Thoughts on ‘A Short stay in hell’ Steven L. Peck

This short book of existentialism horror is a thought provoking read. The brief synopsis being that Soren, a Mormon, has died and has been sent to his hell. His hell consisting of a Borges-esque library of Babel where Soren has to find the one book in the near infinite number of books that describes his life before he is released from hell. As existential horror it is a great read and writing is very accessible and you will find you have finished the book before you realise. The thought of of an near infinite search over a near infinite number of years is beyond fathomable thinking.

But then what? If you find your book, where do you go next? Every day resets to become just like the last and there is an unfathomable amount of time ahead of you in your search. But on the other side, you have been alived in your prime and you cannot get sick or die, you can have any food you desire. Time is meaningless, there is nothing to do except for your search. This could be endless horror with the end no closer than the beginning.

I did not feel existential terror with this read, I saw it as an allegory for our everyday life. We make choices in life and come to believe our course is the correct one. We can see this in the many religions that in life had promised heaven to their followers but after death, saw them cast into hell. We wake up, eat, work, eat, sleep and often only seeing the same few people throughout our days. In the book, the homogeneous nature of the people, the rooms and hallways all being the same is a mirror to the way our lives can become monotonous. We have to make an effort to change our routines or the days and weeks start to meld together. Our life can be changed in good and bad ways through events that are out of our control. Even when Soren finds some solace with Rachel this is taken away from him as a result of the Direites. We cannot expect our happiness to come from another person, people come and go for various reasons. As thinking animals we often make our thoughts more difficult than they need to be, we are always seeking answers for made up questions. Perhaps for those in hell if the lesson they need to learn is to relax and live their life rather than search a mind boggling amount of books for their release. We can see this with the torment Mr Took gives to those around him when he calculates the number of books there are. They are terrorised again at the seemingly never ending task ahead of them.

My takeaway from the book is the message: You have to find your purpose in life and not to find the meaning of life. Finding the thing that gets you out of bed each day and lets you continue even when events around you are not going the way you had hoped.