Inflate-A-Date. "

"What!" The doorman vaulted off his stool and puffed himself up for combat, but Billy had already scampered away into the crowded club. The Breeze stepped in front of the doorman and raised his hands in surrender.

"Cut him some slack, man. He's got problems."

"He's going to have some problems," the doorman bristled.

"No, really, " The Breeze continued, wishing that Billy had spared him the loyal gesture and therefore the responsibility of pacifying this collegiate cave man. "He's on medication. Psychological problems. "

The doorman was unsure. "If this guy is dangerous, get him out of here."

"Not dangerous, just a little squirrelly--he's bipolar Oedipal, The Breeze said with uncharacteristic pomposity.

"Oh, " the doorman said, as if it had all become clear. "Well, keep him in line or you're both out."

"No problem." The Breeze turned and joined Billy at the bar amid a crunch of beer-drinking students. Billy handed him a Heineken.

Billy said, "What did you say to that asshole to calm him down?"

"I told him you wanted to fuck your mom and kill your dad."

"Cool. Thanks, Breeze. "

"No charge." The Breeze tipped his beer in salute.

Things were not going well for him. Somehow he had been snared into this male-bonding bullshit with Billy Winston, when all he wanted to do was ditch him and get laid.