Conspiracies in literature

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i dont go round tryng to sniff things out. you might not know me in real life but you are familiar enough with me to know i am not the preachy type. i dont go round trying to be radical.

Yeah I know, that's why I was slightly surprised.

I dunno. It's not the end of the world that we see different things in a book.
 
D

droid

Guest
I dont really buy it Luka. Im not a massive fan of the book and its a bit clumsy, but your criticisms seem very Zhaoist to me.
 

luka

Well-known member
i read it once and took it to the charity shop. my recollections are hazy at best. i remember being incensed as i read it. even if you dont agree that he has a Time magazine outlook on life i think its fair to say the writing is horrible and the characters are cliched.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The stuff about Qwghlm had me in stitches, reminded me of Terry Pratchett at his sharpest. And I have a natural appreciation for the nerdy maths stuff that of course isn't to everyone's taste, I mean if he were to bang on about the origins of football for pages and pages I wouldn't be so interested but some people might be.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Some interesting stuff in the NS a few days ago:

In 1919, the psychoanalyst Viktor Tausk published his famous paper “On the Origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia”, in which he wrote about patients who believed they were under the control of malign technology beyond their understanding. Sometimes, they claimed, this technology would cause “erections and seminal emissions that are intended to deprive the patient of his male potency and weaken him”. In typical Viennese fashion, Tausk concluded that “the influencing apparatus is a representation of the patient’s genitalia projected to the outer world . . . a machine independent of the aims of the ego and subordinated to the foreign will”.

Right away, we might be reminded of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, in which Tyrone Slothrop may or may not have been secretly conditioned to get an erection every time a V-2 rocket is about to strike London. Yet to find more patients for Tausk, we don’t need to look to fiction. “At first I believed they could only terminate my erection, but recently I also started believing that they could create my erection,” writes the author of a recent blog about electromagnetic persecution by the government. “Often I am given erections in co-ordination with the brain butchery, and occasionally voided of semen,” writes another in the same field.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I've just passed the halfway point in Foucault's Pendulum and am enjoying it immensely. Also slightly kicking myself for not delving into it years ago, but never mind. Criticisms are that the female characters seem a bit unbelievable and exist mainly as romantic/erotic foils to the male characters who are actually concerned with the central plot, and some of the verbal flights of fancy go on a bit, but these are minor quibbles really.

Other good Conspiracies In Literature: the various Canadian/Québécois separatist groups - chief among them, the notorious and dreaded Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents! - in Infinite Jest. All the bits involving them were among my favourite parts in the book.

Edit: haha, better late than never, eh.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco is kinda in the right area.

Mr. Tea in 2007 said:
I've heard good things about that book, I suppose it's on my eventual to-read list.
 
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empty mirror

remember the jackalope
i never got through foucault's pendulum
i will try again

lafcadio's adventures is a great classic conspiracy book
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
'Templar' caves accessed through rabbit hole in Shropshire:

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Caves858-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg


aaarabbit-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/09/rabbit-hole-leads-700-year-old-knights-templar-caves/

Bit of misleading headline, as apparently they're more likely to be about 200 years old and the work of 'neo-Templars'. They've been known for some time but a photographer has recently got in and taken some great photos, which I guess is why they're suddenly in the news.

I wonder if Eco knew about these before he died last year? I like to think he'd heard of them.
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
i am just starting Illuminatus Trilogy again (i didn't get through it my first go 'round, it was a library book and i was out of renewals)

anyone want to join me?
 
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