Your 2010 Celebrity Death Pool Thread

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

I think the latter half of the 20th century produced a lot of books with anti-heroes, and the literary culture of the time was prepared to accept them with a view that the world is fucked up and the guy who says "I'm not participating is this bullshit" is necessarily being held out as a moral exemplar.

And I think the first half of the 21st century will see a lot of English professors who make their living by pointing out the obvious fact that only bad authors lack the imagination it takes to create a very convincing, very three-dimensional character with which he/she disagrees, and it's about fucking time we realized that was equally true of characters who also happen to be first person narrators.

I hate to ask, but what exactly are you saying here? I could read this a couple ways. Are you suggesting Salinger disliked Holden? I don't know about that. Reading Salinger's background and judging from his exile, it appears they had quite a lot in common.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by barely_legal

Part of the reason I had such a negative reaction was because it had been held up to me as such a classic and so many people I know (mostly teachers) just raved about it. And I read it and "meh", like you. It was entertaining enough but I didn't understand why it was so revered and considered a "classic" when I had read tons of more obscure books that seemed more well-written, poignant, relevant and/or daring. But of course I first read it decades after it had been published.

I had a similar reaction to On the Road, which I've never been able to finish. Same with Confederacy of Dunces. I obviously love The Ginger Man, so it's not like I dislike books that go nowhere (I actually prefer them and have a dim view of people who read for story or demand existential changes in the narrator). I just can't get into those books, and I can't figure out why. I've always felt like I should have had a more visceral reaction to Catcher considering the view I take of humanity. Puzzles me. I just can't fathom why anyone would have a strong positive or negative reaction to the thing.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I hate to ask, but what exactly are you saying here? I could read this a couple ways. Are you suggesting Salinger disliked Holden? I don't know about that. Reading Salinger's background and judging from his exile, it appears they had quite a lot in common.

From what little I remember of the book, the ending is susceptible of the interpretation that Caulfield was in fact mentally ill and that his hospitalization (hinted at?) was not exactly an injustice (as it was in Cuckoo's Nest and other books/movies of the Cool Hand Luke variety where society just can't handle the truth, man).

Salinger may have identified with Caulfield, perhaps because of his own set of issues, but the people who hold him out as more highly functioning than the "phonies" tend to be the Mark David Chapmans and John Hinkleys of the world. Oh, and adolescents of all ages. Do we necessarily think Salinger himself embraced the delusional self-importance of youth as a golden age of self-awareness? Or is it more likely that when Caulfield realizes he has lionized himself as the catcher in the rye, that him shutting the hell up and getting back into school, the ordinary defeat we call maturity, it's actually a good thing, not a defeat.

I have the same theory about the deleted chapter of A Clockwork Orange. If it ends with Alex getting his groove back, the whole story is a depressing dystopia where society oppresses the individual, and fails to improve life for anyone. The missing chapter that's in some editions of the book has him realizing that he's natually losing his taste for ultraviolence -- i.e. growing up -- and seen in that light the book is about how the modern British welfare state gives its youth a raw deal but maybe isn't so bad at predicting what people want when they turn 23 and stop listening to The Who. And Beethoven, I guess.

[notcasesensitive]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I had a similar reaction to On the Road, which I've never been able to finish. Same with Confederacy of Dunces. I obviously love The Ginger Man, so it's not like I dislike books that go nowhere (I actually prefer them and have a dim view of people who read for story or demand existential changes in the narrator). I just can't get into those books, and I can't figure out why. I've always felt like I should have had a more visceral reaction to Catcher considering the view I take of humanity. Puzzles me. I just can't fathom why anyone would have a strong positive or negative reaction to the thing.

I read and disliked On the Road last year. I think it was groundbreaking at the time, but it is not the sort of book that stands the test of time. We are all stream of consciousness now. I'm now just a bit taken back by people who have "the mad ones" quote as a favorite. Standing alone it is fine, but it makes me wonder if they actually got something from that book or if they just saw that quote out of its context and thought it sounded good.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

From what little I remember of the book, the ending is susceptible of the interpretation that Caulfield was in fact mentally ill and that his hospitalization (hinted at?) was not exactly an injustice (as it was in Cuckoo's Nest and other books/movies of the Cool Hand Luke variety where society just can't handle the truth, man).

