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I Await the Devil's Coming
Mary MacLane's I Await the Devil's Coming is a shocking, brave and intellectually challenging diary of a 19-year-old girl living in Butte, Montana in 1902. Written in potent, raw prose that propelled the author to celebrity upon publication, the book has become almost completely forgotten.
In the early 20th century, MacLane's name was synonymous with sexuality; she is widely hailed as being one of the earliest American feminist authors, and critics at the time praised her work for its daringly open and confessional style. In its first month of publication, the book sold 100,000 copies—a remarkable number for a debut author, and one that illustrates MacLane's broad appeal.
Now, with a new foreword written by critic Jessa Crispin, I Await The Devil's Coming stands poised to renew its reputation as one of America's earliest and most powerful accounts of feminist thought and creativity.
In the early 20th century, MacLane's name was synonymous with sexuality; she is widely hailed as being one of the earliest American feminist authors, and critics at the time praised her work for its daringly open and confessional style. In its first month of publication, the book sold 100,000 copies—a remarkable number for a debut author, and one that illustrates MacLane's broad appeal.
Now, with a new foreword written by critic Jessa Crispin, I Await The Devil's Coming stands poised to renew its reputation as one of America's earliest and most powerful accounts of feminist thought and creativity.
162 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 1902
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6881 people want to read
About the author
Mary MacLane
47 books67 followersMary MacLane was a controversial Canadian-born American writer whose frank memoirs helped usher in the confessional style of autobiographical writing. MacLane was known as the "Wild Woman of Butte."
MacLane was a very popular author for her time, scandalizing the populace with her shocking bestselling first memoir and to a lesser extent her two following books. She was considered wild and uncontrolled, a reputation she nurtured, and was openly bisexual as well as a vocal feminist. In her writings, she compared herself to another frank young memoirist, Marie Bashkirtseff, who died a few years after MacLane was born, and H. L. Mencken called her "the Butte Bashkirtseff."
MacLane was a very popular author for her time, scandalizing the populace with her shocking bestselling first memoir and to a lesser extent her two following books. She was considered wild and uncontrolled, a reputation she nurtured, and was openly bisexual as well as a vocal feminist. In her writings, she compared herself to another frank young memoirist, Marie Bashkirtseff, who died a few years after MacLane was born, and H. L. Mencken called her "the Butte Bashkirtseff."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 365 reviews
June 6, 2023
Mary Maclane was 19, an 1899 graduate of Butte High School when she wrote the journal-like entries that became I Await the Devil's Coming, her original title for this book.
On long, long daily walks around Butte, Montana and the "sand and barrenness" surrounding it, "so ugly indeed that it is near the perfection of ugliness", she rages against her bitter loneliness, now that her only love, her high school literature teacher Fannie Corbin, had moved away, leaving her alone with her genius and suffering.
In fact, her love was unrequited, if accepted, by Ms. Corbin, whom she called her "anemone lady", and she lived at home with the five other members of her family. You get a sense of her feelings towards them in this passage and several others.
She awaits the Devil to come and marry her and bring happiness if only for three days, meanwhile rehearsing suicide. She prays to the Devil to deliver her "from unripe bananas; from bathless people; from a waist-line that slopes up in the front", but offers sensuous instructions on how to eat an olive, and enjoys porterhouse steaks and fudge she makes with brown sugar.
It's quite a ride. Many recent reviewers pigeonhole her as an ahead-of-her-time Goth or emo, simply transcribing an eternal and universal teen angst. But this teen journal from Butte, Montana sold 100,000 copies in its first month in 1902 and Maclane became an international sensation, before there was a teen angst market.
Here's what the author says about the book:
Learn more about Mary Maclane here: http://www.marymaclane.com/.
On long, long daily walks around Butte, Montana and the "sand and barrenness" surrounding it, "so ugly indeed that it is near the perfection of ugliness", she rages against her bitter loneliness, now that her only love, her high school literature teacher Fannie Corbin, had moved away, leaving her alone with her genius and suffering.
In fact, her love was unrequited, if accepted, by Ms. Corbin, whom she called her "anemone lady", and she lived at home with the five other members of her family. You get a sense of her feelings towards them in this passage and several others.
When I look at the six tooth-brushes a fierce, lurid storm of rage and passion comes over me. Two heavy leaden hands lay hold of my life and press, press, press. They strike the sick, sick weariness to my inmost soul.
She awaits the Devil to come and marry her and bring happiness if only for three days, meanwhile rehearsing suicide. She prays to the Devil to deliver her "from unripe bananas; from bathless people; from a waist-line that slopes up in the front", but offers sensuous instructions on how to eat an olive, and enjoys porterhouse steaks and fudge she makes with brown sugar.
It's quite a ride. Many recent reviewers pigeonhole her as an ahead-of-her-time Goth or emo, simply transcribing an eternal and universal teen angst. But this teen journal from Butte, Montana sold 100,000 copies in its first month in 1902 and Maclane became an international sensation, before there was a teen angst market.
Here's what the author says about the book:
It will amuse you. It will arouse your interest. It will stir your curiosity. Some sorts of persons will find it ridiculous. It will puzzle you.
Learn more about Mary Maclane here: http://www.marymaclane.com/.
May 13, 2013
Nothing, oh nothing on the earth can suffer like a woman young and all alone!
There is a lot in this book that appeals to a part in me that likes essentialism, this affect driven part. Mary MacLane's book is something (it is /something/) that is about what it means to be an adolescent teenage girl (well, one in the Western world, and there are other important constraints here that need to be acknowledged, whiteness, privilege). But there is an anger and a yearning and a sadness that I can't help but believe is universal. That there is absolutely nothing in the world for you, but we wait, for women always wait, things have to happen to us, and for Mary it is awaiting the Devil. This Devil understands her genius and her strangeness and the horrors of her life that she is confronted when she sees the six toothbrushes of her family. No one else. No one else real. She cannot even relate to the heroines, she knows she isn't one of them. To have no place in the real world and to be unable to find solace in fiction - this is why Mary writes. This is important.
She manages to act though, she sends out this book to her publishers and ends the text with an astounding passage about how this book means everything to her. To the world, to the reader, it is an oddity, "something," but to have it verbalized as "everything" makes it unbearably human.
There is a lot in this book that appeals to a part in me that likes essentialism, this affect driven part. Mary MacLane's book is something (it is /something/) that is about what it means to be an adolescent teenage girl (well, one in the Western world, and there are other important constraints here that need to be acknowledged, whiteness, privilege). But there is an anger and a yearning and a sadness that I can't help but believe is universal. That there is absolutely nothing in the world for you, but we wait, for women always wait, things have to happen to us, and for Mary it is awaiting the Devil. This Devil understands her genius and her strangeness and the horrors of her life that she is confronted when she sees the six toothbrushes of her family. No one else. No one else real. She cannot even relate to the heroines, she knows she isn't one of them. To have no place in the real world and to be unable to find solace in fiction - this is why Mary writes. This is important.
She manages to act though, she sends out this book to her publishers and ends the text with an astounding passage about how this book means everything to her. To the world, to the reader, it is an oddity, "something," but to have it verbalized as "everything" makes it unbearably human.
