Books to Burn

[mms]

Laughter and Forgetting is much the same in lots of ways, Fran m'dear, just without the annoying bits (infantile liberalism, 60s chauvinism, pomposity, general pomonautism) i'm afraid its still pretty ponderous tho.
has some very good bits about the doctoring of photos under stalinism- amusingly, this photo

which he describes in the prologue he actually takes some dramatic licence with himself, thus perpetuating the general historical falsification...

(i agree about animal farm btw: am planning a defence of orwell against his fans for the blog at some point. really he was a pamphleteer, which is one of the things that make him interesting. orwell owned a huge collection of obscure political pamphlets, i think they're in the british library now)

anyone know where i can find his rants against butlins ?
been looking for them for years - i read them about 10 years ago and it was excellent ranting stuff.

 

[dogger]

What? Why? Animal Farm goal and strenght is to have been read by thousand of persons, not to have been read by ten academics (as political pamphlet are). Why you can't express political philosophical issues as a fable, because Kundera says so? Tell this to Esopo. Tell this to Swift. And who have discovered that fables, or grotesque allegories, does not have political philosophical meaning?

the unbearable idiocy of Kundera (never read Laughing and forgetting anyway, may it make me change idea?, it's more interesting that ULOB?)

yes, animal farm has been widely read. so has mills and boon. it does not endow it with literary value. the reasons animal farm is widely read and widely loved are: 1) the ideas it communicates are simple and 2) the manner of the presentation is simple and sentimental (poor Boxer! poor, poor Boxer!). this makes it a great text for school kids to study. but those are also my problems with the novel.

so the comparisons with aesop and swift are fatuous: i can't pretend to have read aesop in the original greek, but the interpretations of his fables i have read (particularly those in middle scots by henryson) are artful and witty. unlike animal farm.

as for swift, the blatantly allegorical moments of gulliver's travels are the weakest sections of the book; the houhyhnhms section is widely considered to be the strongest because there has been lively debate as to what the houhyhnhms represent (by the way, i agree with tony nuttall - they are roman stoics).

what i'm saying is that allegory is fine, if it's done well. but it can't be as transparent and clunking as animal farm.

 

[zhao]

Agree about the Goethe (but just that one)

oh but when I was 14 and listening to a lot of the Smiths the Sorrows of Young Werther sustained my teen anguish in a way that Camus or Sartre couldn't touch...

 

[henry s]

I would like to add Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun to this list (and, in fact, every other book that includes a faun as a lead character)...

 

[dogger]

Jamie Whyte - Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking

A truly annoying and offensive book available in your the philosophy section of your local bookshop.

Especially the part where he woefully misunderstands dialectics: 'you simply cannot believe two mutually exclusive things at once...' Doh. I attended a lecture this evening where I was told to go home and read some Hegel. I might direct the same comment at Jamie Whyte.

 

[francesco]

yes, animal farm has been widely read. so has mills and boon. it does not endow it with literary value. the reasons animal farm is widely read and widely loved are: 1) the ideas it communicates are simple and 2) the manner of the presentation is simple and sentimental (poor Boxer! poor, poor Boxer!). this makes it a great text for school kids to study. but those are also my problems with the novel.

Can't comment on literary value of AF since i read it as a little kid (and deeply touched me at that age) but:
the book had a strong political message/allegory, so the more the readers the more the success in spreading the political issues
so 1) and 2) are successful choices of style by the author, it can annoy intellectuals, but intellectuals were not the targets of that book.

By the way, the book i really love by Orwell is 1984.

 

[arcaNa]

all books by the despickable Ayn Rand must burn in hell- they're vile, utter thrash!

 

[shudder]

all books by the despickable Ayn Rand must burn in hell- they're vile, utter thrash!

i always feel as though I should read something by her, maybe the fountainhead, just so I can understand why she is so loved and so hated...

 

[Iria]

Anne of Green Gable and probably all l.m.montgomery`s lit. successes.

and also couple polish books but i`ll not write its` authors cause probablly nobody here will know their names.
Positives

 

[zhao]

all books by the despickable Ayn Rand must burn in hell- they're vile, utter thrash!

again, the Fountainhead is something I read 3 times when I was 15. sure I have loads of problems with her ideological stance now but you will burn this book over my dead body.

 

[arcaNa]

again, the Fountainhead is something I read 3 times when I was 15. sure I have loads of problems with her ideological stance now but you will burn this book over my dead body.

fair enough, i have no probs with other people liking/enjoying other things than me...

...live and let live, innit?

 

[ripley]

word, on the Fukuyama.

Also, Robert Heinlein - at least, the absolute nadir of his work - Fifth Column, in which the "pan-asians" invade america, featuring a trusty half-breed who helps the whites resist the invasion, but can't be fully on the team because there's something in asian people's blood which makes them different..

Although on the other hand, maybe Heinlein fans should all be forced to read it to see him at his worst.

Also, Piers Anthony.

And I say this as someone who spent much of my early teens reading this stuff... I think I would have done better with better escapist stuff to read. Like Rand, I basically think getting into this stuff runs the risk of turning you into an asshole and then you have to waste a lot of time getting over it -it's lucky for me I was introverted at the time, and also female so less likely to replicate a lot of the crap in the Heinlein and Anthony books.

but that's just my cranky opinion. (now who's the asshole, I guess)

 

[Eric]

Also, Robert Heinlein -
Also, Piers Anthony.

And I say this as someone who spent much of my early teens reading this stuff...

I spent a lot of time with this crap too. Pure Shit!!!

Let me also nominate L Ron Hubbard for "Battlefield Earth", which has exactly!!!!! 1!!!!! female character who doesn't have more than a single line in the entire 1000-page book.

I guess L Ron could have got nominated for any number of reasons besides this one though.,

 

[tryptych]

Just cause I got reminded of it in another thread:

The Celestine Prophercies. And everything else that twat has written.

 

[mind_philip]

I read Battlefield Earth when I was about 9 years old, and even then I couldn't figure out why he'd picked such a ridiculous name for the lead character. Has anyone else ever taken one of the tours at the Scientology Centre on Hollywood Blvd? I passed it a couple of years ago when I was staying in LA, and popped in out of curiousity. It was an increasingly bizarre experience, culminating in a heated debate between me and 4 guides in the bookshop over my refusal to buy a copy of Dianetics.

I spent a lot of time with this crap too. Pure Shit!!!

Let me also nominate L Ron Hubbard for "Battlefield Earth", which has exactly!!!!! 1!!!!! female character who doesn't have more than a single line in the entire 1000-page book.

I guess L Ron could have got nominated for any number of reasons besides this one though.,

 

[Paqamaq]

anything by John cunting Irving. soul-crushing chilly greyness...

Good God! What did you misread to form that opinion?