tbf the impression left on me by LOTF might not be a positive one: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
― rob, Monday, 29 March 2021 15:31 (three years ago) link
My dad has this thing about Lord of the Flies being the crappy version of A High Wind in Jamaica, which I think he got from his dad. So I was raised to think of it as a bad book, and I read it so long ago I have no idea what I actually think of it.
― Lily Dale, Monday, 29 March 2021 15:35 (three years ago) link
i think part of the reason i still haven't read LOTF is that it sounds horrifying lol.
― horseshoe, Monday, 29 March 2021 15:36 (three years ago) link
Went for Amos Tutuola over the handful of other entries I've read if only to give the lad a fighting chance.
― tonto's expanding waistband (Matt #2), Monday, 29 March 2021 15:38 (three years ago) link
There were plans to make a gender reversed LOTF recently, and a lot of the ppl arguing against it suggested that LOTF is about masculinity. As someone whose biggest bullies were girls - and the bullying included physical assault, fwiw - I was somewhat unmoved by this argument. Not saying the gender-switched film project looked good, mind.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 29 March 2021 15:50 (three years ago) link
I read LOTF in high school and thought it seemed plausible, but don't remember it so well, like several of these (as usual). I read LOTR long after most of my friends, who had for instance those Ballentine paperbacks, but I was lucky enough to get hooked on library copy of a three-in-one edition, as originally intended ( with lots of typos excised and at least some of the author's past-the-last-minute corrections, tiny, belatedly deciphered marginalia scribbles in drafts and galleys etc [like Balzac and Proust])---so I don't want to vote for a single volume.I'll go with the other one I remember best, I Am Legend: Matheson, macabre and methodical as usual, works out the path and practices of the one Normal Man in a (post-pandemic)world of vampires and their subjugates---for them, he is the nightmare terrorist, and what does this do to his righteous Normality, and why as well as how does he do the things he does.
― dow, Monday, 29 March 2021 22:56 (three years ago) link
I've read shamefully few of these, basically just the Tolkiens and the Narnia, none of which I have a strong memory of, other than Tolkien was much more of a slog than I had been led to believe, maybe I read it too young.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 02:29 (three years ago) link
Have read a surprising 11 of these. Not as strong a year as 1953, I guess Lord of the Flies is "objectively" the best, but familiarity has bred if not contempt, then a certain ennui. Another ambivalent vote for Bonjour Tristesse.
― Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 04:15 (three years ago) link
This list feels like a merge of separate universes. Lucky Jim, Lord of the Rings, García Márquez, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, Céline, Gore Vidal, Ian Fleming and Mishima simultaneously.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 14:34 (three years ago) link
That's one of the main reasons I do these, tbh. I remember a friend owning a book where you could see which historical figures were contemporaries and that sense of parallel realities co-existing is something I get a tremendous kick out of.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 14:38 (three years ago) link
Lord of the Flies is conservative, establishment propaganda. There's a reason everyone gets taught it in school
― or something, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 16:29 (three years ago) link
Couldn't be that schoolkids enjoy reading about the dark side of schoolkids.
― jmm, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 17:03 (three years ago) link
It worked on you then
― or something, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 17:15 (three years ago) link
Lord Of The Flies usually gets the "all kids are like this" treatment but it was only ever really a "English public school boys are like this" thing.
― Bastard Lakes (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 30 March 2021 17:24 (three years ago) link
could have voted for 6 or so last time, there are a good 6 or so here that look like solid second choices.
― Bastard Lakes (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 30 March 2021 17:25 (three years ago) link
Lord of the Flies is conservative, establishment propaganda.
Care to elaborate? I haven't read the thing myself, but have heard similar critiques centring on the idea that humans in LOTF are fundamentally bad and a repressive society the only way to counteract this; I'd argue that a novel about schoolboys surely cannot ever be that, as schoolchildren are already deeply socialised creatures (even one about infants would be tricky in this regard). Isn't it much more likely that Golding is showing up the societal values they've absorbed and are now trying to replicate?
Again, don't want to get too deep in the weeds on this, not having read, but: I can certainly state from personal experience that English public school boys have no monopoly on bullying, sadism and a love of hierarchy.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 18:38 (three years ago) link
there is the jungle = primitive thing which is unfortunate
― wasdnuos (abanana), Tuesday, 30 March 2021 19:06 (three years ago) link
Yes schoolchildren are already socialised but the insinuation is that once the rules and structures are removed they would regress very quickly to violent warring 'animals'. Which assumes that humans were that way before being saved by civilisation, naturally that way as a species, and not the co-operative, egalitarian people that plenty of evidence suggests they were
― or something, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 19:38 (three years ago) link
― Bastard Lakes (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 30 March 2021 21:23 (three years ago) link
I was assigned both Nectar in a Sieve and The Sound of Waves in 9th grade, I mostly remember the former as very bleak but compelling and the latter as baffling, have been meaning to read more Mishima though.
Have a copy of I’m Not Stiller around that I should read as well.
Anyone have anything to say about the later Celine novels?
― JoeStork, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 21:45 (three years ago) link
Which assumes that humans were that way before being saved by civilisation, naturally that way as a species, and not the co-operative, egalitarian people that plenty of evidence suggests they were
Those cooperative, egalitarian "uncivilized" communities are not populated solely by young boys. The group Lord of the Flies portrays has nothing in common with stable traditional societies and quite a bit in common with English public schoolboys whenever adults were removed from the scene. It is not a very convincing portrayal of any other known social grouping.
― Judge Roi Behan (Aimless), Tuesday, 30 March 2021 22:17 (three years ago) link
I'm not saying they were. And I'm not saying that's what Golding intended the work to be about either, I've no idea what his intentions were. But I do believe it's presence on the curriculum for decades in English schools at least was one of the more transparent incremental reinforcements of the status quo that I can think of right now
― or something, Tuesday, 30 March 2021 22:31 (three years ago) link
I'm interested in how it's taught in the USA, where presumably the UK public school context is less obvious
― Bastard Lakes (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 30 March 2021 22:41 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Wednesday, 31 March 2021 00:01 (three years ago) link
Voting Story of O to stick it to E. L. James.
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 31 March 2021 00:31 (three years ago) link
We should do a TS: Hobbes vs Rousseau some time.
xps
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 31 March 2021 00:32 (three years ago) link
I don't think the supposed point of LOTF is that when rules are removed people regress to being 'animals'. The boys' saviour is a naval officer from a warship!
― Zelda Zonk, Wednesday, 31 March 2021 00:45 (three years ago) link
Françoise Hardy talks about interviewing the mysterious author in her autobio btw.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 31 March 2021 10:14 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Thursday, 1 April 2021 00:01 (three years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1955
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 1 April 2021 10:09 (three years ago) link
Nerd vote surprisingly directed towards Matheson! Still glad Fellowship got more votes than Two Towers.
Three votes for Story Of O more than I expected, too.
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 1 April 2021 10:19 (three years ago) link
Normance by Louis-Ferdinand Céline The Sound Of Waves by Yukio Mishima The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Normance or Sound of Waves but didn't vote.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 1 April 2021 13:57 (three years ago) link
― koogs, Sunday, 4 April 2021 07:35 (three years ago) link
(oh, has been linked before. looked unfamiliar when i saw it in sna)
― koogs, Sunday, 4 April 2021 07:36 (three years ago) link