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Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.



 
 
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  #11  
Old June 27th 06, 03:06 PM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.

On 26 Jun 2006 17:16:52 -0700, wrote:

... Warren Zevon's "All Night Long"...

..
Quite a talent lost. "Dolan, the Headless Thompson Gunner" and the
rest.

In books, Jerry Pournelle's anthology series There Will Be War! begat
lewis Shiner's When The Music's Over.

Nancy Kress said that Beggars in Spain was written in response to both
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed.

And of coiurse, one could consider George Orwell's 1984, Arthur
Koestler's Darkness At Noon, and Aleskandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day In
the Life of Ivan Denisovich as responses to Karl Marx's Communist
Manifesto and Vladimir Lenin's What Is To Be Done...

Tsk, I should have remembered 1984 at least from Lit class, but it was
always scheduled in the morning ....


Lawrence Person
Lame Excuse Books
Stock available online at
www.tomfolio.com (searched by
www.bookfinder.com), or at:
http://home.austin.rr.com/lperson/lame.html


Thanks again,

Dave
Ads
  #12  
Old June 27th 06, 06:26 PM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.

Has this happened in fiction before, and/or is it common where an
author seems to take aim at another? Obviously in Academia,
dissenting ideas get published regularly, but what about fiction?

And of coiurse, one could consider George Orwell's 1984, Arthur
Koestler's Darkness At Noon, and Aleskandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day In
the Life of Ivan Denisovich as responses to Karl Marx's Communist
Manifesto and Vladimir Lenin's What Is To Be Done...


Those were all responses to Stalinist practice rather than to
anything Marx or Lenin wrote, and in Orwell's case you'd be hard
put to find any major disagreements with Marx at least. I don't
think any of them even quotes or alludes to anything *Stalin*
wrote. Anyway the OP was more interested in ideological fiction
vs. other ideological fictions rather than ideological fiction
vs. a manifesto or political system. (Voltaire's _Candide_ might
be the earliest of those).

Some more that come to mind:

- Cervantes's _Don Quixote_ vs. any number of chivalric romances
- Christine de Pisan's _The Book of the City of Ladies_ vs. _The
Romance of the Rose_

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557
  #13  
Old June 27th 06, 08:07 PM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.

An Anonymous Coward wrote:
Those were all responses to Stalinist practice rather than to
anything Marx or Lenin wrote


BEEEEPP!!! I'm sorry, you don't win the microwave!

Anyone actually familiar with Lenin's writings would realize he was
every bit as bloodthirsty and ruthless as Stalin, he just didn't have
time to kick the Gulag up into high gear the way Old Joe did, though
its outline can already be found as earky as 1918 when the firwst
Soviet forced labor camps were set up, or even earlier in the purge of
the Menshaviks right after seizing power.

And don't forget his famous quote in response to relief efforts for the
volga famine: "Psychologically, this talk of feeding the starving is
nothing but an expression of the saccharine-sweet sentimentality so
characteristic of our intelligentsia."

The idea that evil Stalin corrupted Lenin's pure vision is a
self-serving fantasy by those who still believe in Marxism.

But thanks for playing! As a consolation prize, please pick up a copy
of Adam SMith's The Wealth of Nations, available at a Project Gutenberg
repository near you!

Lawrence Person
Lame Excuse Books
http://home.austin.rr.com/lperson/lame.html

  #14  
Old June 27th 06, 08:44 PM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.

wrote:
An Anonymous Coward wrote:


That is utterly offensive ****e. I have my real name, postal
address, and phone number in my signature, and have had it
there for more than 20 years and something like 20,000 Usenet
posts. Can you say as much, you gutless little slime?


Those were all responses to Stalinist practice rather than to
anything Marx or Lenin wrote

BEEEEPP!!! I'm sorry, you don't win the microwave!
Anyone actually familiar with Lenin's writings would realize he was
every bit as bloodthirsty and ruthless as Stalin,


So what? Orwell didn't say so, and even less did he appear to have
any problem with Marx.

If you believe he did, quote something relevant. _Homage to Catalonia_
suggests it's rather unlikely any such quote will exist.

Having read a lot of the anarchist literature about Lenin, I am well
aware of what he was like, and I'm none too impressed with Orwell
either. But I don't see that as a justification for portraying
Orwell as a sort of prefigurative Richard Perle, which I guess is
what you're up to. There are some ascertainable historical facts
about what he thought.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557
  #15  
Old June 27th 06, 10:14 PM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.

Dave wrote:
On 26 Jun 2006 17:16:52 -0700, wrote:


... Warren Zevon's "All Night Long"...


