Posted On: Wednesday - April 24th 2024 3:56PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Trump Race/Genetics Books Zhou Bai Dien
(Continued from the basic book review and book criticisms.)
Uh, oh, whadda we got, an obsession with author Lionel Shriver here, like Kathy Bates in Misery? Well, Lionel Shriver's novels have been very interesting and pertinent, and it's great to see a reasonably well-known writer rail against the Wokeness, Kung Flu Totalitarianism, and more, from the inside. (Until she moved to Portugal, she lived in Brooklyn, NYC and then both there and London.)
I can't say I've been her "biggest fan" but sure wanted to support her by reading her and blogging here (maybe even getting to meet her some day). By her new novel Mania, I was disappointed.
That can happen when someone you assume seems to generally get things, doesn't, and on some major issues too. A year or so ago, commenter Adam Smith linked us to a few UK Spectator articles by Mrs. Shriver, and I figured out his trick to view a few more. The posts never got written here, but I did note that she was way off, IMO, on some of them.
Mania is the story of a quickly and dangerously growing program of Wokeness, very much a Cultural Revolution, based only one stupid concept, that we are all equal in intelligence. Anything spoken, written, and actions taken, that go against this idea are forbidden. How did this idea and program start in the novel? The author never said. Wouldn't that be really important?
One might think that Mrs. Shriver's whole idea here was to describe a flavor of Wokeness that the reading public would think silly (so far, anyway), but as an allegory of what similar things ARE going on today. The reader could see the story as a recent-past and near-future parallel to what has been going on and what will be. What is going on in reality that this book may remind one of? Could it be the Affirmative Action, Feminism, and genderbender nonsense that has resulted in the stifling of certain speech and the regulation from on high and the minions below that has had universities cancelling professors and no longer admitting people based on merit, employers cancelling good employees and not hiring based on merit? The race and sex aspect of this had been going on for 60 years, with the last 10 seeing a much quicker implementation due to the numbers.
The current widespread D.I.E. madness is having the same effects in the real world as the Mental Parity has in Mania, though slightly less directly. Competence levels are going down. It's no longer a prediction from the alt-right folks, but the worries about crashing airplanes and botched surgeries (in the book - slight spoiler) are big in the mind of the public now.
Yet, Lionel Shriver specifically wrote, in 2 places, words to the effect of "this MP is different from race and sex discrimination, which are real". It's as if she can't see that not only a ban on discrimination, but mandatory discrimination in the anti-White-male direction is having the same effect as the MP program in her story.
Of the handful of students in the protagonist's college English class who actual care about learning rather than goofing and/or trying "struggle against" their teacher, 3 are Oriental women (that's not so freaking likely), and one's a black guy. The worst of the people out to get her, her nemesis in the class, is a tall "smarmily good-looking" White guy named Drew Patterson. (Why not Haven Monahan? He's fictitious too.) That's backwards and a crock of shit, Shriver!
I was disappointed slightly by Mrs. Shriver's failure to continue the brave and nicely-done AA sub-plot in The Motion of the Body through Space. I chalked that up to it possibly not fitting in (as with the Jehovah's Witnesses in this book), but then she did a 180 degree turn on it near the end. With her conservative speeches and writings of late, I was sure she would not be cowed by fellow writers or critics. Did the publisher tell her that any of this race talk was forbidden in this latest book? If not, well she does not get the enormity of the race issue at all. Did she have to explicitly differentiate between race/sex supposed discrimination and the discrimination against the intelligent here?
I know Mrs. Shriver has heard of all the D.I.E. business, and she does a great job taking most of a whole chapter of [Alt-'13] to describe a struggle/apology session with one Dean Poot of the U. In no way does she relate this to the race/sex/alien-status D.I.E. business going on right now in the universities. I guess when it doesn't affect HER career or storylines personally, this writer is having nothing to do with it.* (Later, in Chapter 2 of [Alt-'14] she describes a mandatory D.I.E. class taught by a guy named Timmy with great humor.)