September 29, 2020
The 1902 publication of Mary MacLane’s book made her an overnight sensation, discussed and written about from England to Australia, horses, cigars, even cooking products were branded with her name; admiring fan-girls formed MacLane clubs, and young women considered too wayward or too unconventional were labelled as suffering from MacLaneism. On the surface there’s nothing remarkable about I Await the Devil’s Coming it’s a brief portrait, three months in the life of a fairly ordinary, nineteen-year-old girl living in rapidly-developing, but culturally barren, Butte, Montana. MacLane could almost be a composite of Amy and Jo from Little Women, arrogant, convinced of her uniqueness, slightly wild, well-read, desperate to see the world, be a famous writer. Except MacLane openly rejects Alcott’s model, she’s no prototypical ‘good girl’, if someone had given her Pilgrim’s Progress she’d probably have tossed it out of a window. Instead, MacLane fantasises about the devil rescuing her from dull respectability, she obsesses over a former teacher, Fannie Corbin, her only friend and the woman she loves and longs for. No wonder she was so notorious, reading this I could visualise hosts of anxious parents scrutinising their daughters, searching for signs of strange desires lurking beneath demure exteriors.
I found the diary itself fascinating, it’s a very unbalanced piece. It’s difficult to tell what’s deliberately inserted for effect and what accidental: MacLane repeatedly revisits scenes, over and over again almost identical descriptions of solitary walks, wrestling with her emotional highs and lows. This repetition was frequently irritating but there were passages that had an unexpected balladic, oral quality, a near-mythic dimension. And MacLane’s account of her stifling daily routines, made her feelings of intense boredom and frustration almost palpable. Interspersed with MacLane’s meticulous recreation of her mental states are a series of acutely-observed, often very funny, vignettes of small-town society with all its gossip and hypocrisy, presumably yet another aspect of this that rattled many contemporary readers. Her prose style veers between overblown and beautifully controlled. Her sensual depictions of the natural world, her fiercely passionate protestations, echo Romanticism, particularly Emily Bronte’s work. Possibly a conscious decision, it’s obvious MacLane read widely, she cites numerous literary influences, from Jane Eyre to Vanity Fair, to Dr Johnson and a curious mix of idols including Napoleon, and prominent diarist/artist Marie Bashkirtseff, whose pictures she uses to decorate her bedroom.
MacLane’s journal reminded me of outsider art or what the artist Jean Dubuffet termed ‘art brut’, it’s a similarly feverish, painted outside the lines, type of piece ”created from solitude,” only distinguishable from that tradition by her conscious craving for fame and fortune. Her inclusion of the devil as seductive, grey-eyed rescuer, has been pored over by critics; some link this invocation to late nineteenth-century ‘satanic feminist’ movements, not a group of occult-worshippers but women who reclaimed the figure of the witch-like outcast female as a mark of rebellion and independence, recasting Eden’s serpent as Eve’s liberator from the chains of patriarchy. I’m not convinced that MacLane’s strategy is quite so sophisticated, her vision of the demonic has too much of the trappings of performance, a simple desire to shock, to be different, the idea of a Faustian pact’s a perfect, potent symbol of her refusal to be what society demanded of her and young women like her.
I found the diary itself fascinating, it’s a very unbalanced piece. It’s difficult to tell what’s deliberately inserted for effect and what accidental: MacLane repeatedly revisits scenes, over and over again almost identical descriptions of solitary walks, wrestling with her emotional highs and lows. This repetition was frequently irritating but there were passages that had an unexpected balladic, oral quality, a near-mythic dimension. And MacLane’s account of her stifling daily routines, made her feelings of intense boredom and frustration almost palpable. Interspersed with MacLane’s meticulous recreation of her mental states are a series of acutely-observed, often very funny, vignettes of small-town society with all its gossip and hypocrisy, presumably yet another aspect of this that rattled many contemporary readers. Her prose style veers between overblown and beautifully controlled. Her sensual depictions of the natural world, her fiercely passionate protestations, echo Romanticism, particularly Emily Bronte’s work. Possibly a conscious decision, it’s obvious MacLane read widely, she cites numerous literary influences, from Jane Eyre to Vanity Fair, to Dr Johnson and a curious mix of idols including Napoleon, and prominent diarist/artist Marie Bashkirtseff, whose pictures she uses to decorate her bedroom.
MacLane’s journal reminded me of outsider art or what the artist Jean Dubuffet termed ‘art brut’, it’s a similarly feverish, painted outside the lines, type of piece ”created from solitude,” only distinguishable from that tradition by her conscious craving for fame and fortune. Her inclusion of the devil as seductive, grey-eyed rescuer, has been pored over by critics; some link this invocation to late nineteenth-century ‘satanic feminist’ movements, not a group of occult-worshippers but women who reclaimed the figure of the witch-like outcast female as a mark of rebellion and independence, recasting Eden’s serpent as Eve’s liberator from the chains of patriarchy. I’m not convinced that MacLane’s strategy is quite so sophisticated, her vision of the demonic has too much of the trappings of performance, a simple desire to shock, to be different, the idea of a Faustian pact’s a perfect, potent symbol of her refusal to be what society demanded of her and young women like her.
March 18, 2025
I decided to read this for a curious reason: it figures prominently in the new novel Plain Bad Heroines, that I'm reading next, so I thought it might be wise to read this first. Alas, even though fairly short, it is extremely repetitious and tedious. I really could have read the first 10 pages, and gotten the gist of the entire book. There is no plot to speak of - it is comprised solely of three months of the 1901 diary entries of a 19 year old girl living in Butte, Montana, who fashions herself a 'genius', although her writing doesn't QUITE bear that out.
Mainly she complains unendingly about how unhappy and bored she is, and that pretty much sums up how one feels reading it. The prose itself is sometimes lovely and lyrical, and there are a very few scenes towards the end of the book (her conversations with the Devil and an Italian peddler-woman) that pique one's interest... but most of it is just sophomoric philosophizing that isn't worth the slog.
Mainly she complains unendingly about how unhappy and bored she is, and that pretty much sums up how one feels reading it. The prose itself is sometimes lovely and lyrical, and there are a very few scenes towards the end of the book (her conversations with the Devil and an Italian peddler-woman) that pique one's interest... but most of it is just sophomoric philosophizing that isn't worth the slog.
April 12, 2013
This is crazy and ridiculous and unintentionally funny and therefore amazing. Published in 1902 when the author was 19, this has such a great style that I kept having to read bits out to whoever was in the room with me (hi bert!). Mainly she is talking about what a genius she is and how great the devil is, a bit about food and then more about her genius. I loved this bit:
'Also I eat bits of toast. I have my breakfast alone - because the rest of the family are still sleeping, - sitting at the corner of the kitchen table. I enjoy those three eggs and those bits of toast. Usually when I am eating my breakfast I am thinking of three things: the varying price of any eggs that are fit to eat; of what to do after I've finished my housework and before lunch; and of my one friend. And I meditatively and gently kick the leg of the table with the heel of my right foot.
I have beautiful hair.'
So apparently after the publication of this book it became huge and Mary went a bit crazy on the ol' booze and men and then wrote another book 15 years later called I, Mary MacLane and then ended up dead in a hotel room aged 48 of causes unknown. Genius.
