Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1954

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?

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.

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

I'm interested in how it's taught in the USA, where presumably the UK public school context is less obvious

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voting Story of O to stick it to E. L. James.

We should do a TS: Hobbes vs Rousseau some time.

xps

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!

Voting Story of O to stick it to E. L. James.

Françoise Hardy talks about interviewing the mysterious author in her autobio btw.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1955

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.

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.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1955

(oh, has been linked before. looked unfamiliar when i saw it in sna)