Then there's the pure politics espoused in this alt-recent-history. Lionel. Shriver simply is not so knowledgable about American domestic and foreign politics.
On the foreign policy side, narrator Pearson Converse is pretty much a solid neocon, worried about Putin and Russia as if the Cold War never ended. That just has to match the the writer's opinions too, or she would have no reason to write that stuff. I'm guessing if I go back to those archived UK Spectator articles (thanks, Adam!) those on the subject would have been the ones that got me to realize that this lady simple does NOT get everything.
More importantly, in domestic politics, in this alt-recent-history, candidate Øb☭ma loses the nomination for D-squad presidential candidate in '12 to his VP, old JoeTatoe. To go along with the story line, the reason is that Bai Dien is less literary and intelligent than Øb☭ma, which is a plus for the former. The narrator very much extolls the intelligence and speaking ability of Øb☭ma. He is described as "having class" and an "irksomely inspirational oratory", ("Irksome" to the PM followers, that is.) Also, "However challenging it may be to recall now, in many a previous era having a leader who was outstandingly astute, eloquent, and well informed would have seemed to any country's considerable advantage." Believe me, all this was not written just for the story. That's Lionel Shriver speaking, not just the characters. Most of this above wasn't in the usual conversations, in fact, but could be considered the mind of Pearson Crenshaw... which is no doubt the mind of Lionel Shriver here. She writes of what she "knows", indeed.
Finally, there's that orange-haired gentleman who must not be named, in this book, anyway. To provide plausible deniability for Lionel Shriver, this guy is a Democrat "ace in the hole" in [Alt-'15] (Chapter 5), as David Ruth (Pearson's adoptive father) says:
The Democrats have seized on an ace in the hole, and that's why the party higher-ups are coaxing Biden out the exit.Who else would this be but Mr. Donald Trump? It's not this fictional David Ruth, but Lionel Shriver that doesn't like Trump, because she can't see anything past "having class" and speaking well. Lots of evil liars speak very well - that's how they get to be BIG-TIME evil liars.
They know as well as we do who'd be a shoo-in. The tiny vocabulary? The repetition of the same words over and over? The incomplete sentences.** He checks every lowbrow box in the book. He's crude. He's crass. He's a boor. He has garish aesthetic taste. He's fat. Better still, he routinely wears that slack, brutish expression, and he never reads. It's also a big plus that he has no foreign policy experience. [Actually, it was. It's just that he hired the beltway Neocons] Ditto his never having been elected to a political position of any sort. [Mega-dittos!!] The PR people might need to coach him on that arrogance problem, but so long as you're boasting about how unremarkable you are, you can get away with all the narcissism you like.
That's most of it. I'm glad to have gotten this off my chest. Next, I will write about some more, if not the "S-word" (stupidity), ignorance, by a writer who I'd thought was the cat's meow on a very basic concept. Unfortunately, to do this I WILL have to spoil the ending completely. Therefore, I'll put a warning up. If you want to read this book, just make yourself skip over the post until you're finished. At that point, if you're of anywhere near the same ideology as the Peak Stupidity blog, you won't need to read our coming post.
* This is why in the first post I suggested that she wouldn't be caught dead reading Steve Sailer. Though he doesn't push his luck like the very brave "Paul Kersey", he's pretty honest about the situation.
Regarding other points made here, Mr. Sailer long ago wrote a book about America's Half-blood Prince. It was not meant to be flattering - it was more of a WARNING. I think Mrs. Shriver would neither agree nor understand.
** Hey, wait, those ones were incomplete sentences too!
Comments:
Adam Smith
Thursday - April 25th 2024 8:05AM MST
PS: Good morning, Mr. Moderator!
So... I've been meaning to chime in for days now, but I've been up to my eyeballs busy. Spring is springing, and aside from all my normal work, plus getting the garden/yard stuff done I've suddenly found air conditioning season upon us. (Weird how that happens after just a couple 80°+ days.)