Salinger may have identified with Caulfield, perhaps because of his own set of issues, but the people who hold him out as more highly functioning than the "phonies" tend to be the Mark David Chapmans and John Hinkleys of the world. Oh, and adolescents of all ages. Do we necessarily think Salinger himself embraced the delusional self-importance of youth as a golden age of self-awareness? Or is it more likely that when Caulfield realizes he has lionized himself as the catcher in the rye, that him shutting the hell up and getting back into school, the ordinary defeat we call maturity, it's actually a good thing, not a defeat.

I have the same theory about the deleted chapter of A Clockwork Orange. If it ends with Alex getting his groove back, the whole story is a depressing dystopia where society oppresses the individual, and fails to improve life for anyone. The missing chapter that's in some editions of the book has him realizing that he's natually losing his taste for ultraviolence -- i.e. growing up -- and seen in that light the book is about how the modern British welfare state gives its youth a raw deal but maybe isn't so bad at predicting what people want when they turn 23 and stop listening to The Who. And Beethoven, I guess.

I never saw Catcher as a study on maturity or lack thereof. Granted, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to themes, and as I said, this is degraded recollection, but I recall it being more a study about people developing into caricatures of themselves. I always took it as something akin to the Matrix. The whole duality thing, you know... The point I took from it is, "It's all paper mache... a joke, really." And that's a point I agree with (I think we're hopelessly moronic primates, "borne back ceaselessly" toward our narrow biological limits, instincts and imperatives). And yet I never really got into the book. I think the reason might be because it's heavy handed. I recall Holden being preachy. If you're going to stick your finger in the eye of people who think we're more than a monstrous accident of Evolution, I think you have to do it with humor. Comedy does that all day long, and it works. Salinger's thing just seemed like a kid getting an early clarification on something we all realize later and then beating the reader over the head with it for 190 pages. As I noted before, Gatsby shredded nearly every American totem far more efficiently and elegantly (the opening pages of that book are staggering still).

Maybe that's it. Catcher's a rant without a punchline.

On Clockwork, your reverence for the "lesson" ending shocks me. I enjoyed the original because it leaves you hanging. Clearly, Alex can't keep rolling along like a mad, raging nut his whole life. But how does it end? Who knows... All we know is, a lot of people never really "mature." They just assimilate. We just like to believe they mature because it makes comfortable those of us who need that parochial reinforcement.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by PresentTense Pirate Penske

Sanctions!?!? I don't need no steenkin sanctions! I went rogue, all mavericky up in your fecta face. Boosh!

etA: I think mine was 24 too-you couldn't see the Mods board at that time, but its on my screen save. Check your old PMs.

yours would have been a 24 if the adult board counted. but it doesn't as it is not all access. RTR*. no offense.



*actual lawyer term

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by notcasesensitive

I read and disliked On the Road last year. I think it was groundbreaking at the time, but it is not the sort of book that stands the test of time. We are all stream of consciousness now. I'm now just a bit taken back by people who have "the mad ones" quote as a favorite. Standing alone it is fine, but it makes me wonder if they actually got something from that book or if they just saw that quote out of its context and thought it sounded good.

In that same vein, I cannot deal with William Burroughs. Tried Junkie and Naked Lunch and gave up on both. They're poster children for the rule that attempting to write out the experiences of drugs is impossible.

Well, except for Fear and Loathing, which gets away with it by being an over the top comedic cartoon.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

From what little I remember of the book, the ending is susceptible of the interpretation that Caulfield was in fact mentally ill and that his hospitalization (hinted at?) was not exactly an injustice (as it was in Cuckoo's Nest and other books/movies of the Cool Hand Luke variety where society just can't handle the truth, man).

