Controversial books, a list (not mine)

[Guest]

These blurbs are well written and enticing. I wish I could stop reading reviews and such, i.e., I don't really want to live to 150, the time I'd need to read what is on my "to read" list now. (I liked ALK's On Bullfighting very much, her other books are on the list.)

Perhaps others would add to this list? - Perdita

AL Kennedy's top 10 controversial books - The Guardian, 9.1.2004

"Taking offence at books is a centuries old tradition. This may concern a question of personal taste, political expediency, or a desire to guard the malleable from dreadful things that they might take to. Plato wanted Homer kept from immature readers, Caligula was keen to suppress The Odyssey in case the Greek style freedoms it suggested caught on. What follows is a list of books which trouble, which are awkward, and many of which have offended at some point - although, Lord knows, not one of them leaped into an unwilling reader's hand and forced them to study every line. My aim is not to offend but to illustrate that freedom of the imagination is something we sacrifice only at great risk and that sometimes we may be prepared to resist real evil by meeting its fictional self. So, in no particular order."

1. The Dark by John McGahern. An astonishing study in power, fear, sexuality and religion. Staggeringly well written and heartbreaking in every possible way. Famously banned for a time in Ireland.

2. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S Thompson. Insanity, obscenity, profanity, illegality and reptilian paranoia - but which is more distressing, HST's lunatic chemical life and Gonzo prose style, or Richard Milhous Nixon and co taking a whole country for a nasty ride? And where, by the way, is the energy of Gonzo now when we need it?

3. That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis. Dreadful title, wonderfully savage book. This fantasy anticipated the postwar decline in British education with ghoulish clarity. No fauns and witches (they're banned in some US schools, by the way), only very adult evil, moral weakness and the kind of unremitting justice that unsettles the soul.

4. Sergeant Getulio by Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro. A stunningly written, unflinching journey with a man we should find appalling. And the sergeant does indeed horrify, but also emerges as terribly familiar, a monster we can feel under our skin. Not for the fainthearted, but worth it - a lovely, angry, truthful book.

5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Great for a kneejerk banning, even today. A different monster here, in paedophile Humbert Humbert, but one who is equally unnerving and, ultimately, just as close at hand. A faultlessly crafted work without prurience and with considerable knowledge of human nature. Also rather more use than a lynch mob on the lookout for paediatricians.

6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Lambasted when it came out as irredeemably perverse and, I quote, as practically "French".

7. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This appears consistently on the American Library Association's list of "most frequently challenged books". Apparently the fact that it evokes the dreadfully disinterested havoc of war is offensive, rather than necessary. It also uses bad words and black humour, unforgivable in time of war, and employs phrases like "The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the fly of God Almighty." Dear me.

8. The Confidence Man by Herman Melville. A rarely appreciated masterpiece by a writer pushing the boundaries of his craft. It's also subtly and very deeply alarming in its examination of personality, compromise and evil.

9. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. Placed on the Index in Madrid for the sentence "Works of charity negligently performed are of no worth." Justifiably a classic of world literature and one a remarkable number of people have never actually read.

10. The Beach at Falesa/ The Ebb Tide/ Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by RL Stevenson. They're all published together in at least one edition. Mr Hyde, of course, didn't fit with the image of everyone's favourite children's author and the two late stories didn't appear unedited until long after the author's death; implying, as they did, that the British Empire might not have been an entirely altruistic enterprise. For burning moral certainty and deep understanding of human frailty and hypocrisy, see all the above. For an additional savage attack on economic violence, abuse of power and the insanity of capital, The Ebb Tide can't be beaten.

AL Kennedy appeared on the Granta best young British novelists lists of 1993 and 2003. The author of uncompromising, stylistically inventive and emotionally charged novels and short stories, her books include So I Am Glad, Everything You Need, and On Bullfighting. Her most recent book is Indelible Acts.

 

[fogbank]

Some great books. Certainly haven't read all of them, but Lolita, Slaughterhouse Five, Don Quixote are all favorites of mine.

