Why Hell Stinks Of Sulfur: Mythology And Geology Of The Underworld, by Salomon Kroonenberg, translated by Andy Brown

Sometimes the reasons why an author writes a book are not immediately obvious or completely straightforward. This book, translated from a Dutch original, purports to be an attempt to write about various mythological (loosely defined, as we will see) accounts of hell, while subjecting them to geological analysis, while also commenting on the changing state of the knowledge of the world according to the best information that existed at various times concerning the geology of the earth. Yet this is not really what drives the existence of this book, which appears to be rooted in at least a couple of personal issues that are of interest to the author and probably not as much to most people. On the one hand, the author appears to have desired to wrestle with a family legacy that includes a parental divide in vacation spots and politics, as well as a frustrated desire to have gotten close to an uncle of his who was an eminent expert on crayfish and related species who was nonetheless (properly) skeptical about evolutionary claims and who seems to have viewed geology as a field unworthy of his time and study fairly early in life. Secondarily, the author has a seeming desire for the earth to take vengeance on the destruction of the soil and the insight it brings through our mining efforts through the thought that those who destroy the earth will themselves be destroyed by the earth.

This book is almost 300 pages long and is divided into 17 chapters, some of which are relatively long and some of them are very short. The book begins with the author introducing his view of the geology of the earth as being like a gobstopper (1). This is followed by a look at the biblical view of the underworld and the importance of Jerusalem (2). After that the author discusses the wanderings of Odysseus (3), as well as Greek thoughts about the entrance to hell (4), the vestibule (5), and Charon’s Ferry (6), which involve a look at underground rivers and the change of the course of rivers over time. The author takes on various views of limbo, including Dante’s (7), before he discusses the city of Dis, leading to a look at cave dwellings in Cappadocia and Naples (8) along with a look at the avarice involved in mining (9). This is followed by a discussion of the coal fires of East Turkistan (10), the monster Geryon (11), as well as a discussion of the river of tar (12). A short chapter about collapses (13), which includes more references to Dante, brings the author to the last set of chapters in the book. These chapters deal with the idea of the lead cloak (14), the journey to the center of the earth (15), the view of Lucifer as residing in the ice (16) even though the center of the earth is quite hot, as well as a look about the way back (17). The end of the book discusses sources, acknowledgements, photo acknowledgements, and an index.

If this book was more of a scholarly examination of the slow progress of understanding the nature of the underworld as well as the relationship between the physical and spiritual aspects of death and the grave, it would have been a better book. Had the book been less intent on considering Christian, Muslim, or literary accounts of such people as Dante or Verne as being mythological in nature, the book would also have been better. There are definitely some worthwhile and quirky elements to this book, including the author’s interest in the sources of Verne’s Journey To The Center of the Earth and Dante’s Inferno, which appear to be far more complicated than is often obvious. Similarly, the author has surprising praise for figures like the seducer Casanova (who himself appears to have been an expert in the karst geology of nearby Slovenia, who knew?), which indicates some broad-mindedness that deserves to be respected. Een so, this book is far too personal to be of the sort of wide interest that the author believes his work to be worthy of. This is a book which drips with personal agendas and deep-seated insecurities, and as a result the book really lacks the impact one would want from an examination that could otherwise have been even more interesting and far less subject to the author’s own whims and his own views that he is qualified to pronounce judgment on the scientific value of a large body of literature that relates to the underworld, hell, and related subjects.