Ashley Fahey
Jeffrey C. Pughs new book "Devils Ink: Blog from the Basement Office" writes from Satans perspective in a blog post format. Image courtesy of Amazon.
Jeffrey C. Pugh’s book “Devil’s Ink: Blog from the Basement Office” is no ordinary read. Pugh, the 2010 Elon University Distinguished Scholar and professor of religious studies, wrote the entire book from the perspective of Satan, in the form of a blog.
“We can bring our ideas in different forms the way we are now rather than through dense philosophical tones,” said Pugh. “It was intentional to use blog style to make short, pithy points to leave the reader inflecting and thinking about it.”
Pugh spoke about his new book and read excerpts from it at the Distinguished Scholar Lecture on April 14. The book is a result of Pugh’s research that seeks approaches to religious studies with both historical and contemporary relevance. He said the book was a different form of scholarship and that he examined evil as something that is not elusive.
“I started with the understanding of the great spirit of negation,” said Pugh. “In what way have we constructed the world that actually negates well-being and human flourishing? The totality of existence. Once I climbed in and stayed there, it just kind of came out every night.”
Professor Jeffrey C. Pugh reads aloud an excerpt from his new book “Devil’s Ink: Blog from the Basement Office” at Elon University.
Pugh read aloud several excerpts from his book, which addressed topics ranging from politics to the atomic bomb to Disney World. The blog-like format of the book was written entirely in first person perspective from Satan’s point-of-view. The posts even include the tagging function that would be found on a normal blog site.
“What I want is for the reader to start asking questions, to think about things in a way they haven’t before,” Pugh said in a recent interview. “Hell has its own logic. I want to confront the reader with whether or not they’ve embraced the logic of hell within the societal structures they live under.”
He discussed how reading the book for him was now like an out-of-body experience. But Pugh stressed the importance he felt in writing the book in such an intimate and unyielding manner.
“The book is an attempt to think through perplexing concerns,” said Pugh. “If you look a little closer at the field of theology, it is more about illuminating the claims of human life that have emerged from tradition and symbols to construct the realities we live in.”
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