Danse Macabre

Levin's accomplishment is that such satire does not deflate the horror of his story but actually enhances it. Rosemary's Baby is a splendid confirmation of the idea that humor and horror lie side by side, and that to deny one is to deny the other. It is a fact Joseph Heller makes splendid use of in Catch-22 and which Stanley Elkin used in The Living End (which might have been subtitled "Job in the Afterlife").

Besides satire, Levin laces his novel with veins of irony ("It's good for your blood, dearie,” the Old Witch in the E.C. comics used to say). Early on, the Castevets invite Guy and Rosemary over for di

"Honey, if it was trouble I wouldn't ask you," Mrs. Castevet said. "Believe me, I'm as selfish as the day is long.” Rosemary smiled. "That isn't what Terry told me," she said.

"Well," Mrs. Castevet said with a pleased smile, "Terry didn't know what she was talking about.” The irony is that everything Mi

My wife, raised in the Catholic church, claims that the book is also a religious comedy with its own shaggy-dog punchline. Rosemary's Baby , she claims, only proves what the Catholic church has said about mixed marriages all along-they just don't work. This particular bit of comedy grows richer, perhaps, when we add the fact of Levin's own Jewishness against the Christian backdrop of custom used by the Satanist coven. Seen in this light, the book becomes a kind of you-don't-have-to-beJewish-to-love-Levy's view of the battle of good and evil.

Before leaving the idea of religion and talking a bit about the feelings of paranoia which really seem to lie central to the book, let me suggest that while Levin's tongue is in his cheek part of the time, that is no reason for us to expect it to be there all of the time. Rosemary's Baby was written and published at the time the God-is-dead tempest was whirling around in the teapot of the sixties, and the book deals with questions of faith in an unpretentious but thoughtful and intriguing way.

We might say that the major theme of Rosemary's Baby deals with urban paranoia (as opposed to the small-town or rural paranoia we will see in Jack Fi

Rosemary and Guy begin as typical young marrieds; Rosemary is practicing birth control as a matter of course in spite of her rigid Catholic upbringing, and both of them have decided they will have children only when they-not God-decide they are ready. After Terry's suicide (or was it murder?), Rosemary has a dream in which she is being scolded by an old parochial school teacher, Sister Agnes, for bricking up the school windows and getting them disqualified from a beautiful-school contest. But mingling with the dream are real voices from the Castevet apartment next door, and it is Mi

This is Levin's handling of religious views in the microcosm-on the surface, Rosemary is a typical young modern who could have stepped whole and breathing from Wallace Stevens's poem "Sunday Morning"-the churchbells mean nothing to her as she sits peeling her oranges. But beneath, that parochial schoolgirl Rosemary Reilly is very much there.

His handling of the macrocosm is similar-just bigger.

At the di

Guy smiled. "Well," he said, "that's show biz.” Mr. and Mrs. Castevet laughed, and Guy along with them. Rosemary smiled and cut her steak . . . . Still laughing, Mr. Castevet said, "It is , you know: That's just what it is: show biz!” "You can say that again," Guy said.

"The costumes, the rituals," Mr. Castevet said; "every religion, not only Catholicism.

Pageants for the ignorant.” Mrs. Castevet said, "I think we're offending Rosemary.” "No, not at all," Rosemary said.

"You aren't religious, my dear, are you?" Mr. Castevet asked.

"I was brought up to be," Rosemary said, "but now I'm an agnostic. I wasn't offended.

Really I wasn't.” We don't doubt the truth of Rosemary Woodhouse's statement, but underneath that surface there is a little parochial schoolgirl named Rosemary Reilly who is very offended, and who probably regards such talk as blasphemy.

The Castevets are conducting a bizarre sort of job interview here, testing Rosemary and Guy for the depth and direction of their commitments and beliefs; they are revealing their own contempt for the church and things sacred; but, Levin suggests, they are also expressing views which are commonly held . . . and not just by Satanists.

Yet faith must exist beneath, he suggests; it is the surface weakening that allows the devil in, but beneath, even the Castevets are in vital need of Christianity, because without the sacred there is no profane. The Castevets seem to sense Rosemary Reilly existing beneath Rosemary Woodhouse, and it is her husband, Guy, an authentic pagan, that they use as a go-between. And Guy lowers himself admirably to the occasion.

We are not allowed to doubt that it is the softening of Rosemary's faith that has given the devil a door into her life. Her sister Margaret, a good Catholic, calls Rosemary long distance not long after the Castevets' plot has begun to move. "I've had the fu

The religious motif stretches through the book, and Levin does some clever things with it, but perhaps we could close off our discussion of it with some thoughts about Rosemary's remarkable "conception dream." First, it is significant that the time chosen for the devil to impregnate Rosemary coincides with the Pope's visit. Rosemary's mousse is drugged, but she eats only a little of it. As a result, she has a dreamlike memory of her sexual encounter with the devil, but it is one her subconscious couches in symbolic terms. Reality flickers in and out as Guy prepares her for her confrontation with Satan.

In her dream, Rosemary finds herself on a yacht with the assassinated President Ke

Jackie Ke