'Also I eat bits of toast. I have my breakfast alone - because the rest of the family are still sleeping, - sitting at the corner of the kitchen table. I enjoy those three eggs and those bits of toast. Usually when I am eating my breakfast I am thinking of three things: the varying price of any eggs that are fit to eat; of what to do after I've finished my housework and before lunch; and of my one friend. And I meditatively and gently kick the leg of the table with the heel of my right foot.
I have beautiful hair.'
So apparently after the publication of this book it became huge and Mary went a bit crazy on the ol' booze and men and then wrote another book 15 years later called I, Mary MacLane and then ended up dead in a hotel room aged 48 of causes unknown. Genius.
September 8, 2009
"Napoleon was a man, and though sensitive, his flesh was safely covered"
Yes, but who was Mary MacLane? Mary MacLane was a truly extraordinary nineteen-year old with a "fine young body that is feminine in every fiber" and a brain that is "a conglomeration of aggressive versatility". She is "a fantasy--absurdity--a genius!" with no parallel, "a genius, with a wondrous liver within". But she lives in Butte Montana in 1901, and stuck there, she writes this "Portrayal" of herself, in which she is very honest (though she is also "a liar") about her obsession with the devil, her desire for Fame and Happiness (always the Devil brings Happiness), her seventeen pictures of Napoleon that she stares at daily, her (then, and even now) unconventional views of marriage, her liver, her crush on the "anemone lady" and so on.
It may be tempting to find her exaggerated way of phrasing things amusing and quirky, but they also communicate some incredible and unique insights. I do think she was a genius, in her own odd way, and I found myself agreeing to (and feeling deeply with) a lot of what she says. Her repetition bordered on poetic at times, and her mysterious use of certain phrases (her heart is always a "wooden heart" and her philosophy is always "peripatetic", she lives in perpetual "sand and barrenness" and always the "red red line of the sky" is a symbol of Happiness to come). Mostly, she writes about how lonely she is, stuck in Butte Montana, and how she would give anything for 3 days of Happiness. I wonder what happened to her after she wrote this.
"But no matter how ferociously pitiable is the dried up graveyard, the sand and barrenness and the sluggish little stream have their own persistent individual damnation. The world is at least so constructed that its treasures may be damned each in a different manner and degree." p.16
Yes, but who was Mary MacLane? Mary MacLane was a truly extraordinary nineteen-year old with a "fine young body that is feminine in every fiber" and a brain that is "a conglomeration of aggressive versatility". She is "a fantasy--absurdity--a genius!" with no parallel, "a genius, with a wondrous liver within". But she lives in Butte Montana in 1901, and stuck there, she writes this "Portrayal" of herself, in which she is very honest (though she is also "a liar") about her obsession with the devil, her desire for Fame and Happiness (always the Devil brings Happiness), her seventeen pictures of Napoleon that she stares at daily, her (then, and even now) unconventional views of marriage, her liver, her crush on the "anemone lady" and so on.
It may be tempting to find her exaggerated way of phrasing things amusing and quirky, but they also communicate some incredible and unique insights. I do think she was a genius, in her own odd way, and I found myself agreeing to (and feeling deeply with) a lot of what she says. Her repetition bordered on poetic at times, and her mysterious use of certain phrases (her heart is always a "wooden heart" and her philosophy is always "peripatetic", she lives in perpetual "sand and barrenness" and always the "red red line of the sky" is a symbol of Happiness to come). Mostly, she writes about how lonely she is, stuck in Butte Montana, and how she would give anything for 3 days of Happiness. I wonder what happened to her after she wrote this.
"But no matter how ferociously pitiable is the dried up graveyard, the sand and barrenness and the sluggish little stream have their own persistent individual damnation. The world is at least so constructed that its treasures may be damned each in a different manner and degree." p.16
November 24, 2024
I love this. This is a published diary written in 1901(!) by a 19-year-old, self proclaimed genius, Mary MacLean of Montana. She’s depressed, sexually confused and in love with her only friend (who is also a woman). She claims to be more of a genius than any other literary genius to ever live and she is DEFINITELY not like other girls.
Despite the childishness described above, Mary MacLane’s journal entries emit a certain self-awareness. I believe this is what made her publication a best seller in 1902. If the NYT best seller list had existed back then, they would have been all over this diary!
My favorite portions of Mary’s entries are her talking through being in love with her friend and questioning if, sexually, she is part male. If Mary was alive right now, she would have easily been labeled as bisexual. Sexuality and gender norms worked differently back in 1901, though— so, what undoubtedly is recognized as bisexuality to us, instead lead Mary to wonder if was sexually a man.
Thank you to Melville House for gifting me a copy of I AWAIT THE DEVIL’S COMING. What an excellent piece of queer history!
Despite the childishness described above, Mary MacLane’s journal entries emit a certain self-awareness. I believe this is what made her publication a best seller in 1902. If the NYT best seller list had existed back then, they would have been all over this diary!
My favorite portions of Mary’s entries are her talking through being in love with her friend and questioning if, sexually, she is part male. If Mary was alive right now, she would have easily been labeled as bisexual. Sexuality and gender norms worked differently back in 1901, though— so, what undoubtedly is recognized as bisexuality to us, instead lead Mary to wonder if was sexually a man.
Thank you to Melville House for gifting me a copy of I AWAIT THE DEVIL’S COMING. What an excellent piece of queer history!
May 22, 2016
"I have in me the germs of intense life. If I could live, and if I could succeed in writing out my living, the world itself would feel the heavy intensity of it."
-
"I am filled with an ambition. I wish to give the world a naked Portrayal of Mary MacLane: her wooden heart, her good young woman's-body, her mind, her soul."
-
"I wish to leave all my obscurity, my misery--my weary unhappiness--behind me forever.
I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness."
---
I feel like Mary's handful of actual ideas would be more powerful if they were boiled down to fewer redundant entries and repetitions of phrase. Sometimes she expands a little, but often what she's trying to achieve in poetic repetition is just the dull, monotonous pounding of the same point or phrase, ad naseum, whose potency has been long been lost in all the hammering.
Often, in the ecstasy of that hammering, she actually finds ways to contradict herself and whatever the hell mundane point she thinks she's making is completely lost.
Mary could use some editing.
Though, to her credit, some of her sentiments hit close to my own teenage heart. I, too, have notebooks filled with adolescent gushing on the world I want to conquer with my point of view. I, too, tried to cultivate a personal mythology while borrowing from my influences and tripping with inexperience over turns of phrase. I, too, was once at a stage of womankind and adolescent years who sighed over literature and tried to conjure a landscape of dramatic longing over my own perfectly normal life.
Though Mary's prayers to the Devil and musings on bisexuality might have earned her shock points in Edwardian America, behind the narcissistic fluff is the same short-sighted, inexperienced tantrum logic of every adolescent dreamer who has nothing to complain about but all the same fancies themselves a kind of tragic heroine.
4 pages on eating an olive makes the act sound like a tedious, pretentious, overlong process that in no way exemplifies this art with a capital "A" our worldly genius Mary MacLane has achieved. One wonders how Mary, of womankind and nineteen years, didn't meet her end early from a fed up bystander shoving a fist full of olive A rt down her ridiculous throat.
"I make fudge--and a sweet girl makes fudge, but there are ways and ways of doing things. This entire affair of the fudge is one of my uniquest points.
No sweet girl makes fudge and eats it, as I make fudge and eat it."
