Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST,Angel face
Date: 16 Aug 03 - 04:35 PM

Do you know he came for me around 1984, I gave him the JC sign
and he got very angry with me. I'd say most people shit their
pants and give it away or others get a slight second wind and
bargin. I almost had a sleepless night but kept thinking
reality...I have to get up for work in the morning tehe

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Aug 03 - 04:30 PM

Do a search on it yourself, Baffled. Sounds like some trolling going on in this question.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST,Baffled
Date: 16 Aug 03 - 04:26 PM

I heard that a book on getting "power from the devil" was the
number one book read by students in the USA around 1998.

Does anyone know if this is true?

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Aug 03 - 12:43 PM

This has me thinking of a couple of films that fit this category--could be "dangerous" for some because they worked to disturb the status quo of others. Educating Rita for one, and Thelma and Louise. Of the two, Rita was the most subversive for it's time.

SRS

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Peter T.
Date: 15 Aug 03 - 11:38 AM

Not quite off topic, but I was profoundly influenced by a painting I saw in the Accademia in Venice, by Tintoretto. It is a painting of St. Mark asleep in a boat while the storm rages around him (he is on the way to found Venice), sailors panic, etc. It is of course a mimic of Jesus' sleeping in the same situation. For some reason it chimed in my mind with some of those old pop novels ("Quo Vadis" etc.) about the travels of St. Paul and St. Peter, and the early Christians in general. I confess I have always hated St. Paul (and his theology), am not a Christian, and have a healthy fear of missionaries -- but there is something quite sweet about the atmosphere of these early disciples -- heading off around the world, not caring for risk, being comforted whatever happens by the knowledge that Jesus is there to help. You get the same feeling in the early stages of almost every religion, before they get grim. The atmosphere got to me: the simplicity of the nature of the wanderings, the small communities of the faithful surrounded by a hostile world. Sort of Jack Kerouac-like.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST,fred Miller no cookie
Date: 15 Aug 03 - 10:49 AM

Well, I agree with your disagreement with me, Guest. I really overstated my point. I just meant some healthy skepticism, too.

But I keep hoping someday to meet up with anyone else who was partly formed by all that superfiction stuff. I got into it right in the transition between my juvenile mode, and reading (as you nicely put it) to see things through someone else's eyes. A lot of my favorite writers just don't come up much. Nobody seems to have ever liked Nabokov. Nor do many aspects of reading that seem to relate to those stylistic concerns. It seems to be a 70's trend like striped bell-bottoms, platform shoes, or big collars--things people prefer to forget. Fine, y'all, laugh if you will. But it affected me, and it seems to have dulled my taste for many books that come up much more often.

Maybe it's a short story thing. A lot of short stories have affected me and stayed with me much more than most novels. I'd usually mention Salinger's Laughing Man, or others, before The Catcher occurred to me. I can quote from many of John Updike's stories but hardly at all from his novels. I can re-tell most of Raymond Carver's stories off the top of my head, and I have, to explain the mush Robert Altman's movie Shortcuts made of them, dropping all the significant endings, cramming them together. Short stories don't come up as much as they really should, they're good stuff.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Gervase
Date: 15 Aug 03 - 10:17 AM

Glad to see someone else plump for The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - I remember reading it as a teenager and feeling the first stirrings of a political consciousness. Orwell, too, was a great influence. I keep going back to his letters and journalism rather than his fiction and finding myself green with envy at his talents.
As for 'dangerous' in Peter T's original post, possibly for me the most dangerous book was John Seymour's "Self Suffiency' (recently replublished for the River Cottage generation), which was my vade mecum when I was flat broke and living in Suffolk. From it I learned the self-confidence to grow my own food and make my own tools, and to plan towards putting more of it into action while turning my back as far as possible on the less savoury aspects of the modern world.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 07:14 PM

If it weren't for stories we'd only live one life. And that's maybe not enough to explore all the different ways of living it.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 07:08 PM

Books are just one way of getting Our Stories across. And our cultures all priviledge storytellers. Not only for entertainment, but more importantly, for teaching. In an age of mass communication, it's harder to be heard above the din.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 05:13 PM

No, I disagree with that Fred. I think we can both teach and learn about the real world through books. I don't think that books work for everyone, because people have different temperments, and a lot of people don't like reading. But I think you can teach a lot about the real world through books to the people who do like to read, and enjoy seeing the world through different people's eyes, which is what reading does for me. Over the years, my reading has taught me enough to survive in the real world that I never would have "learned" on my own without reading.

