Literary Significance and Reception
Jeff VanderMeer has described The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman as “the finest surrealist novel of the past 30 years. It perfectly captures the ideas and ideals of surrealist beauty.” In the New York Times, William Hjortsberg recommended Carter’s novel, noting its attention to detail and maintaining that while reading “We soon forget that the terrain she observes with such care is the interior of her own imagination, for the world she describes becomes as real as any naturalist's report.” However, he criticized Carter’s wordiness and her overuse of abstraction, simile, and metaphors. While she was successful in her early career, this later novel failed to achieve commercial success.
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“I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.”
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