Anyway... All is well here, just busy. And sunny and warm and wonderful. (I hope this message finds you and the Newman family the same. The wonderful and well part, not necessarily the busy part.)
The other day, I was about to give up on that original Cocaine Cowboys (because sometimes torrents just don't download) but I let it spin one more time...
And behold!
Cocaine-Cowboys (898.9 MB .avi)
https://tinyurl.com/2s49a3sm
But...
That format doesn't stream. It will probably/maybe work on your tablet/computer/device, but maybe not. Who knows? You're welcome to try it. You would have to download it first.
But because .mp4 files are a little more universally playable across different devices and platforms, I ran the .avi through the transcoder...
and Behold!
Cocaine-Cowboys (1.12 GB .mp4)
https://tinyurl.com/2kcbxptx
It should work on more devices across more platforms than the .avi file from which it was made. (and it streams too!) I hope it works on your tablet and/or preferred device.
Sorry about the late/slow reply. I've truly had this comment on my to do list for days now, just haven't had much time for anything more than work and sleep. (Getting up early many days in a row really isn't my thing. So glad I Klufted like a human last night!)
That's about all I have for now.
Time to go mow the grass before I head off to work.
I hope you have a great day, Achmed!
☮️
So... I've been meaning to chime in for days now, but I've been up to my eyeballs busy. Spring is springing, and aside from all my normal work, plus getting the garden/yard stuff done I've suddenly found air conditioning season upon us. (Weird how that happens after just a couple 80°+ days.)
Anyway... All is well here, just busy. And sunny and warm and wonderful. (I hope this message finds you and the Newman family the same. The wonderful and well part, not necessarily the busy part.)
The other day, I was about to give up on that original Cocaine Cowboys (because sometimes torrents just don't download) but I let it spin one more time...
And behold!
Cocaine-Cowboys (898.9 MB .avi)
https://tinyurl.com/2s49a3sm
But...
That format doesn't stream. It will probably/maybe work on your tablet/computer/device, but maybe not. Who knows? You're welcome to try it. You would have to download it first.
But because .mp4 files are a little more universally playable across different devices and platforms, I ran the .avi through the transcoder...
and Behold!
Cocaine-Cowboys (1.12 GB .mp4)
https://tinyurl.com/2kcbxptx
It should work on more devices across more platforms than the .avi file from which it was made. (and it streams too!) I hope it works on your tablet and/or preferred device.
Sorry about the late/slow reply. I've truly had this comment on my to do list for days now, just haven't had much time for anything more than work and sleep. (Getting up early many days in a row really isn't my thing. So glad I Klufted like a human last night!)
That's about all I have for now.
Time to go mow the grass before I head off to work.
I hope you have a great day, Achmed!
☮️
Peak Stupidity Book Club
Thursday - April 25th 2024 7:39AM MST
PS: Good morning, Everyone!
A little late to the party, but better dead than red...
(or something like that...)
Lionel Shriver Mania (995kb .epub)
https://tinyurl.com/5n82pfmd
Half-BloodPrince (1.8 MB .pdf)
https://tinyurl.com/4efyp4ja
Cheers! ☮️
A little late to the party, but better dead than red...
(or something like that...)
Lionel Shriver Mania (995kb .epub)
https://tinyurl.com/5n82pfmd
Half-BloodPrince (1.8 MB .pdf)
https://tinyurl.com/4efyp4ja
Cheers! ☮️
I am SO GLAD you were able to get that original "Cocaine Cowboys" video downloaded - I look forward to watching it the next couple of days. I'm sure the PS crowd thanks you for the free electronic versions of "Mania" and "Half-Blood Prince".
As for the former book, I could have REALLY used the ctrl-f function 3 days back - sure wouldn't work on my library hardback! I wanted to find just one thing that I'd read, the thing about the game show "Jeopardy". I went back and forth for 1/2 an hour till I saw what I'd read a couple of days prior. What's funny is that I can usually remember what side of the book (left page or right page) something is on, but ... that was about it.