I'd suggest Nabakov's Ada or Ardour should also be on the list, with it's rather graphic underage incest.

And Bear, by Marian Engel. Only in Canada can a tale about beastiality between a librarian and a bear win the nation's most prestigious literary award.

Lady Chatterly's Lover could probably also be included. Maybe not that offensive by today's standards, but I think the anal sex earned it a lot of notoriety when it came out.

Lastly, American Psycho. An amazing book that I can't actually bring myself to recommend to anyone else, for fear of being responsible for seriously messing them up. If you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, let me say that the movie only barely scratches the perversity of the book.

 

[Guest]

1. The Dark
No.
2. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
No. But I like the Gonzo part.
3. That Hideous Strength
No.
4. Sergeant Getulio
No.

5. Lolita
No. But I read Navakov.
6. Wuthering Heights
Seen the movie. The bad version with Ralph Fines in it. Emily Bronte was repressed nutcase.
7. Slaughterhouse Five
No.
8. The Confidence Man
No.

9. Don Quixote
I read a bit. I should've read it when I was twelve.
10. The Beach at Falesa/ The Ebb Tide/ Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
No. Nor Dracula, Frankenshtain, or X-men.

What's with those female writers with men's name like Al Kennedy, George Sand, and Will Shakespear?

 

[BlackShanglan]

"Wuthering Heights" rather stunned me when I first read it. I knew that the author had led a somewhat sheltered life and certainly did not expect one of the male leads to threaten to shove a knife down the throat of the nursemaid. It was much, much more violent than I had anticipated, and it is difficult to see Heathcliff's relation with his wife as anything but sadomasochistic. Fascinating book.

But come now. No "Picture of Dorian Gray"? What *was* that man thinking? And leaving "A Rebours" off the list is simply criminal. Might I also suggest "A Clockwork Orange"?

Shanglan

 

[fogbank]

Might I also suggest "A Clockwork Orange"?

Ah, definitely should be on the list; A real zammechat book that gets in your govorett more than a in-out in-out with your devotchka. Bolshy yarbles, it's dobby.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Damn. I'm late. I was going to add to that list:

American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis - Imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront. - AP was cancelled by its original editor Simon & Schuster, boycotted by bookshops everywhere, and is probably the book more often mentioned along with the expression 'if there was only one book I could burn at a holy bonfire.' And yes, unlike Fogbank, I would recommend it vividly. If you get messed up, you had it coming anyway.

Glamorama, also by Bret Easton Ellis - if possible, twice as good as AP, guaranteed to fuck you up.

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess - The first time it was published in the US in its entirety was in 1988, 26 years after its first truncated edition.

 

[Guest]

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - The first time it was published in the US in its entirety was in 1988, 26 years after its first truncated edition.

Wow, I didn't know that. I read it for a college course in 1968 or so.

Perdita

 

[Guest]

A Clockwork Orange

"Them bolyshoi tities were the cause of all the fuckin' trouble. Her klasnae pussy was dripping like molye, makin' my xoi fuckin' mega-bolyshoi hard."

 

[Guest]

As this is my thread I'll promote myself. If you want a funny Russian-laden story read my chain story entry, at least the story-within-a-story (link in sig).

do' cvedanya,

Perditskaya

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Wow, I didn't know that. I read it for a college course in 1968 or so.

Perdita

Then it was also the edition that carried a glossary of nadsat words, wasn't it? Burgess didn't write that either, and was, in fact, visceraly against it. In a novel that takes brainwashing as its subject, it was imperative for him to exerce his own form of brainwashing upon the readers.

You can probably find the truncated last chapter online easily enough, if you're interested in reading it.

 

[Guest]

Lauren, you're my madeleine today. Now I remember the book itself, the cover, the spine, etc. And that I wrote an essay comparing "Clockwork" with Joyce's "Portrait". Hmm, the beginnings of my literary ways.

Perdita

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Here is that Chapter 21.