No really--this genius right here!
Occasionally, an entry is worthwhile. Her observations on marriage are sharp and certainly startling for her day. But mostly she's redundant and full of bluster without any substance to back up her declarations. There's about 15 pages of actual content whipped into 162 pages of repetitive froth.
I'm not impressed, but she gets points for trying.
"...I am mature--old. I am not a child in anything beyond my passions and my years."
Nope.
1 damn star.
Note: I also take affront that Mary is lauded as some beacon of feminism. She spends most of the book wishing for a man (literally and figuratively) to hand her happiness to her, to save her from the woe-is-me, fudge-eating Nothingness of her life. You know what I'm going to do this fall, Mary? Vote. Until then, I'm going to drive my own car to my own job and work to pay for the mortgage that's in my own name. And not a damn bit of your whining made that possible.
October 17, 2020
When I saw this on order in the library catalog, I guessed from the cover that it must be about a female serial killer, and was very surprised when I read the description and reviews here. Despite those serial killer eyes, this is actually a confessional diary from a depressed, goth, bisexual teenage girl from turn-of-the-century Montana who was convinced that she was a genius and was alternatively in love with her female school teacher from the past, Napoleon, and the Devil.
Yes. The Devil. The book is full of her ecstatic and desperate prayers to him, and she carries on multiple times about how much she wants to marry him. I'm not sure if she primarily wrote this as a metaphor and then emphasized it for the contemporary shock value, or if she truly meant it. She wanted this book's title to be I Wait for the Devil, but the publisher intervened, sadly. I truly wish that I could write in a historical fiction book about a character reading a book entitled I Wait for the Devil, but alas, the only book with that title was a re-release years later.
This edition has the original title, and since it isn't a recent publication, I have no idea how my library ended up with this book. However, Mary MacLane's diary was a RIDE, and I am glad that someone in collection development decided to throw part of our 2020 book budget in this unexpected direction. I'm not sure how much this will circulate, but it is hilarious. Mary MacLane was egotistical and self-absorbed, constantly carried on about how no one could ever understand her, wrote scathing indictments of anonymous neighbors, wailed about her family, wrote multiple pages about the act of eating an olive, and kept reminding her readers that she was "Odd," fascinating, dark, and gritty, because unlike everyone else, she could Feel Things.
This book does invite empathy from the reader, since MacLane was clearly very lonely and isolated. She writes repeatedly about her desperation to escape the "Nothingness" that was her life in Butte, Montana, and one can see why she felt so lonely in a place that held so little intellectual and emotional stimulation for her. This emptiness also contributed to her idealization of "the anemone lady," the former teacher whom she had a crush on. She claims that this woman was her only friend, misses her terribly, and writes about the mix of platonic and "masculine" feelings that she inspired in her, desperately wishing for an equal return of affection.
The main reason why I am giving this book three stars, however, is not because I feel bad for its lonely and desperate author. Rather, I am giving it three stars for her writing style, because even though her diary entries are repetitive and whiny, she had a knack for atmospheric writing and gives a strong sense of the landscape, her social isolation, and the multicultural community around her. In my opinion, some of the best parts of the book focus on describing other people, and I wish that she had directed more of her considerable mental energies in that direction, instead of carrying on about how much she wanted the "kind Devil" to come and save her from her loneliness.
MacLane gives a strong sense of what her community was like in the early 1900s, and I enjoyed picking up on the historical details that she captured during the process. Even though she thought that her burning genius was the main attraction to this "Portrayal" of herself, it is really her eye for detail in the world around her that kept me reading. She described the world around her in vivid ways, and even though her prose frequently turns purple, I can see how much raw talent she had.
However, I don't think that MacLane was a genius, or even a proto-feminist. She did nothing to try to improve her situation, just waited for the Devil to romance her, and was more concerned about being personally iconoclastic than she was about any idea of justice or equal rights. Anything that she writes about women's issues comes through a self-absorbed lens where she carries on about how amazing she is for being different. This is a classic "I'm not like other girls!" diatribe, not a feminist text.
In my opinion, this book's only significance to the feminist movement is that it captures the thoughts and feelings of a girl from that era who chose to publicly express her deviance from cultural, sexual, and religious norms. This book is, as MacLane keeps incessantly reminding us, "a Portrayal," and in that sense, it succeeds. She shows us herself as an autobiographical subject, portrays her society and world, and gives the modern reader plenty to contemplate about her life and era.
I would recommend this book to someone who is very interested in history and women's literature, or who just wants a high from reading someone else's ridiculous, unfiltered nonsense. As soon as I knew what this book was about, I knew that there was no way in the world that I could say no to reading it, because I love journaling, love the early 1900s, and was struck by the absolute hilarity of this book flying off the shelves in Edwardian America. I am definitely going to incorporate this scandalous bestseller into a novel someday.
I am glad to know that this ridiculous book exists, and I am glad that I read it. I also feel vastly less embarrassed now by everything that I wrote when I was a teenager. What do I have to regret from my old journals, when I see this girl's mad ravings about wanting the Devil to come sweep her off her feet? I was good. I was FINE. My journals won't ever be published, I hope, but even my worst and most self-absorbed moments are a whole lot better than this.
Yes. The Devil. The book is full of her ecstatic and desperate prayers to him, and she carries on multiple times about how much she wants to marry him. I'm not sure if she primarily wrote this as a metaphor and then emphasized it for the contemporary shock value, or if she truly meant it. She wanted this book's title to be I Wait for the Devil, but the publisher intervened, sadly. I truly wish that I could write in a historical fiction book about a character reading a book entitled I Wait for the Devil, but alas, the only book with that title was a re-release years later.
This edition has the original title, and since it isn't a recent publication, I have no idea how my library ended up with this book. However, Mary MacLane's diary was a RIDE, and I am glad that someone in collection development decided to throw part of our 2020 book budget in this unexpected direction. I'm not sure how much this will circulate, but it is hilarious. Mary MacLane was egotistical and self-absorbed, constantly carried on about how no one could ever understand her, wrote scathing indictments of anonymous neighbors, wailed about her family, wrote multiple pages about the act of eating an olive, and kept reminding her readers that she was "Odd," fascinating, dark, and gritty, because unlike everyone else, she could Feel Things.
This book does invite empathy from the reader, since MacLane was clearly very lonely and isolated. She writes repeatedly about her desperation to escape the "Nothingness" that was her life in Butte, Montana, and one can see why she felt so lonely in a place that held so little intellectual and emotional stimulation for her. This emptiness also contributed to her idealization of "the anemone lady," the former teacher whom she had a crush on. She claims that this woman was her only friend, misses her terribly, and writes about the mix of platonic and "masculine" feelings that she inspired in her, desperately wishing for an equal return of affection.
The main reason why I am giving this book three stars, however, is not because I feel bad for its lonely and desperate author. Rather, I am giving it three stars for her writing style, because even though her diary entries are repetitive and whiny, she had a knack for atmospheric writing and gives a strong sense of the landscape, her social isolation, and the multicultural community around her. In my opinion, some of the best parts of the book focus on describing other people, and I wish that she had directed more of her considerable mental energies in that direction, instead of carrying on about how much she wanted the "kind Devil" to come and save her from her loneliness.