But I do agree, there is a line beyond which learning through reading will become an intellectual exercise, rather than enlightening. And I hate that sort of reading/writing/mode of dysfunctional relating to the real world too!

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Sam L
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 04:51 PM

Well Guest, I maintain that the taste of the real world you get from reading any books is just a taste of reading those books, since that's what you're really doing in the so-called "real" world.

One lame thing about Tolstoy though, the sex is not very hot at all, mostly just a bunch of people blushing about something or other every few minutes.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 12:49 PM

Sage: Yes, at best a sweet melancholia, but the follow up and conclusion, if it helps, is:

"Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies [i.e your kid], so He loves also the bow that is stable."

Of course, you can ignore, evade, or change it all with varying definitions of "house of tomorrow" and "He." But thanks to LH for the Ghibran reference.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Allan C.
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 11:59 AM

Among others, Frank Yerby's "Judas, My Brother" had quite an influence upon my thoughts regarding religion. Although the basis for the plot was just a bit thin, there were countless footnotes that were well worth the reading. By the time I read this book I had already begun to question religious perceptions and dogma. The book, while not necessarily being "the icing on the cake" certainly was the filling between the layers.

Whether or not it led me astray is an entirely different question.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 11:26 AM

I think it would be good if high school students had to read Ayn Rand and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickle and Dimed".

That would give them a serious taste of the real world, IMO.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Sam L
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 09:47 AM

I like McGrath's comment about applying a maxim to one's self. And it reminds me of all the metafiction I read-- mostly '70's "superfiction" short-stories, John Barth, Borges, Italo Calvino--really the whole trend generally. I think a lot of it was silly, precious, merely clever and self-indulgent, some not so good at all, but the whole vein changed the way I read anyone. The idea of a writer thinking primarily about their own actions, as a writer, made sense of a lot of things I didn't understand in literature. It led me way astray of how I read before.

So when Ayn Rand comes up, I don't really have a position regarding her wisdom about life in general, but her books are a too big a chore for me. Whatever she thought, the fact of the matter is she wrote books of made-up stories, and I don't recognise her depictions, from my own experiences, as mature observations, they don't resonate, for me, aren't convincingly meaningful.

Other people with other experiences may see it, but I can't help thinking they may be coloring in her pictures for her with their own experiences. She's nothing like a good writer as I understand it, and has a lot of similarities to comic books in her handling of characters. That kind of projection would explain why some--maybe not all--her readers take her so much to heart.

I like Tolstoy for a lot of the kinds of ideas that have come up about Rand. I even read the essay chapters--by the time they come in I'm completely convinced.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Peg
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 01:37 AM

Hey, I   thought   the sex in Atlas Shrugged was pretty   hot (considering it   wasn't explicit). Dagny Taggart submissive??? Not hardly...what about her   torrid affair with Francisco D'anconia?

Heric; are you serious?   I forced you to rent movies with Johnny Depp in them??? I   should be summarily executed. How dare I.

I love Dead Man.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 12:16 AM

heric, that's depressing. And I hope it's wrong. Dreams must span generations--even if we finally understand them best in the later years of our lives.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Aug 03 - 12:10 AM

That's right, Amos, and that for many people may just be the thorniest struggle of their lives.

That's one of my favourite quotes, heric.

By the way, I am quite relieved that I did not (like many of my friends) grow up in a dogmatically religious household, Catholic or otherwise. God knows, it could've been a lot worse... :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 10:49 PM

We Ghibraniacs always say about kids:


You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,

not even in your dreams.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Amos
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 10:43 PM

Well, regardless of who your Father is, you get to design your own legacy. Makes no sense asserting that how you see things is attributable to someone else. Nope.

A

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 10:20 PM

SINSULL - Ahhh...now I have a better understanding of what would have attracted you to Rand's philosophy (as far as I think I understand her philosophy).

Now, consider my situation. Unlike you, SINSULL, I was brought up in a completely nonreligious family, a non-church-going essentially atheistic and materialistic family, with a father who was a compulsive success-oriented workaholic with tremendous professional ambition and a determination to the "the Big Boss". He simply could not work for anyone else, because he had to call every shot, and everyone else was "an idiot". All he ever thought about or talked about was his business. Everything else was sacrificed to this one obsession. Nothing else mattered.