.
Quite a talent lost. "Dolan, the Headless Thompson Gunner" and the
rest.


I believe you mean "ROLAND, The Headless Thompson Gunner," n'est ce pas?

http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/rolandth.htm
  #16  
Old June 27th 06, 11:29 PM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.


Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
wrote:
An Anonymous Coward wrote:


That is utterly offensive ****e. I have my real name, postal
address, and phone number in my signature, and have had it
there for more than 20 years and something like 20,000 Usenet
posts. Can you say as much, you gutless little slime?


Having read a lot of the anarchist literature about Lenin, I am well
aware of what he was like, and I'm none too impressed with Orwell
either.


Well, then maybe YOU can write one of
the most famous novels of the twenty-FIRST
century to show him up.

But I don't see that as a justification for portraying
Orwell as a sort of prefigurative Richard Perle, which I guess is
what you're up to. There are some ascertainable historical facts
about what he thought.


People always make a mistake when they drag
in a novelist's politics, or what they think is his
politics. Anyone who is in the used book business
can likely tell you that 1984 remains one of the most
requested novels by a Twentieth Century author who
has been gone a couple of generations -- and for
'the most part is read by people who could care
less about Orwell's politics.

In a sense, people make the same mistake
with "1984" that they make with Heinlein's
"Puppetmasters." In the case of the
latter, people often take a simplistic
approach holding that Heinlein was merely
commenting on communism. The reality
is that he was likely commenting -- if we want
to take his terrifying story as anything beyond
sheer entertainment -- on a pernicious tendency
in human nature, a tendency which became
overt not only in communism, but also
in Nazism, and, I suspect, Heinlein would
agree, in the terrorist groups of today. When
people start making suicide attacks on
innocent people, then something just as
pernicious as Heinlein's Puppetmasters
(a novel which should be required reading for
anyonce seeking a better understanding
of Al Quaida) .has gotten hold of their nervous
systems... But getting back to 1984,
technology being what it is today, any sort
of totalitarian government could institute a
surveillance system far more through than
what Orwell depicted. That is very basic
knowledge to likely all "1984" readers,
which is one good reason why the novel
remains scary stuff..

[Memo from the upstairs office.]
============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557


  #19  
Old June 28th 06, 12:34 AM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Posts: n/a
Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:06:11 GMT, Dave wrote:


... Warren Zevon's "All Night Long"...

.
Quite a talent lost. "Dolan, the Headless Thompson Gunner" and the
rest.


Minor quibble: "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner." Easy error to
make.


  #20  
Old June 28th 06, 05:14 AM posted to rec.collecting.books
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Posts: n/a
Default Dueling authors.... well, ideas anyway.


Barbara Bailey wrote:
On 27 Jun 2006 15:43:02 -0700, wrote:


Dave wrote:
On 26 Jun 2006 17:16:52 -0700,
wrote:

Tsk, I should have remembered 1984 at least from Lit class, but it was
always scheduled in the morning ....


That strikes me as a bit bizarre,
because almost any person of
normal reading ability EXPERIENCES
"1984" and could not forget the story
if he wanted to.


That's a pretty broad generalization.
I consider myself to be a person with 'normal reading ability' and I
didn't "experience 1984". I slogged through it, hating every minute.
Maybe it would have been more powerful had I read it at a different
stage in my life (I think I was in freshman high school English, so I
was, oh, about 13. Might have been sophmore year, that would make me
14.)
I slogged through Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 the same year. Hated
them, as well. I don't think I was ready for overt socio-political
commentary in my fiction yet.


Interesting. I have never understood
"1984" to be socio-political commentary,
though. For me, it is more like science
fiction with a terrifying warning. After
all, I think few people would deny that
there is a tendency in human nature
toward the creation of a "big brother
(or "big sister," for that matter) state.
The technology of today is already
far advanced over what the ruling elite
of Orwell's novel employed to acheive
their means. It's very scary, and it
certainly could still happen. That is
characteristic of a type of science
fiction when successful.

"Fahrenheit 451" is one of my
favorites. Would you deny that
there is also a tendency in human
nature toward thought control
through means such as book
burning? Neither of us was
around when the Nazi's were
burning books in the 1930's,
but I have certainly seen horrifying
photos of it. And we have had all
sorts of attempted censorship in
the U. S., from Dr. Wertham's anti-
comic book crusade of the early
1950's, to people demanding that
Huckleberry Finn be removed from
the library (to cite only a couple
of drops in the attempted-censorship
bucket). So why is "Fahrenheit
451" with its fireman who burn books
instead of putting out fires such a
stretch for you?

[Memo from the upstairs office]

Barb

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from
http://www.teranews.com

 




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