It was very important for Burgess that the novel was read in its entirety. It had a well thought out structure. He had divided it in three sections, each begining with the same punkily defiant question: 'What's it going to be then, eh?' There were 21 chapters, 21 being the traditional age of adulthood, which was apt in a book that was ultimately about growing up. There were 7 chapters in each part, in an alusion to Shakespear's seven ages of man.

The American edition only had 20 chapters, which meant it also stole the book of its moral integrity. It was unfinished, unresolved, and didn't allow for moral growth.

Kubrick never read, never cared to read, Chapter 21. Burgess didn't approve of the movie either, of course...

 

[BlackShanglan]

The above said ... to some extent I found the 21 chapter "oooh look at me what a clever structure" line-up a little offputting, to be honest. A touch heavy-handed. But then, I read the 20 chapter first, and we do have a way of being prejudiced in favor of our first loves.

A real zammechat book that gets in your govorett more than a in-out in-out with your devotchka.

"Gulliver," surely? Call me a nadsat pedant.

Shanglan

 

[Guest]

Shanglan, I'm glad you said that. I loved Orange when I was 20 but it's really too pat and gimmicky a work. I thought he "borrowed" a bit too heavily from Joyce. In the end Burgess was too prolific and commercialized past his original promise. I'll take Kubrick over the book.

Perdita

 

[Pure]

One question is are we trying to think of controversial, *but excellent* books.

Certainly there are some excellent ones like Lolita on the original list. I'm not at all convinced Ellis, as in American Psycho, has anywhere near the talent of Nabokov or several other authors mentioned. The book does have an impact, but violent details from law enforcement files do not a top novel make. IMO.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for asking, Pure. I would prefer "excellent controversial", but then I'm rarely interested in less than the best when I read. However, I must allow differences of opinion in judgment.

Perdita

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Here are a few others that have kicked up some controvery:

Catch-22

Huck Finn

Catcher in the Rye

Animal Farm

The Story of O

--

Rumple Foreskin

 

[rimmy]

One question is are we trying to think of controversial, *but excellent* books.

Certainly there are some excellent ones like Lolita on the original list. I'm not at all convinced Ellis, as in American Psycho, has anywhere near the talent of Nabokov or several other authors mentioned. The book does have an impact, but violent details from law enforcement files do not a top novel make. IMO.

I don't anyone would compare Ellis to Nabakov but I found American Psycho impossible to put down. It is a fascinating in-depth look into a truly disturbed mind. Most everyone i recommended it to didn't read the whole thing and thought all the decriptions were redundant but I think that that is the point Ellis is making. Patrick Bateman was compulsive about everything be it material or otherwise and his obsession with things like his shower routine over and over again give you a glimpse into his sick world.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

One question is are we trying to think of controversial, *but excellent* books.

Certainly there are some excellent ones like Lolita on the original list. I'm not at all convinced Ellis, as in American Psycho, has anywhere near the talent of Nabokov or several other authors mentioned. The book does have an impact, but violent details from law enforcement files do not a top novel make. IMO.

I find it insulting to compare American Psycho to law inforcement files, and even more insulting to reduce it to the violent and gruesome details that some chapters describe. Have you read American Psycho, or just fragments of it? I mentioned that book, as well as Glamorama, because I, personally, consider them to be two of the best books ever to be written, certainly in the top 10 of the last 20 years, regardless of controversy. The only contemporary authors whose work even comes close to his on a regular basis are JG Ballard and Irvine Welsh.

No, Ellis isn't Nabokov, thankfully. Only Nabokov is Nabokov. In some aspects, though, he is far better.

 

[Pure]

An honest American psycho

Why we can't cope with Bret Easton Ellis's new novel

Fay Weldon
Thursday April 25, 1991
The Guardian


Shall we consider New York, 1990? (New York today, every city in the world tomorrow.) 'Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here' scrawled in blood red lettering on the wall of a fine upstanding branch of The Chemical Bank? 'Fear', ditto, on the MacDonalds on Fourth and Seventh? In the newspapers, on the radio, on TV, snippets of murders, mayhem, torture, the cruelty of nice literary editors abusing babies, of beggars, buggers, and brutality. Love me tender, love me true, gone down the plughole. Aids pulled out that saving plug so now we're filthy: can't wash ourselves clean.