MacLane gives a strong sense of what her community was like in the early 1900s, and I enjoyed picking up on the historical details that she captured during the process. Even though she thought that her burning genius was the main attraction to this "Portrayal" of herself, it is really her eye for detail in the world around her that kept me reading. She described the world around her in vivid ways, and even though her prose frequently turns purple, I can see how much raw talent she had.
However, I don't think that MacLane was a genius, or even a proto-feminist. She did nothing to try to improve her situation, just waited for the Devil to romance her, and was more concerned about being personally iconoclastic than she was about any idea of justice or equal rights. Anything that she writes about women's issues comes through a self-absorbed lens where she carries on about how amazing she is for being different. This is a classic "I'm not like other girls!" diatribe, not a feminist text.
In my opinion, this book's only significance to the feminist movement is that it captures the thoughts and feelings of a girl from that era who chose to publicly express her deviance from cultural, sexual, and religious norms. This book is, as MacLane keeps incessantly reminding us, "a Portrayal," and in that sense, it succeeds. She shows us herself as an autobiographical subject, portrays her society and world, and gives the modern reader plenty to contemplate about her life and era.
I would recommend this book to someone who is very interested in history and women's literature, or who just wants a high from reading someone else's ridiculous, unfiltered nonsense. As soon as I knew what this book was about, I knew that there was no way in the world that I could say no to reading it, because I love journaling, love the early 1900s, and was struck by the absolute hilarity of this book flying off the shelves in Edwardian America. I am definitely going to incorporate this scandalous bestseller into a novel someday.
I am glad to know that this ridiculous book exists, and I am glad that I read it. I also feel vastly less embarrassed now by everything that I wrote when I was a teenager. What do I have to regret from my old journals, when I see this girl's mad ravings about wanting the Devil to come sweep her off her feet? I was good. I was FINE. My journals won't ever be published, I hope, but even my worst and most self-absorbed moments are a whole lot better than this.
January 27, 2011
The wonderous Mary Maclane, "Montana's lit'ry lady!" This book is not a story, as the title suggests; not a memoir, either. It's the daily journal of a lonesome 19-year-old in Butte, Montana, in the early months of 1902. Each day, she reflects on life writ large or small: declaring her unprecedented genius one day, telling a surrealist story about toothbrushes the next. Sensuously teaching "how to eat an olive," or describing how she eats breakfast alone, kicking against the kitchen chair, staring out the window and avoiding her dull family.
She's most engrossing when she shares specifics about the mine-ravaged landscape and the ethnic neighborhoods in Butte, or when writing rapier character studies (including her suitors -- "Men Who Have Made Love To Me"). But she's most touching in the entries wherein she envisions her intellect and brilliance overtaking the world. She longs for transcendence in faraway places, hopes to dazzle others with her wit. The book was an instant bestseller, landing her a fortune, cool digs in New York, and worldwide notoriety. Sadly, only a few odd stream-of-consciousness writings remain.
She's most engrossing when she shares specifics about the mine-ravaged landscape and the ethnic neighborhoods in Butte, or when writing rapier character studies (including her suitors -- "Men Who Have Made Love To Me"). But she's most touching in the entries wherein she envisions her intellect and brilliance overtaking the world. She longs for transcendence in faraway places, hopes to dazzle others with her wit. The book was an instant bestseller, landing her a fortune, cool digs in New York, and worldwide notoriety. Sadly, only a few odd stream-of-consciousness writings remain.
September 18, 2023
RIP Mary MacLane you would have loved Valerie Solanas. Into your hand I place bread, not a stone.
July 6, 2020
Ich fasse mich kurz: Dieses Buch ist unvergleichlich. Ein Einblick in 3 Monate Gedankenwelt einer 19jährigen Amerikanerin, die um 1900 herum ihren Alltag, ihre Empfindungen, ihr Leid und ihre Langeweile dem Leben gegenüber teilt. Es ist bewundernswert, wie unveränderlich die Zustände der Pubertät und des Erwachsen-werdens sind - ganz egal in welchem Jahrhundert. Ein herausragendes Buch.
December 28, 2021
Jag är både glad och ledsen att jag inte läste denna som tonåring på den västerbottniska landsbygden. Sådant underbart plågsamt melankoliskt storhetsvansinne!
January 29, 2024
Ich weiß nicht mehr wodurch ich auf dieses Buch aufmerksam wurde. Es ist ein im Tagebuchstil verfasster Roman aus den ersten Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ich bin froh dieses Buch gelesen zu haben, weil mich MaryMacLane fasziniert und ich ihren Mut spannend finde und dass dieses Buch ihrerzeit als Skandal erlebt wurde. Manchmal hat es aber sehr genervt es zu lesen. Ich glaube die Übersetzerin sagt in den Anhängen, dass wir MacLane bei der Pubertät zusehen. Jaaaa, und das ist echt nicht immer einfach. Und dann war ich doch auch immer wieder berührt oder überrascht von einzelnen Passagen.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 20, 2013
In the words of Mary MacLane, "Poor little Mary MacLane!"
Her egotism must surely be the weight of an ark. Her genius is self-proclaimed from the rooftops. She is stuck in nowheresville Butte, Montana, and she is 19, and lonely, and despairing, and everyone else's souls are dumb, and she is so very much alone with her own philosophy, and her mad genius, and she is, by the way, 19, just to make things worse. As the forward notes, imagine the tragedy, the utter uselessness, of Napoleon being trapped in the body of a 19-year-old prairie girl.
She rages, she moans, complains and philosophizes and rambles and curses the world. She is 19, she is miserable, she is, as she puts it, "a little piece of untrained Nature ... Oh the wretched bitter loneliness of me!"
She is a mad, raging genius, who thinks she knows it, and in knowing it, is driven more mad, more raging. She is 19, and knows it: "Nineteen years are as ages to you when you are nineteen. When you are nineteen, there is no experience to tell you that all things have an end. This aching pain has no end."
Poor little Mary MacLane. But she is no heroine, and she'll be the first to spit in the face of the other prairie girls, the Mary of Laura Ingalls Wilder, she would spit in her face with glee. She is a spiteful little thing, a girl genius of 19 years who is sharpening her teeth and claws in this memoir, sharpening them, always sharpening them. She is a delight, a vile, horrid little witch, a beastly wild thing, a raging mad genius girl stuck with the heart and soul of a conqueror, who knows it, despairingly.
Her egotism must surely be the weight of an ark. Her genius is self-proclaimed from the rooftops. She is stuck in nowheresville Butte, Montana, and she is 19, and lonely, and despairing, and everyone else's souls are dumb, and she is so very much alone with her own philosophy, and her mad genius, and she is, by the way, 19, just to make things worse. As the forward notes, imagine the tragedy, the utter uselessness, of Napoleon being trapped in the body of a 19-year-old prairie girl.
She rages, she moans, complains and philosophizes and rambles and curses the world. She is 19, she is miserable, she is, as she puts it, "a little piece of untrained Nature ... Oh the wretched bitter loneliness of me!"
She is a mad, raging genius, who thinks she knows it, and in knowing it, is driven more mad, more raging. She is 19, and knows it: "Nineteen years are as ages to you when you are nineteen. When you are nineteen, there is no experience to tell you that all things have an end. This aching pain has no end."
