what are you reading now?

droid

droid

Well-known member
HBHG is great, one of my fave literary frauds. Think its fair to say they really believed it, or rather, that it was true, therefore making a few things up was justified.

Gavin Menzies' 1421 is another sincere lie.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
These are dumb, mass market books. They're badly reasoned and badly written but if you can't get anything out of them then you're not gunna get initiated into my guild that's for sure.
If you want a drier less credulous presentation of the same material you start with Frances Yates.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Kathleen Raine is a true believer but also a genuine scholar and a good writer if you want a midway point
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
Going back to Eco - and Ive said it before Im sure. But Foucaults Pendulum is the daddy of them all.
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
It's an overview of popular themes in conspiracy, a brilliant conspiracy theory encompassing almost every aspect of human endeavour, and also an utterly damning critique of conspiracy thinking.

Basically, if you read it you will instantly understand the entire field.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
I thought it was a cheap cash in piggybacking on genuine works of imagination but horses 4 courses and all that
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
You can use it as something to hang a plot on, piggybacking, or you can work within the tradition
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
droid said:
HBHG is great, one of my fave literary frauds. Think its fair to say they really believed it, or rather, that it was true, therefore making a few things up was justified.
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My understanding is that one of the chaps sincerely believed he was descended from the Merovingian dynasty - and hence from Jesus and Mary M - and that the other two were straight-up mountebanks who latched onto him in order to perpetrate a literary fraud and make $$$.

The story about the HBHG authors and Dan Brown is actually pretty funny:

Dan Brown actually plays an important part in the history of trolling – but as the victim, rather than perpetrator, of an exquisitely realized hoax [...] Brown was suckered hook, line and sinker, basing his best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code on the ludicrous claims of the older book and even going so far as to include a note in the preface asserting the historical (and, presumably, present-day) reality of the Priory. [...] Hilariously, two of the three authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail unsuccessfully sued Brown’s publisher for plagiarism in 2005, two years after the publication of The Da Vinci Code, which had proven an instant bestseller. The court then rather wonderfully bullshitted the bullshitters and ruled that, since the plaintiffs’ book was ostensibly a work of historical ‘fact’, Brown was justified in using it for ‘research’ for his novel. The free publicity of the trial apparently significantly boosted sales of the older cranks’ book, which may have brought them some comfort after they were landed with legal fees in the region of £3,000,000.
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http://dointhelambethwarp.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/the-voynich-manuscript-and-the-joy-of-trolling/

droid said:
Gavin Menzies' 1421 is another sincere lie.
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Is that the one about the 'Chinese Columbus'?
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Almost finished 'On the Move' by Oliver Sacks. Far from being an essential book of his (ala 'The Man who Mistook...'), but fascinating and fun all the same.
 
HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

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HMGovt said:
I came close to throwing it into the fire when he cited hapless AI 'expert' kevin warwick as an authority on anything, but a few pages later it had redeemed itself. it's going to be a rocky road though, that's clear.
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A few more chapters in - it really is the most unutterable shite. The passage about fish men and apes as degenerate humans is a big warty bag of sweaty bollocks. Laughably incoherent, but I'm sure it's a real page turner for the pathologically credulous and those coming round from long comas. Binned.
 
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