Let's enjoy the dirt. Film and record posters showing more, yet more: as if we couldn't get enough, don't get enough. Screaming women and crazed men (the paraphenalia of blood, sex, bondage, and violence) looking down from the hoardings. Look up, not at the stars but at a tortured, torturing humanity. Not just life but the human imagination (let me qualify that, the young man's imagination) slipping, so far as we can see, out of control, over the cliff into chaos.

Money, restaurants, designer labels, smart clothes, things: that's all we've got, we smart young things, to cheer us up. And nobody is shocked. Nothing shocks. We are stunned, we are brutalised. Only the military, strangely (and more's the pity for the rest of the world, who haven't got to this stage yet, not quite) with their clean lined elegant weapons of death, their promise of purity and a neat, swift finality (if only they knew), seems able to return us our dignity and our hope.


Shall we now consider the society hostesses of Manhattan, who, assuming Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho, featuring a cannibal murderer, to be autobiographical, continue to ask him to parties? He has been heard of. That's what counts. A little excitement, a little thrill. Okay for him to eat my sister's brains, she's on the game anyway, more or less, but I don't suppose he'll do it to me amongst the canapes.

And if he did, and if he did, is life really so much worse than death? Do come in, smart Mr Bret Easton Ellis, serial killer! It's the year of the serial killing, isn't it? Aren't the films of the year about serial killers: murder for the fun of it? And we all clap and cheer. Me too, me too.

All very well for Mailer to complain that the work's 'legitimate theme' needs 'a greater writer than Bret Easton Ellis' to do it properly, but I reckon he's done it properly; he's done it proud.

This man Bret Easton Ellis is a very, very good writer. He gets us to a T. And we can't stand it. It's our problem, not his. American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel which revolves about its own nasty bits. Brilliant.

Because what's the fuss about? Have you read any Clive Barker? Or have you read The Silence Of The Lambs, by Thomas Harris? Martin Cruz's book about the Vampires? Everyone's eating everyone (in the cannibalistic sense) because one thing leads to another, folks. These are good books, good writers I'm talking about. Blood everywhere! Stephen King's fairly fearful. Such a nice guy, too: wouldn't say boo to a goose. One flap of a gander's wing and he'd apologise. Kind to little children too.

Read the King novel about the woman and child who spend a week in a car while a crazed killer dog pads around? Cujo, I think it's called. The woman gets devoured. Cujo's pretty male. Slaver, slaver, fangs and prick. Bats and rats and dogs today, people tomorrow. Look, I read all these books on the way home from Paddington Station. You've got to read something: and some of them are pretty good. Rats up ladies' vaginas are nothing to me.

Had you wondered, folks, had you wondered? All those little children up in the sequestered North: where did they get their funny peculiar Satanic stories from? Why, from the video nasties. Fit meat for the children's suppers. You ever seen a video nasty, all you sweet people who get upset because Brat Easton Ellis, in a novel of 399 pages devoted almost entirely to the obsessive consolations offered by a society, itself in the grip of a psychotic fit of sado-masochism, scattered throughout a novel delineating why the serial killer kills, actually describes the detail of the killings. Why have you got so squeamish all of a sudden?

Of all the things you ought to censor, should have censored - because we now live in a world so terrible, so full of 'Abandon Hope' scrawled blood red on our city walls, someone has to start crying 'enough' - why pick on wretched, brilliant Bret Easton Ellis? Young BEE? I'll tell you why. It's because there's always been someone in the other books to play lip service to respectability: to the myth that the world we now live in is still capable of affect. The serial killer gets discovered, punished, stopped. There are people around to throw up their hands in horror, who can still distinguish between what is psychotic and what is not. Justice is done. There is remorse. Just not in American Psycho. And we hate him for saying it.

