Thursday, 27 September 2012
Charlton breaks his word
*
A while back I stated that I would (despite everything) read JK Rowling's new novel, which has been published today
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/jk-rowlings-forthcoming-novel-prediction.html
I am breaking my word: I am not going to read it. Despite everything I said then.
Can't be done.
There is no way I could make myself read a book like that nowadays.
*
I used to thrash myself through quantities of vile, subversive, despair-inducing Leftist stuff (novels, movies, TV, plays); since everybody else had done it, so I could say I'd experienced it, and to show that I was sophisticated enough to deluge my mind with slurry and come out of it all enhanced by the experience and deepened in sensibility... but no more!
Not me. Nope. Don't try to make me do it.
*
And so, yet another victory for political correctness - the deception, capture and enslavement of our best living fiction writer; and her enlistment as a propagandist of evil.
Of course she always presented a mixed picture: surface postmodern progressivism but a deep religious traditionalism.
However, in line with Robert Conquest's Second Law: anybody not explicitly and wholly reactionary will sooner or later become a total Leftist.
*
Of course she is not necessarily lost: she may repent.
But until I hear something of that sort, I shall henceforth cease to follow her career.
*
You had higher hopes of her than I ever had.
ReplyDeleteGene Wolfe is still living.
ReplyDelete@d - that's right - kick a man when he's down.
ReplyDeleteBet you were one of those hairy, thickset, sadistic prop forwards of the species I mentioned in the previous post...
Was there a particular red flag in the book reviews that made up your mind?
ReplyDelete@ Kevin Nowell
ReplyDeleteIndeed— Rowling cannot hold a candle to Wolfe, whose artistry is spectacular and whose deep Christian conservatism is consistent and apparent. I think part of the reason he has not risen above a secret even within genre fiction is because of this; I've heard more than one person denounce him as an evil reactionary.
While I hate to make it seem as if I am merely pitching, here, those unfamiliar with Wolfe's prose can look at a couple of excerpts I placed on my blog in the past:
http://wp.me/p1sONB-3b
http://wp.me/p1sONB-4d
So, what is it that you've heard about this new novel that makes you so sure that it's evil?
ReplyDeleteIn our society it is easier for liberals to indulge their reactionary tendencies in genres like fantasy and sci fi. One could, for example, do a bang up piece on race in Star Trek.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Rowling's gifts were for world creation and plot, but she isn't exactly a great prose stylist, so why would anyone expect much from her as a realistic novelist?
@It is all over the news o I could not avoid reading quite a lot of plot detail and some excerpts. The point at which I decided enough was enough was reading Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph.
ReplyDelete@Ariston
ReplyDeleteWolfe is a giant. "The Great Relearning" is the best description of our age and the need for tradition.
Imnobody
The thing I don't get about these leftist people is the way they relish nihilism.
ReplyDeleteI get that people believe that God does not exist, the Universe has no sense and that you and your beloved ones are walking to the nothingness. I was once one of these guys.
But I don't get that they are able to be happy about that! You watch them on TV proclaiming their nihilistic credo with happiness and enthusiasm. You see their faces with pleasure when they say the Universe is absurd and has no meaning and we all are going to disappear. They are not faking it. They seem genuinely happy .
I wonder if they have ever loved somebody. When I was an atheist I could accept my own death with calm. But I could not accept my beloved ones (my parents, my sisters) were going disappear into nothingness. I loved them too much to be happy about that.
When Nietzsche declared God was dead, he regarded it as a bad thing, as an ugly truth, and as something that would produce disaster in the Western civilization (he predicted some of the horrors of the XX century).
These new atheists can't be more satisfied about that. I don't know what is the reason to be so happy. Why nihilism is celebrated with so many enthusiasm.
Imnobody