So, you see, when I read about one of Rand's heroic self-made men, who do you think I see? My father, a man who as far as I am concerned has pretty much wasted his life on a single-minded and pointless obsession, and caused a lot of unnecessary pain to others in the process, and been a really not very good husband or father. He's like "the ugly capitalist", and he's not even much good at it, although he certainly tries hard. He's almost 80 and still works 7 days a week. It's bizarre. He has never once stopped to "smell the roses". Selfishness ain't bad in his system...it's the only way to go, because there really IS no one else except him in his system.

You experienced one common form of oppression as a child...the Catholic guilt-ridden, suffer-to-get-into-heaven religious kind...I experienced a completely different one. I was never persecuted by religion as a child, I was persecuted by crass materialism and social-climbing ambition. There WAS no heaven in that system, except the secular heaven of becoming a big important "success" in the eyes of other people. As if it mattered...

- LH

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 10:05 PM

A lot of people think that way. I suppose books like that might give some of them an excuse to think it's ok. But you've got to be wanting to think that way in the first place to be able to stomach that kind of thinking, in a book or anywhere else.

Look around the world and it's pretty clear that a lot of people with a lot of power are that way inclined. I doubt if some of them ever read a book in their life. "Spivs" were what the less successful members of the class used to be called, and it wasn't a compliment.

When I was eight or so I got as a prize a book called "William the Rebel" by Richmal Crompton. It probably did as much as anything to set me on what I'd see as the right path.

You get from a book what you take to it really, more often than not.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 08:42 PM

Some very interesting comments. I wonder about the ages of posters and how that affects their evaluation of Atlas Shrugged. I was raised Roman Catholic in the 50s and was taught that "good" people do for others even at the cost of their own suffering. Selfishness was an abomination. I can still see the blackboard with a diagram: two souls. One of the little boy who went to bed without saying his prayers (small blemish on soul) and horror of horrors skipped morning prayers so that he could rush downstairs and take the biggest banana (two more marks, one quite large). His sister's soul remained lily white (actually black - it was a blackboard) as she slept less and did without big bananas.

Atlas Shrugged was the first hint I got of another philosophy. Dagne Taggert, refusing to support her useless brother, was a shock.

By the way, I always found the sex in AS somewhat disappointing. Macho male accomplishes orgasm while submissive female passively accepts. So much for grabbing the biggest banana!

For those who have not read the book: The title describes the plot of the book. When Atlas (capable productive individuals) refuses to be responsible for supporting the burden of an ungrateful world (crooked politicians, those who succeed on the coat tails of others, the unproductive), he shrugs off his burden and world chaos is the result.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Amos
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 05:29 PM

The closing chapters of 1984 contain some of the most sophisticated political commentary I have ever read anywhere. Maybe I have lead a sheltered life, though!

A

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 05:17 PM

"To each according to his need; from each according to his ability."

Actually the way to apply it is to yourself, rather than to other people. Am I taking more than I reasonably need, in the circumstances? and am I doing less than I should be doing, given my abilities and circumstances?

It's about as crazy as "Love your neighbour" or even "Love your enemies; do good to those who hurt you." Quotes taken from a very subversive book.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 04:45 PM

There is one very short Ayn Rand novel available as full-text online, called Anthem. If you want more information before you take the plunge, try this page.

SRS

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: alanabit
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 04:37 PM

I can second Peter T's comments about "Homage to Catalonia". It's very easy to perceive George Orwell as being dogmatic and dour - which I think does not do him justice. He was an ex-public school boy, who spent some time as a policeman in Malaysia and also quite deliberately lived "Down and out in London and Paris". He knew what he was talking about and he did some handy character sketches on the way. Hís portrait of the unemployed carpenter in "Down and Out" is unforgettable. His political essays can some over as dour if you read them that way, but I prefer to see them as having a deadpan sense of humour as he straight facedly pokes fun at his opponents. Some people read it as heavy handedness - I read it as underplayed irony.
Another writer who described the time just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War was the poet Laurie Lee in "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning". That book rather over romanticises the life of a busker, but it's a great read. I'll bet that has led more than one young chap astray!
"Siddhartta" by Herman Hesse is a lovely read and has a very optimistic theme, but the handling of the same theme by Somerset-Maugham in "The Razor's Edge" left me in a trance for days. I'm with Art Thieme on this one.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Cluin
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 04:12 PM

By the way.... Cannery Row, great book. Loved it, several times. Parts to make you howl laughing as well as make you think.