In American Psycho not so. Nobody cares. Slaughtered bodies lie undiscovered. The city has fallen apart. Nobody takes much notice. The police have other things to do. Those who are killed don't rate - they are the powerless, the poor, the wretched, the sick in mind, the sellers of flesh for money: their own and other people's. The tides of the city wash over them, erase their traces.

The landlady, seeing her blood- spattered walls, is vexed because she needs to re-let quick. She doesn't want a fuss, she wants her rent. Docilely, our anti-hero of the nineties (pray God), our hero of the eighties (young, unscrupulous, talented, highly-motivated, highly skilled, an asset to society) cleans up the walls, able to respond to this desire at least. Nowhere else can he find a response. Whatever he does there is no affect.

So what do we cry? Ban the book! Disgusting! Pervert! Let's ask BEE to our party, watch him buzz. After that we'll take ourselves off to the cinema, watch a few flayed bodies; work ourselves in with Nightmare On Elm Street. The books and the films don't create society, I promise you. They reflect it.

Our yuppie hero kills an abandoned dog, slices it with a knife, walks on. No one cares. Women get their kicks from bondage. Yuppie goes too far, the women get to bleed a bit, but they get paid. That's enough for them. The whole world's into bondage. Altzheimers or Armani, spermicidal lubricant or Ralph Lauren, everything on the same level. So he goes further. What's the odds? Not a nice book, no, not at all, this portrait of psychotic America, psychotic us. Just enough to touch a dulled nerve or two, get an article or so written.

Picador, which is publishing American Psycho over here, is keeping the price high, or so one hears, to keep the dreaded thing out of the hands of those who might, eschewing the video nasty, use scenes of torture and cannibalism as a tool for masturbation (though they don't put it quite like that, of course, who does?) and then escalate to the real thing, in the same spirit as people escalate (or so they say) from dope to heroin. Such dreadful unliterary people Picador seem to assume, are poor, uneducated. The wankers of the world. Can't afford the hardback. Too abashed to go into a proper bookshop where the hardbacks sell.

Well, that's hopeful of Picador. Publishers are nice folk. They see a world in which wealth and education will stop people being mass murderers and perverts. Perhaps they're right. I reckon Picador is publishing it because it's a good book, this Book of BEE's, this buzzer of a book. A seminal book.

The feminists, that's me too, see BEE's book as anti-woman. So it is. So's the world increasingly. Dead women, the stuff of fiction. It's anti-dog too, and anti-beggar, and anti-child. Women, in BEE's book, just seem to queue up to be murdered: tie me up and tie me down, as young men, joining the army, queue up to murder. I reckon if we can ban American Psycho as anti-women, and perhaps we should, a whole lot of anti-men books could be banned too. Let's ban Mailer. Incitement to murder the male . . . incitement to war, the other pornography.

Look, I don't want you to actually read BEE's book. I did it for you. I expect you have enough trouble with your own fantasies of revenge, as you wonder whether you're brave enough to walk down your street late at night, take a trip on the Underground without taking BEE's on board. It's upsetting all right. Just don't insult a novel without reading it first, that's all I ask.

I wouldn't go to the stake for it, as I would for Salman Rushdie's right to publish The Satanic Verses. American Psycho is a novel written out of the American tradition - the novelist's function to keep a running tag on the progress of the culture: and he's done it brilliantly, but others are doing it too.

And anyway no one is suggesting that Bret Easton Ellis should be killed, eaten alive, for writing it. Or not yet. The Satanic Verses comes more out of a European tradition; its function not just to collate the world, but make sense of it: move it on a little further towards civilisation. Not much, but all we've got. God knows it's an uphill struggle.

 

[Guest]

If discussion of "Am. Psycho" is of this much interest I suggest it be given its own thread. My intent was to spark either discussion in general on controversial books and/or further recommendations to the list. Some particular criticism on individual books is great but this one seems about to take over this thread.

Thanks for your consideration, Perdita

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Thanks, Pure.