Poor little Mary MacLane. But she is no heroine, and she'll be the first to spit in the face of the other prairie girls, the Mary of Laura Ingalls Wilder, she would spit in her face with glee. She is a spiteful little thing, a girl genius of 19 years who is sharpening her teeth and claws in this memoir, sharpening them, always sharpening them. She is a delight, a vile, horrid little witch, a beastly wild thing, a raging mad genius girl stuck with the heart and soul of a conqueror, who knows it, despairingly.
July 17, 2016
This diary enlightened me to the fact that the teenage mind has changed much less due to modernity than I thought. The compulsive obsessions with the glory of oneself and the horror of feeling isolated are probably a continuation from the time before the pyramids. I can picture an Egyptian teenage girl sitting in the shadow of a half built pyramid musing about how her genuis wasn't understood by the adults around her. "I can write stories that will make the Gods come alive!!"
My hubby and I read this outloud while driving through the Pacific Northwest. It gave us much conversation and giggles. We really grew to wish Mary was our daughter.
Anyway, I enjoyed this until about 3/4 of the way through. It just became too repetitive at that point.
Some of my favorite Mary Quotes:
"They do not feel any of these things at Forty. At Forty the fire has long since burned out."
"My conversation is on all occasions devoted directly or indirectly to myself."
"It is the trivial little facts about anything that describe it the most effectively."
"I am the most human. The genuises are always more human than the herd."
She severly cracks me up. :)
My hubby and I read this outloud while driving through the Pacific Northwest. It gave us much conversation and giggles. We really grew to wish Mary was our daughter.
Anyway, I enjoyed this until about 3/4 of the way through. It just became too repetitive at that point.
Some of my favorite Mary Quotes:
"They do not feel any of these things at Forty. At Forty the fire has long since burned out."
"My conversation is on all occasions devoted directly or indirectly to myself."
"It is the trivial little facts about anything that describe it the most effectively."
"I am the most human. The genuises are always more human than the herd."
She severly cracks me up. :)
Want to read
October 2, 2011From an ACLU handout at a Lewis & Clark Public Library program during the Big Read 2011: Banned in Butte when the author called the Butte area "as ugly an outlook as one could wish to see" and called the people of Butte "dry and warped." Butte did not like being insulted and the book was banned by the local library and denounced by The Butte Miner.
October 5, 2014
In her early pictures she wears the same look of fiery sullenness we see in the young Napoleon: she knows that within her there is a spring of life and she is afraid that the world will not let it flow forth...
-- Rebecca West
-- Rebecca West
December 19, 2024
Ein Tagebuch einer einsamen und gelangweilten 19-Jährigen, die sich für ein Genie hält und in der Ödnis in Butte, Montana darauf wartet, dass endlich der Teufel ankommt und im besten Fall zu ihrem Liebhaber wird. In bemerkenswerter Sprache beschreibt Mary MacLane ihre Abgeschiedenheit und Genialität, aber auch ihre Verachtung für alles Tugendhafte und die Menschen, denen sie sich so wenig verbunden fühlt. Zur Entstehungszeit (1901) war das Buch sowohl ein riesiger Erfolg als auch Skandal. Ich habe mich sehr gut unterhalten gefühlt und gerne an ihren Gedanken teilgehabt. Hin und wieder wird es ein wenig zäh, aber insgesamt kommt das Buch erstaunlich gut ohne Handlung aus und ist in Anbetracht des Alters der Autorin und der Zeit des Entstehens etwas Besonderes. Zumindest fällt mir nichts Vergleichbares ein.
June 22, 2024
RIP Mary MacLane, you would have loved Chappell Roan & Last dinner party
December 9, 2013
Summary: The electrifying MacLane returns.
As a long-time researcher and publisher of MacLane's work, I welcome Melville House's publication of this 1902 classic: much-imitated in her time, and unsurpassed to this day in communicating the inner reality of a complex, surging, sui generis spirit.
As I remarked in a forthcoming MacLane anthology: [She] wrote at least five books: three published, two she is known to have destroyed. Her first - a journal of three months in utter obscurity in Butte - brought international fame. Written in a cool, precise, almost faultless style, The Story established her persona to the present day. Everything she wrote later, and almost all later interest in her, would be founded on this book.
Her prediction at age twenty-one that "fifty years after I am dead they will say, `Her first book was her masterpiece' " proved correct. It has been adapted for the stage, reprinted around the world, made the subject of academic study, and is quoted on and off the Internet.
More than a century before what Anna Saunders has called "Generation Exhibition," MacLane created a proto-blog and populated it with entries that sum to a portrait of a time, a place, and the talent they are seen through.
As a long-time researcher and publisher of MacLane's work, I welcome Melville House's publication of this 1902 classic: much-imitated in her time, and unsurpassed to this day in communicating the inner reality of a complex, surging, sui generis spirit.
As I remarked in a forthcoming MacLane anthology: [She] wrote at least five books: three published, two she is known to have destroyed. Her first - a journal of three months in utter obscurity in Butte - brought international fame. Written in a cool, precise, almost faultless style, The Story established her persona to the present day. Everything she wrote later, and almost all later interest in her, would be founded on this book.
Her prediction at age twenty-one that "fifty years after I am dead they will say, `Her first book was her masterpiece' " proved correct. It has been adapted for the stage, reprinted around the world, made the subject of academic study, and is quoted on and off the Internet.
More than a century before what Anna Saunders has called "Generation Exhibition," MacLane created a proto-blog and populated it with entries that sum to a portrait of a time, a place, and the talent they are seen through.
March 4, 2015
Leyendo tan solo un par de páginas de este Deseo que venga el Diablo, no cuesta ningún trabajo adivinar por qué el primer libro de Mary MacLane causó tanto revuelo en el momento de su publicación ni por qué sigue haciéndolo hoy, más de un siglo después de que cierta joven canadiense de apenas diecinueve años consiguiera encandilar a medio mundo y escandalizar al otro medio cabalgando a lomos de su desproporcionado ego. Y es que, a pesar de su inmadurez, su recalcitrante complejo de superioridad y una pesadumbre vital que roza la depresión clínica, el autorretrato que realiza Mary MacLane en Deseo que venga el Diablo destila en todo momento un asombroso genio narrativo a la hora de abordar temas como el feminismo, la sexualidad o la muerte; una cualidad ridículamente fascinante que sobrepasa el límite de lo terrenal y trasciende al reino de lo divino en un proceso que no dejará a nadie indiferente.
January 8, 2014
This is very bad. I'm sorry- I am more open-minded than most & certainly was excited by all the buzz surrounding this book. Maybe everyone else rating it so highly has succumbed to some intellectual elitist groupthink regarding this "memoir" (unfair to even call it this- it amounts to little more than the self-indulgent ramblings of a very bored, slightly manic teenager and not even in an engaging way) but I cannot find the appeal. I understand that her "feminist" writing was unusual for the time, but it isn't even very feminist. She just loudly and repeatedly proclaims her own genius as though saying it often enough will make it true or convince the reader of the fact. I strongly dislike her and this self-indulgent vapid little book.
January 26, 2016
Mary MacLane was nothing but a huge narcissist. I am sorry for those who lived next to her and did not have the choice of throwing away the book, like I did every time she started getting obnoxious again, which was every two pages, approximately.
