It is a delight of horror, with a plot as twisted and deranged as the crazy corridors and secret passages of the Paris Opera House. The Phantom of the Opera is no masterpiece, but it is magnificent in its raving enthusiasm and pitch-perfect melodrama. (The book is always better.) But to those civilized readers who with spade and lantern descend to the skeleton-lined catacombs to exhume this voiceless volume from the crypt where popular culture has entombed it, to these are reserved a privilege as mysterious as echoing organ music: the terrific pleasure of a terrible book. (There are worse things.) For some, for very few even, The Phantom of the Opera is a 1911 crime novel by Gaston Leroux-a ghost of a story sentenced to the dark dungeons of forgotten literature only to haunt its adaptations with invisible, ironic obscurity, lost in its own legacy, tragic in its triumph. (More’s the pity.) For many, The Phantom of the Opera is Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Universal Studios and Hammer Horror. Chief among these is that reading is enriching even when it is entertaining, and recreational reading should be stimulating rather than stultifying, for all literature worth reading infuses pulp with some soul.įor most, The Phantom of the Opera is a bombastic Broadway show by Andrew Lloyd Webber. In other words, there are many books which are good but not great-and many of these are worth reading for several reasons. All great literature is well written, but not all that is well written is great literature.
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