I'll take that as a no. If you had read the book, you would know that Ms. Fay Weldon didn't. The book she describes has nothing to do with the one written and published on this universe. And still she can't deny the brilliancy of the author.

The book is not about the glorification of violence;
The book is not about the glorification of murder;
The book is not about the glorification of pornography;
The book is not about the glorification of cannibalism;
The book is not about impunity;
The book is definitely not anti-feminist (quite the contrary);
The book is definitely not autobiographical (it's not even conceptual factual);

Picador did keep the price high, though. But only about as high as any other book they publish.

***

edited to add:

Some particular criticism on individual books is great but this one seems about to take over this thread.

Don't worry, Perdita. It's not going to. That review is so completely off that it's not even fun to take it apart.

 

[Guest]

Works by writers who had a score to settle with society

I think this list fits here. Oh my, more books for my list. - Perdita
--------------
from The Guardian, Books - 9.3.2004
Brian Chikwava: "This is a mélange of geniuses whose minds sought tackle or reorder the worlds they lived in. These writers had issues to settle with society, and in these works of fiction they let rip their imaginations to drip smoldering ideas on the minds of their generations and many beyond."

1. A Hero Of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. A landmark in Russian literature, this novel published in 1840 influenced writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Five episodes, each of which could easily stand alone as a short story, are weaved together to produce a psychologically fascinating story of 19th century aristocratic boredom and disillusionment.

2. The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera. A wildly angry and chaotic novella (and other stories) by the tortured late Zimbabwean author. Marechera has also been described as African literature's enfant terrible largely for his rejection of African literature as ridiculously narrow.

3. Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky is one of the greatest literary talents the world has seen in the past two centuries, and the reputation of his works is monumental. Notes From Underground is arguably his most idiosyncratic masterpiece.

4. Collected Stories by Isaac Babel. A collection of stories by the hard-hitting Jewish Russian author. "...since I was a boy, I have felt that certain literary works were a form of witchcraft. After I had read The King, I knew that a new sorcerer had entered Russian literature," Russian writer Konstantin Paustovsky once referred to Babel.

5. Tigers are Better-Looking by Jean Rhys. A very engaging collection of passionately delivered short stories, incorporating Rhys's first collection of Paris stories, The Left Bank. Rhys's work was way beyond her time in terms of the issues she tackled.

6. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre's thought-provoking novel in which he explores his theories of existential angst through a protagonist whose encounters with existence lead him to a relentless questioning of reality.

7. The Outsider by Albert Camus. One of the 20th century's existential jewels. It is a short unassuming novel through which the Algerian-French writer/philosopher delivers an awesome indictment of society.

8. The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka. For anyone interested in the development of Kafka's ideas into longer fiction, this is the definitive book. In this collection one sees Kafka's imagination toying around with the worlds that it creates.

9. Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans. A very dense and compact story in which Huysmans extended the scope of the French novel by using art, science and history to frame and capture the excessive indulgence of an aristocratic heir.

10. Catcher In the Rye by JD Salinger. A literary masterpiece by a master of satire, this is a devastating examination of the human condition and has kept its controversial reputation since its publication in 1951.

Writer and musician Brian Chikwava won this year's Caine Prize for African Writing for his story Seventh Street Alchemy. He is currently working on a novella, Bubble Wrapping Artificial Shit, and a blues album, Jacaranda Skits.

 

[Pure]

Hi Lauren,

That review is so completely off that it's not even fun to take it apart.

You put your view of Am Psycho's merit with lots of imperiousness and vehemence, and say others haven't read it, don't understand it, and kick our dogs.

What you haven't done is give us any reason to think the book is really excellent.

Perd, a thread starter is not an owner, merely an instigator.

Do you really think threads should proceed according to the wishes of the person starting them?

I've seen little evidence of it to date, in your postings.

But I will certainly follow the example you set in the future.

 

[Guest]

Pure, I used the word "suggest" only. Fuck you.

Perdita