Colour me not surprised that she vanished into oblivion soon after passing away. Colour me surprised that she is now being heralded as this rebel, visionary soul as well as, according to the Spanish publishing house in charge of her Dear Diary, the first blogger of history. Yeah, maybe only because she was as shallow and keen of navel-gazing as only some bloggers can get to be. Yawn.
Colour me not surprised that she vanished into oblivion soon after passing away. Colour me surprised that she is now being heralded as this rebel, visionary soul as well as, according to the Spanish publishing house in charge of her Dear Diary, the first blogger of history. Yeah, maybe only because she was as shallow and keen of navel-gazing as only some bloggers can get to be. Yawn.
July 7, 2024
“I long unspeakably for happiness. And so I await the Devil’s coming.”
Published in 1902 under the title "The Story of Mary MacLane," Mary MacLane's debut work "I Await the Devil's Coming" is a revolutionary text that shook the literary world. MacLane's unflinching honesty and radical self-expression were too avant-garde for her time, prompting her publisher to make numerous alterations to her original manuscript. Republished in 2014, I read an annotated, unexpurgated edition that restores MacLane’s raw and powerful voice.
MacLane’s writing is often considered the precursor to the confessional diary genre. Her openness about her self-love, sexual attraction to women, and desire to marry the Devil was groundbreaking. Her influence extended to literary figures like Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and she is recognized as a pioneer for her feminist and bisexual identity. Despite the historical context of her work, MacLane's themes of self-exploration, identity, and defiance against societal expectations remain strikingly relevant today.
"I Await the Devil's Coming" is a bold and introspective account of 19-year-old Mary MacLane's life and thoughts. Dedicated to the Devil—“who one day may come”—MacLane's narrative explores her deep sense of isolation, yearning for purpose, and rejection of the roles imposed upon women. Her writing probes the line between art and artifice, challenging the constant performance demanded of women. Mary’s reflections on her life in Butte, Montana, are interspersed with her longing for something more—an intense desire for change and recognition.
MacLane's prose is both sensory and sensual, drawing readers into her world with vivid descriptions of the Montana landscape and her internal turmoil. Her language is raw and unfiltered, capturing her emotions with an honesty that feels almost invasive. Lines like “Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?” and “May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity—a virtuous woman” highlight her radical views and deep introspection.
Mary’s relationship with her former English teacher, Fannie Corbin—referred to as “the anemone lady”—is a poignant thread throughout the book. Mary's desire to escape with Fannie to the mountains, coupled with her acknowledgment that Fannie, a good Christian woman, would never reciprocate her feelings, paints a heartbreaking picture of unrequited love and longing. This relationship underscores the intense loneliness that permeates Mary’s life, as she imagines becoming a man to be with Fannie and achieve the respect and value denied to her as a woman.
MacLane’s reflections on her own femininity and her desire to be more than a commodity are powerful and ahead of her time. She grapples with feelings of invisibility and powerlessness, yet remains fiercely self-aware and determined to leave her mark on the world. Her narrative is informed by and obsessed with the natural world around her, often using it as a metaphor for her inner state.
The book’s portrayal of Mary’s inner world is both fascinating and at times, repetitive. While this redundancy can slow the narrative, it also reinforces the relentless nature of her introspection and desire for change. MacLane's self-awareness and her struggle to find happiness and recognition are themes that resonate deeply, making this book a unique and valuable insight into the life of a queer feminist in the early 20th century.
"I Await the Devil's Coming" is a remarkable and daring work that captures the essence of Mary MacLane’s rebellious spirit and her quest for identity and autonomy. It is a testament to the enduring power of radical self-expression and the importance of preserving the authentic voices of trailblazing women. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of feminist literature and the raw, unfiltered thoughts of a woman who dared to defy societal norms. For its groundbreaking nature and emotional depth, this book earns a solid four-star rating.
📖 Recommended For: Advocates for LGBTQ+ Representation, Feminist Readers, Those Interested in Historical Memoirs, Fans of Radical and Unconventional Literature
🔑 Key Themes: Queer Feminist Identity, Rejection of Societal Norms, Loneliness and Desire, Introspection and Self-Discovery, Unrequited Queer Love.
Published in 1902 under the title "The Story of Mary MacLane," Mary MacLane's debut work "I Await the Devil's Coming" is a revolutionary text that shook the literary world. MacLane's unflinching honesty and radical self-expression were too avant-garde for her time, prompting her publisher to make numerous alterations to her original manuscript. Republished in 2014, I read an annotated, unexpurgated edition that restores MacLane’s raw and powerful voice.
MacLane’s writing is often considered the precursor to the confessional diary genre. Her openness about her self-love, sexual attraction to women, and desire to marry the Devil was groundbreaking. Her influence extended to literary figures like Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and she is recognized as a pioneer for her feminist and bisexual identity. Despite the historical context of her work, MacLane's themes of self-exploration, identity, and defiance against societal expectations remain strikingly relevant today.
"I Await the Devil's Coming" is a bold and introspective account of 19-year-old Mary MacLane's life and thoughts. Dedicated to the Devil—“who one day may come”—MacLane's narrative explores her deep sense of isolation, yearning for purpose, and rejection of the roles imposed upon women. Her writing probes the line between art and artifice, challenging the constant performance demanded of women. Mary’s reflections on her life in Butte, Montana, are interspersed with her longing for something more—an intense desire for change and recognition.
MacLane's prose is both sensory and sensual, drawing readers into her world with vivid descriptions of the Montana landscape and her internal turmoil. Her language is raw and unfiltered, capturing her emotions with an honesty that feels almost invasive. Lines like “Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?” and “May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity—a virtuous woman” highlight her radical views and deep introspection.
Mary’s relationship with her former English teacher, Fannie Corbin—referred to as “the anemone lady”—is a poignant thread throughout the book. Mary's desire to escape with Fannie to the mountains, coupled with her acknowledgment that Fannie, a good Christian woman, would never reciprocate her feelings, paints a heartbreaking picture of unrequited love and longing. This relationship underscores the intense loneliness that permeates Mary’s life, as she imagines becoming a man to be with Fannie and achieve the respect and value denied to her as a woman.
MacLane’s reflections on her own femininity and her desire to be more than a commodity are powerful and ahead of her time. She grapples with feelings of invisibility and powerlessness, yet remains fiercely self-aware and determined to leave her mark on the world. Her narrative is informed by and obsessed with the natural world around her, often using it as a metaphor for her inner state.
The book’s portrayal of Mary’s inner world is both fascinating and at times, repetitive. While this redundancy can slow the narrative, it also reinforces the relentless nature of her introspection and desire for change. MacLane's self-awareness and her struggle to find happiness and recognition are themes that resonate deeply, making this book a unique and valuable insight into the life of a queer feminist in the early 20th century.
"I Await the Devil's Coming" is a remarkable and daring work that captures the essence of Mary MacLane’s rebellious spirit and her quest for identity and autonomy. It is a testament to the enduring power of radical self-expression and the importance of preserving the authentic voices of trailblazing women. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of feminist literature and the raw, unfiltered thoughts of a woman who dared to defy societal norms. For its groundbreaking nature and emotional depth, this book earns a solid four-star rating.