A quote:

   "It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
   "Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?" said Richard Frost.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Cluin
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 04:06 PM

Studying the enemy?

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Ely
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 04:03 PM

Perhaps this is a phenomenon of American education: I read _the Fountainhead_ in 11th grade as a comparison to _the Grapes of Wrath_, which was an experiment that I now think was pretty brave for a public school English teacher, even in an honors class. We nearly started some brawls during discussions, too. I've never liked Ayn Rand.

Has anyone else seen that postcard of a classroom full of (I think they're West Pointers, but I forget), identically dressed in uniforms and cropped hair, diligently reading _On The Road_? Masterpiece of situational irony.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Deckman
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 04:02 PM

The U.S. Constitution. Bob

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: greg stephens
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 03:56 PM

Well,I'll certainly try my local lending library, and report back, Amos. But I'll guess they wont be there, I dont think they can ever have crossed the Atlantic.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Cluin
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 03:51 PM

... and now, back to Drunken Naked Twister...

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Amos
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 02:49 PM

Ayn Rand wrote books which extolled the primacy of individual initiative and which dramatized the belief that all good is produced by individuals and the exercise of individual ability. She portrays heroically individualistic, strongminded people running into the swamps of societal mechanisms which drain power from the very people on whom society depends for any advance, being undermined by leeches and socialistic bloodsuckers and whiny victims.

Her two most renowned works are Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, both of which ar eprobably available at your lending library.

A

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: greg stephens
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 02:42 PM

The difference between Americans and Brits is an interesting feature of Mudcat. I would guess that Ayn Rand is an example of this. I am pretty literate in English terms, but I've never heard of her(and I would guess that I'm not alone in England in that respect). Should I be taking a look? I can't even get much impression from all this discussion as to what kind of books they are. Could someone do me a one paragraph synopsis of an Ayn Rand plot?

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Peter T.
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 01:53 PM

Orwell was in Spain as part of a volunteer English group, and he latched on -- almost by accident it seems -- to an anarchist group called the P.O.U.M. -- which fought against the Fascists, and were supposed to be allied with the range of opposition groups (in reality they weren't the opposition, they were the Government side; the Fascists were rebels bent on overthrowing the Government); it turned out that, besides the Fascists, the big enemy the small anti-Fascist groups were struggling against was on their own side -- the Communists, who were supported by Stalin, and who did everything they could to undermine everyone on supposedly their own side. Orwell lived through this, and it was central to his distrust of the Communists and the more radical Socialists from then on. This made him persona non grata back in England in the late 1930s, where people were still somewhat starry eyed about Stalin, etc. Orwell describes all this: though the great tour de force is the description of Barcelona under siege.


yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Amos
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 10:49 AM

Mowat is famous for the Boat that Wouldn't Float, the Dog that Wouldn't Be, A Whale for the Killing, one about wolves. The last two are real slayers, IMO.

A

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 10:44 AM

I've read some Farley Mowat, but not that one. He can be quite entertaining.

- LH

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: mack/misophist
Date: 13 Aug 03 - 01:37 AM

I must disagree with the Stilly River Sage about The Jungle. Perhaps the sage misunderstood, thinking the people were the focus of the storey, rather than the factory. A brilliant piece of muckraking and a fine novel.

Orwell served in the militia during the war. "Homage" is one of the dozen best war memoirs around. If Little Hawk would rather read a Canadian book, Farley Mowat's is up near the top, also. I'm afraid the name escapes me.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 01:39 PM

That does sound interesting, Peter. What was Orwell's connection with the Spanish Civil War. Was he there? It certainly was a situation that inspired many powerful writings.

- LH

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Peter T.
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 01:08 PM

Little Hawk, if you have never read it, you should read "Homage To Catalonia" by Orwell.(It helps if you can get a map or two or Hugh Thomas' big tome on the Spanish Civil War). It is one of the great books, beautifully, consummately written. Whenever anyone asks me about great non-fiction writing, it is at the top of my list.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 01:02 PM

wait wait wait - thread drift away - PEG: it was YOU who said in recommending films "any Johnny Depp movie." I swear you did, causing me to rent BOTH Dead Man and The Man Who Cried. The former has its fans, and can be forgiven, even if I, a Neil Young fan who recognized him instantly on the score, would have SHOT him given the opportunity near the end of the film. But the latter, the Man Who Cried, is unforgivable. I won't shoot you either, but, but, ohhhhhh that was painful. okay you're forgiven rant off back to your regularly scheduled whatever.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 12:39 PM

Janie, I like that assessment.