Salinger may have identified with Caulfield, perhaps because of his own set of issues, but the people who hold him out as more highly functioning than the "phonies" tend to be the Mark David Chapmans and John Hinkleys of the world. Oh, and adolescents of all ages. Do we necessarily think Salinger himself embraced the delusional self-importance of youth as a golden age of self-awareness? Or is it more likely that when Caulfield realizes he has lionized himself as the catcher in the rye, that him shutting the hell up and getting back into school, the ordinary defeat we call maturity, it's actually a good thing, not a defeat.

I have the same theory about the deleted chapter of A Clockwork Orange. If it ends with Alex getting his groove back, the whole story is a depressing dystopia where society oppresses the individual, and fails to improve life for anyone. The missing chapter that's in some editions of the book has him realizing that he's natually losing his taste for ultraviolence -- i.e. growing up -- and seen in that light the book is about how the modern British welfare state gives its youth a raw deal but maybe isn't so bad at predicting what people want when they turn 23 and stop listening to The Who. And Beethoven, I guess.

Here's the theme of the next great American novel: The shift in our culture from rebellion to manipulation - the Holden Caulfields of today and tomorrow choosing not to offend, but instead assimilate and exploit. Many comments on capitalism infused in that.

Too bad there's no Mailer to write the fucker. The closest we have to a big book author who might tackle something so sprawling is Wolfe, and he's hated by critics. And 80.

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I had a similar reaction to On the Road, which I've never been able to finish. Same with Confederacy of Dunces. ...

Confederacy was utter shite and I did not finish it. As for On the Road, I am reading "The Road" and it sucks too. I get it. Page after page after page after page after page of the same thing. Desolate. Hungry. Eaters, hide! Love the boy. Kill the boy. Got it in 10.

[PresentTense Pirate Penske]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

yours would have been a 24 if the adult board counted. but it doesn't as it is not all access. RTR*. no offense.



*actual lawyer term

Dissent. Adult and Mod Board gave me 25. I win. Again!

eta: i don't know legal terms. cite please?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by PresentTense Pirate Penske

Dissent. Adult and Mod Board gave me 25. I win. Again!

eta: i don't know legal terms. cite please?

read the rule.
I thought you had associates reporting to you? if you don't do "RTR", how can you yell at them properly?

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

On Clockwork, your reverence for the "lesson" ending shocks me. I enjoyed the original because it leaves you hanging. Clearly, Alex can't keep rolling along like a mad, raging nut his whole life. But how does it end? Who knows... All we know is, a lot of people never really "mature." They just assimilate. We just like to believe they mature because it makes comfortable those of us who need that parochial reinforcement.

If I had written the Great American Novel, my ghost would have mixed feelings about it. It's considered required reading! That's good. It's in the adolescent lit section of the bookstore! That's bad.

I think kids read these books because clever English teachers believe they are challenging, but they're also just a highbrow version of what teens want to hear. There's a vampire love story where a wise if somewhat sullen boy loves the girl so much he actually has gone past the point of wanting to bang her and now has reached the point where he just presses up against her exquisitely, never actually taking her physically? There's an audience for that! There's a story about a kid who's got life pretty well figured out and the key is that conformist grown-ups are fools and tools, but he's going to live an authentic life instead? There's an audience for that! Orange is for antisocial boys with dominant Ids; Catcher is for antisocial boys with dominant Super-egos. And 99% of both grow up to be stockbrokers, lawyers and Indian chiefs.

I didn't like the "whatever will become of Alex" ending because it left the implication that Alex was the way he was because of the social engineering of the state -- he was the natural consequence of any society that could develop and deploy the Ludovico Technique. I felt that was wrong -- society has always had savage men regardless of the level of its dominance and control. I liked it better when you realized Alex was just a normal teenage boy, writ large, and that he had a future as we all do. Then again, we all know I don't chafe against convention as much as you, so it makes sense we would respond very differently to that book.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

If I had written the Great American Novel, my ghost would have mixed feelings about it. It's considered required reading! That's good. It's in the adolescent lit section of the bookstore! That's bad.