📖 Recommended For: Advocates for LGBTQ+ Representation, Feminist Readers, Those Interested in Historical Memoirs, Fans of Radical and Unconventional Literature
🔑 Key Themes: Queer Feminist Identity, Rejection of Societal Norms, Loneliness and Desire, Introspection and Self-Discovery, Unrequited Queer Love.
November 21, 2023
Could have been done in 1-2 sittings but I got covid :( Ravishing prose, what a character!
March 23, 2019
Ugh. Honestly....I’m not really sure how I was even able to finish this. I thought that I would be able to relate to this...but the way it was written made it somewhat difficult. And jeez, talk about repetition! I get that this was a start at feminism back in the day, but I don’t know...I just couldn’t get into it. Yet, surprisingly I finished it. That’s about all I have to say about this one. It is hurting my head trying to think about it further. Lol.
April 6, 2013
The late Bill Hicks used to do a bit in the late '80s where he lamented the rise in popularity of Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, and wondered how such attention could be paid to teenaged girls, who obviously couldn't have anything important to say. If he truly believed in the complete vapidity of the American teenaged girl, then it's very likely that Bill Hicks never read Mary MacLane. If he had, his autodidact's sense of snobbery and frustration with the small-mindedness of Joe and Jane America would've found a soulmate in MacLane, a self-proclaimed genius, oddity, and thief who also happened to be an irreverent-to-the-point-of-blasphemy (the book's title is one not of bracing for damnation, but of pining for old Beelzebub to come and sweep her off her feet for a few days of genuine joy) bisexual and creator of some of the most sensuously solipsistic prose-poetry since a fellow named Whitman sang of himself. "I Await the Devil's Coming," published when MacLane was only nineteen, is a hundred-plus page rant against the smallness of her life in Butte, Montana, a celebration of the little joys MacLane managed to scrape from that life, and an intense and none-too-modest self-assessment of her body, her mind, and her spirit. The book made MacLane a minor celebrity, before the lifestyle choices it prophesied chewed her up and spit her out, leaving her a washed-up bohemian who didn't make it to age fifty (since there are parts of "I Await" that could be summarized as "hope I die before I get old," perhaps this ending wouldn't have been as unwelcome as we might think). "I Await" garnered praise from no less a presence than H.L. Mencken, whose broadsides against the essentially dullness and stupidity of the American masses mirrored Hicks's. It's a short, fiery, and intensely enjoyable read that, in its days, was as scandalous as anything in print (her publisher didn't have the stones to release it under its given title, substituting "The Story of Mary MacLane" without MacLane's consent; regardless, that bland wrapper couldn't conceal the explosive contents). A few blurbs I've seen peg it as the first of the American confessional/tell-all books. I think that sells it short. This isn't some Real Housewife gassing on about some silly feud with one of her surgically-altered peers. It's dynamite, and the Neversink Library's packaging nicely reflects this; MacLane's face stares intensely from the hell-red cover above the stark, all-caps words of the restored title. If MacLane had lived in 2002 instead of 1902, she might have been seen putting a boot in Paris Hilton's bony ass on "The Simple Life," hurling a plate of her beloved steak and onions into the faces of the Countess LuAnn or Kim Zolciak, or perhaps laying out her shocking sexual fantasies on the Howard Stern show. But one thing is almost certain: she would've been famous, and she would've been shameless. And she would likely still have started by standing in the sand and barrenness, pleading for the devil to swoop down and sweep her off to paradise.
March 31, 2013
Mary MacLane is the kind of woman I love, a bit crazy, maybe. Self-obsessed, yeah, sure. But I want to party with this cowgirl!
She spends the entirety of her book ranting about her genius, how lonely she is in the middle-of-nowhere America and that the Devil is the only man for her. It's a constant refrain, the title of the book, the only being she reaches out for other than herself (and an unnamed female companion, long gone).
After I while I wondered where the genius was. The writing is strong, the sentiment is poetically wrought, but it all felt too narcissistic. Then, reading more, I changed my mind. I found myself in a dialogue with this 19 year old from the turn of the 1900s. I kept putting down the book and talking to her. I keep thinking. She engaged me, and I wanted to engage her right back.
She sought love over 100 years ago, and found it, I think, in her readership. Most likely read for the voyeurism, the unique view of a woman unseen publicly in those times. But there must have been others, like me, who wanted to connect, who did connect, and, more than that, whose intellectual imagination was kindled.
Not much happens in the book. There are few interactions other than the author's with herself. Yet, through the confessions of boredom is an excitement of discovery for this once-famous woman now mostly forgotten. Some have seen a parallel with MacLane and the Internet culture of look-at-me Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/Tumblr/Blog feeds, the first of the exhibitionist memoirists. There's that, sure, but more. Few of those modern examples spark more than superficial conversation, shallowly buried in the churning cycle of online content. Mary MacLane resonates, and I hope others will, unknowingly for now, find themselves awaiting her coming.
She spends the entirety of her book ranting about her genius, how lonely she is in the middle-of-nowhere America and that the Devil is the only man for her. It's a constant refrain, the title of the book, the only being she reaches out for other than herself (and an unnamed female companion, long gone).
After I while I wondered where the genius was. The writing is strong, the sentiment is poetically wrought, but it all felt too narcissistic. Then, reading more, I changed my mind. I found myself in a dialogue with this 19 year old from the turn of the 1900s. I kept putting down the book and talking to her. I keep thinking. She engaged me, and I wanted to engage her right back.
She sought love over 100 years ago, and found it, I think, in her readership. Most likely read for the voyeurism, the unique view of a woman unseen publicly in those times. But there must have been others, like me, who wanted to connect, who did connect, and, more than that, whose intellectual imagination was kindled.
Not much happens in the book. There are few interactions other than the author's with herself. Yet, through the confessions of boredom is an excitement of discovery for this once-famous woman now mostly forgotten. Some have seen a parallel with MacLane and the Internet culture of look-at-me Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/Tumblr/Blog feeds, the first of the exhibitionist memoirists. There's that, sure, but more. Few of those modern examples spark more than superficial conversation, shallowly buried in the churning cycle of online content. Mary MacLane resonates, and I hope others will, unknowingly for now, find themselves awaiting her coming.
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May 23, 2015Totally interesting to read with the context of this being one of the very first confessional diaries published and that it was written by a bisexual girl in 1902 Montana.
It was, however, a confessional journal of a 19 year old girl. There's nothing much to it, except that MacLane was SUPER conscious of her intellect and depth and we hear about it repeatedly. It's kind of awesome because she's madly confident in a way you don't see girls portrayed, especially in that era and place, but it gets sort of boring because it's 165 pages of it.
She was into some really weird role models, too. There's actually SO much here to mine, it would be a shame if no author were considering fictionalizing her story for a YA readership. How did she fall in love? What captivated her? Did she ever pursue her? Just a few ideas but this is ripe.
It was, however, a confessional journal of a 19 year old girl. There's nothing much to it, except that MacLane was SUPER conscious of her intellect and depth and we hear about it repeatedly. It's kind of awesome because she's madly confident in a way you don't see girls portrayed, especially in that era and place, but it gets sort of boring because it's 165 pages of it.
She was into some really weird role models, too. There's actually SO much here to mine, it would be a shame if no author were considering fictionalizing her story for a YA readership. How did she fall in love? What captivated her? Did she ever pursue her? Just a few ideas but this is ripe.
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