(no subject)
Never before in my life have I read a book that I had to stop reading halfway through because I thought I might be physically ill. Never have I cried so violently with disgust and fear over a book, of all things, that I have shaken uncontrollably in my lover's arms while I soaked the shoulder of her shirt.
Don't read Bearheart: The Hiership Chronicles by Gerald Vizenor unless you feel a great desire to be bombarded with senseless violence, rape, bestiality, and general hatred of humankind. I've gotten 140 pages into it and so far we've had: gay cannibalistic cultist priests, a very graphic scene where a woman is fucked by two boxers (dogs, not people), a self-immolation, a man using steel wire to castrate and behead the thief who stole a statue the man was in love with, the evil gambler who offers a wager of five gallons of gasoline (which has been used up altogether in this not-that-alternate reality) against people's lives, a group of "weirds and sensitives" living together in a strange commune house where they regularly kill and eat kittens, an eight-year-old girl being abused sexually by her stepfather, and a woman offering herself up sexually to a group of deformed and cancer-stricken men and subsequently being torn limb from limb as they fight over who gets to fuck her.
That last bit is what made me stop reading. What. The. Fuck.
And I could understand this series of awful events if it served some sort of purpose. But there's no central theme to this book! There's no message! Nothing is being illustrated or argued, unless Vizenor is trying to express the horrors that humans can inflict on one another, and if that's the entire point, this is really fucking overkill. It's just Vizenor's sick inner demons being laid out on the page for the consumption of the public. And yeah, if this were inside my brain, I would want to write it out to deal with it, but why the hell would this get published? What purpose does it serve? It doesn't even serve as government criticism, because in this world the government has ceased to function!
For the first time in my school career, I have made the decision not to finish an assigned book, not due to lack of time or the pressure of other assignments, but simply because I cannot stomach any more. If I subjected myself to the last 100 pages, I might have to wash my brain out with bleach. So please, professor, feel free to put this on the midterm. Go right ahead. I will readily admit that I did not finish it. Self-preservation is more important to me than the grade.
Don't read Bearheart: The Hiership Chronicles by Gerald Vizenor unless you feel a great desire to be bombarded with senseless violence, rape, bestiality, and general hatred of humankind. I've gotten 140 pages into it and so far we've had: gay cannibalistic cultist priests, a very graphic scene where a woman is fucked by two boxers (dogs, not people), a self-immolation, a man using steel wire to castrate and behead the thief who stole a statue the man was in love with, the evil gambler who offers a wager of five gallons of gasoline (which has been used up altogether in this not-that-alternate reality) against people's lives, a group of "weirds and sensitives" living together in a strange commune house where they regularly kill and eat kittens, an eight-year-old girl being abused sexually by her stepfather, and a woman offering herself up sexually to a group of deformed and cancer-stricken men and subsequently being torn limb from limb as they fight over who gets to fuck her.
That last bit is what made me stop reading. What. The. Fuck.
And I could understand this series of awful events if it served some sort of purpose. But there's no central theme to this book! There's no message! Nothing is being illustrated or argued, unless Vizenor is trying to express the horrors that humans can inflict on one another, and if that's the entire point, this is really fucking overkill. It's just Vizenor's sick inner demons being laid out on the page for the consumption of the public. And yeah, if this were inside my brain, I would want to write it out to deal with it, but why the hell would this get published? What purpose does it serve? It doesn't even serve as government criticism, because in this world the government has ceased to function!
For the first time in my school career, I have made the decision not to finish an assigned book, not due to lack of time or the pressure of other assignments, but simply because I cannot stomach any more. If I subjected myself to the last 100 pages, I might have to wash my brain out with bleach. So please, professor, feel free to put this on the midterm. Go right ahead. I will readily admit that I did not finish it. Self-preservation is more important to me than the grade.