Crap is a load of books

[imomus]

1. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the

Comments

Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[imomus]

"Still," said the Murderer, "it's nice to be safe. The way to live long and live well is to stay safe

Re: Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[imomus]

I'm very taken by the idea of empathy and altruism as the current taboos.

One of the oddest things about literary culture right now (in the UK, at least) is the way levels of cynicism in the press and blogs alike - assuming your audience is thick; refusing to look beyond winners' history despite having more space available; peddling reactionary opinions in the superstitious belief it will get you ahead with the bullies - have shot up at the same speed that pay rates, where they even exist, have plummeted. What use is cynicism when it doesn't even pay?

One small but characteristic upshot is that no one will tell you that, say, Riddley Walker is the real deal and The Road a camp mish-mash of drivel and doggerel. I think they're actually afraid, as if Cormac McCarthy's going to come and take away that picture of a carrot on the end of a stick they were given by their editor.

What could be more transgressive, under these circumstances, than extolling the virtues of life beyond wealth, fame and power, like . . . the Cynics?

Re: Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[imomus]

stopped reading The Holy Bible at the story of Lot

Actually, come to think of it, the story of Lot is a good example of the Overton Window at work. We're so busy welcoming the destruction of evil, evil Sodom and Gomorrah, with their extremely evil homosexuals and loose women and so on, that we turn a blind eye to Lot fucking his daughters.

Re: Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[imomus]

Lot's daughters get him drunk and fuck him because they think he's the only man left alive after the destruction of the cities and the human race will die out if they don't procreate. Pretty extreme circumstances, I think you'll agree, and not really rubber stamp for incest. Indeed, the descendants of these incestuous relations, the Moabites and the Ammonites, were the enemies of Israel and subject themselves to various prohibitions.

Re: Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[imomus]

and not really rubber stamp for incest

I think God's editor could have coaxed him towards a slightly clearer position on this. Not every reader is going to make a clear connection between that and what later happened to the Moabites and Ammonites. Or even keep reading. (I know that, personally, that was the passage, so to speak, that made me cast my lot, so to speak, with the homosexuals.)

Re: Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[imomus]

"capitalism has even embraced contestation as a means of innoculating itself from it." - Did you just come up with that? That's well put.

Re: Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[imomus]

this is pretty standard pomo political theory, particularly found in, well, anywhere from the situationists, to jameson and lyotard; anything on so-called late-capitalism usually iterates this point.

Re: Conformity is the new subversion! And vice versa!

[fishwithissues]

The subversive thing is ordering the book online amd bringing the physical copy inside your house, to be enjoyed.