Conference Book Club: Louise Penny’s ‘The Madness of Crowds’
At this year’s Atlantic Theological Conference, The Rev’d David Curry made a special presentation on Louise Penny’s novel The Madness of Crowds and other related literature. The YouTube video of Fr. Curry’s talk is posted here; his lecture notes follow below. He also prepared a set of PowerPoint slides, which can be downloaded by clicking on this link.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well
Thank you for the privilege of offering the Atlantic Theological Conference book study. It marks a new venture and is not without its challenges. In my experience people have quite different opinions and feelings about literary works especially those in the popular realm, both about authors and characters. Some absolutely adore Louise Penny’s novels and her lead character, Armand Gamache; others, well, perhaps, not so much. My interest is not to persuade you one way or another on that score but simply to consider the kinds of ethical questions that such literature raises and the ways in which they are considered.
To that end, I would like to offer some reflections on the conference theme of “Plague, Perseverance, Providence: Adversity and the Christian Response to Adversity” by way of a brief consideration of Louise Penny’s novel ‘The Madness of Crowds’ complemented by a side-long glance at Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ and John Donne’s Sonnet, ‘What if this Present were the World’s Last Night.’ “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine” (R.E.M. 1987), only we don’t, and perhaps shouldn’t. The accompanying power-point helps to highlight certain passages in the texts.
‘The Madness of Crowds’ was published in 2021 as a post-pandemic novel in her popular series of seventeen Chief Inspector Armand Gamache’s detective mystery stories. The title is taken from Charles MacKay’s ‘Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’ (c. 1841) which explores a great range of examples of the psychology of mass hysteria and which is explicitly referenced in the novel.
Louise Penny’s novels belong to an array of detective mystery stories that explore a number of ethical questions and problems belonging to our contemporary world. Ethical refers to the idea or concept of what is good and right to think and do. It cannot be just for the few; it has to be for all. That is very much at issue in Louise Penny’s novel, The Madness of Crowds. Justice, as Plato shows in ‘The Republic,’ cannot simply be “the interest of the stronger”; in other words, that ‘might equals right.’ The Philosopher, he argues, must return to the Cave; his pursuit of wisdom is not a private matter. He is obliged to seek the good of all.