I think kids read these books because clever English teachers believe they are challenging, but they're also just a highbrow version of what teens want to hear. There's a vampire love story where a wise if somewhat sullen boy loves the girl so much he actually has gone past the point of wanting to bang her and now has reached the point where he just presses up against her exquisitely, never actually taking her physically? There's an audience for that! There's a story about a kid who's got life pretty well figured out and the key is that conformist grown-ups are fools and tools, but he's going to live an authentic life instead? There's an audience for that! Orange is for antisocial boys with dominant Ids; Catcher is for antisocial boys with dominant Super-egos. And 99% of both grow up to be stockbrokers, lawyers and Indian chiefs.

I didn't like the "whatever will become of Alex" ending because it left the implication that Alex was the way he was because of the social engineering of the state -- he was the natural consequence of any society that could develop and deploy the Ludovico Technique. I felt that was wrong -- society has always had savage men regardless of the level of its dominance and control. I liked it better when you realized Alex was just a normal teenage boy, writ large, and that he had a future as we all do. Then again, we all know I don't chafe against convention as much as you, so it makes sense we would respond very differently to that book.

I didn't read that into Orange. I took it as a study on a society declined enough that something like Alex would think something as base as random violence was entertainment. Most of the post-apocalyptic future stuff seems to have that same theme - post religion, post morality, post effective state rudderless actors acting as the rudderless will. I see no blame to lay on the state there except its failure to maintain a society where people aspire to something higher. That's a criticism of its inability, rather than its active creation of anything.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

If I had written the Great American Novel, my ghost would have mixed feelings about it. It's considered required reading! That's good. It's in the adolescent lit section of the bookstore! That's bad.

I think kids read these books because clever English teachers believe they are challenging, but they're also just a highbrow version of what teens want to hear. There's a vampire love story where a wise if somewhat sullen boy loves the girl so much he actually has gone past the point of wanting to bang her and now has reached the point where he just presses up against her exquisitely, never actually taking her physically? There's an audience for that! There's a story about a kid who's got life pretty well figured out and the key is that conformist grown-ups are fools and tools, but he's going to live an authentic life instead? There's an audience for that! Orange is for antisocial boys with dominant Ids; Catcher is for antisocial boys with dominant Super-egos. And 99% of both grow up to be stockbrokers, lawyers and Indian chiefs.

I didn't like the "whatever will become of Alex" ending because it left the implication that Alex was the way he was because of the social engineering of the state -- he was the natural consequence of any society that could develop and deploy the Ludovico Technique. I felt that was wrong -- society has always had savage men regardless of the level of its dominance and control. I liked it better when you realized Alex was just a normal teenage boy, writ large, and that he had a future as we all do. Then again, we all know I don't chafe against convention as much as you, so it makes sense we would respond very differently to that book.

Other than to say, "It's a matter of degree" or "It's a balancing act," how do you square a reverence for convention with a progressive political bent? I take the simple, selfish approach of splitting money/survival from social issues, taking the typical "conservative on economic matters, liberal on social matters" platform a lot of Libertarians take. You seem to be progressive while simultaneously holding a respect for adherence to established norms. We're all walking contradictions, but that's got to be a headache, particularly for someone who thinks a lot.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Other than to say, "It's a matter of degree" or "It's a balancing act," how do you square a reverence for convention with a progressive political bent? I take the simple, selfish approach of splitting money/survival from social issues, taking the typical "conservative on economic matters, liberal on social matters" platform a lot of Libertarians take. You seem to be progressive while simultaneously holding a respect for adherence to established norms. We're all walking contradictions, but that's got to be a headache, particularly for someone who thinks a lot.

My hypothesis is that se's been completely corrupted by his professional role as Defender of Each and Every State Action.

ETA: Although I have to admit that my theory doesn't not explain his reverence for religious authority. But there may be another theory in there somewhere...

EATA: But don't worry, Atticus, I'm with you on the raw eggs!