Fred, there are quite a few examples through the twentieth century of women authors who fell in love with their fictional characters. (I wonder if there is a male equivalent?) The case has been made that Margaret Mitchell loved her creation Rhett Butler, and that Dorothy L. Sayers was more than a little smitten with her Lord Peter Whimsey. I would say that Rand's Rourke fits that category. I was an undergraduate when I read most of The Fountainhead. When I started reading it, I'd encounted some other "east coast romances," like Hitchcock's Marnie and Rona Jaffe's potboilers (Best of Everything), that have similar chiseled masculine characters, and was probably expecting something along those lines from the Rand synopsis. How's that for muddying the waters?

What made some of those stories "dangerous" was how they treated sex, in a world where our parents tried to convince us the everyone waited until they were married, where babies born out of wedlock were very rare (and the fact that young women were dying from illegal abortions was hush hush). Rand had the elements there, but like Upton Sinclair in his much earlier treatise, The Jungle, you realized after a while that these were cardboard characters, being moved around the board by poorly concealed strings as the authors Rand and Sinclair got around to what they really wanted to talk about, politics and/or philosophy. The window-dressing just didn't work.

SRS

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 12:20 PM

That may be why she appealed to unformed teenage minds -- they were too unformed to realize they were looking at a cartoon.


A

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Sam L
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 12:10 PM

I don't know whether I can class a book as a novel or not, but I can tell pretty quick if it's a novel I'm interested in reading. Good writers do you a favor by getting down to business. If it takes them a while to warm up, they throw that stuff out.

I don't have any particular bias against Rand's ideas, since I don't really know what they are. But I do specifically remember her refusing to describe her architect's stuff. It was just HIM--I think his name was Rourke?-- and he was just IT. I think I read a little more, then gave up.

I've never seen anything so starkly idiosyncratic as this in life. Maybe she has--wish she'd tell me about it. Failing that I fear I suspect her relationship to her character is like she's the president of his fan club, and he'd probably find her an intolerable embarrassment to hang out with.

   I don't care for her writing because I think good descriptive prose and details are not just nice to read, to pretty things up--it's evidence that the writer has taken their idea on a few walks out in the world, exposed it to sunlight, picked up it's poop. That's interesting whether you agree with the ideas or not. It's how ideas really get played out, honed, maybe tempered a little, meet their limits, aquire a sense of proportion. Good observation is a big part of the authority of a made-up story, for me, if it has any at all. I don't know why I'd listen to someone just because they've hung a notion on a plot--like an empty suit on a hanger.

I don't know what each/need each/ability is supposed to mean, but it would probably be a handy rule if you were god, or just a little omniscient. Needs and abilities are pretty elusive things to pin down, otherwise. It sounds neater and clearer than anything in life really is.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 11:09 AM

Well, the books that were most influential in leading me "astray" (toward greater freedom) were a number of social novels by H.G.Wells, all of them about little, inhibited English shopkeeper-type guys trapped in boring unfulfilling lives of conventionality, who in a moment of desperation managed to free themselves and find themselves. Powerful stuff for a kid who was utterly under the control of his parents (I am an only child) and teachers and had not a clue what to do about it...until reading H.G.Wells and listening to Bob Dylan.

And that's probably why I love Bob as much as I do. He (like Wells) played a major role in rescuing a soul that had almost ceased to exist as a separate being with an identity of its own.

- LH

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Janie
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 09:26 AM

I have to say I am astonished at the frequency with which Ayn Rand appears here. I think of her books as a "phase of life" (late adolescence) read. There was a time in high school when I loved her books and read all of them. I get tickled at myself now for having once thought of them as significant books. Now they strike me as the forerunners of the trash romance. What am I missing?

Dangerous books for me

"Stranger in a Strange Land"

"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"

"Siddhartha"

"An Eternity of Species"

"A History of God"

"Johnny Got His Gun"

"The Biography of Benjamin Franklin"

Etc, and so on.

Janie

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 09:06 AM

Farenheit 451 and all of Ray Bradbury and most of Robert Heinlein.

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Cluin
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 03:11 AM

Sex for Dummies

Subject: RE: Dangerous Books That Lead You Astray
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Aug 03 - 02:13 AM

I'm working on an MA in philosophy--I'm around so many people who have opinions about this author I don't need to read any more of her work to form an opinion myself. Especially since not one of them has suggested that Rand is worth reading these days.