It just had such a negative take on... well humanity. There are a few passages in which Patrick Bateman describes our race from his perspective. It's quite cold and depressing, but I often find myself agreeing with some of his points.
Mannen som elsket Yngve / The Man Who Loved Yngve by Tore Renberg.
This is a beautiful tale about the life of a teenage boy living in Stavanger (Norway). His name's Jarle Klepp and the novel takes place in the beginning of 90's. He's popular, rebellious with a button that says 'don't harass my friend' and sometimes he wears a Palestine scarf. He's against EF (EU) and he thinks that 80 % of his friends are too conservative and ignorant. While caring more for his girlfriend Katrine and admiring his good friend Helge, the world around him seems to change. Besides making people blind, falling in love can be pretty brutal. Jarle falls in love with Yngve, another boy. It's a story about love, finding one self and forsaking others.
Elsk meg i morgen / Love Me Tomorrow by Ingvar Ambjørnsen.
This is the fourth novel in the series about Elling. Elling, struggling with neurotic tendencies, falls in love with a woman he meets at a hot dog stand. We follow him whilst dealing with his own feelings and insecurities. Love Me Tomorrow is really just a sweet, though melancholy, novel.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
An old butler, Mr. Stevens, narrates his life, recalling his life in the past through various activities in his contemporary life. Primarily, this is a story about regret, about absolute devotion and faith in a man who makes drastic mistakes. Because of this total professional commitment, Stevens fails to pursue a woman he truly loves. The Remains of the Day is one of the saddest, yet glorious books I've ever read. As Salman Rushdie once commented; "The Remains of the Day is a story both beautiful and cruel." I actually cried when I read the ending. It's tragic and very true. And I must say that the author did a splendid job writing this novel, as I discover hidden treasures every time I read it.
Regards, Yvonne
__________________ - Reader, I married him (Jane Eyre)
The happiness now, will be part of the pain then.
Teaching is an act of love.
Last edited by yvonnekarate on Jun 7th, 2007 at 02:43 PM
This observation begs for commentary. You're argument is that the Bible wasn't an influence on you, because you questioned it's veracity as you read it? If I were Harold Bloom, I'd say you were suffering from a classic case of "Anxiety of Influence", or the subject's desire to cover up its intellectual/imaginative indebtedness to a predecessor. People that go out of their way to mention how they're not beholding to this person or that book, secretly betray out-and-out subjugation to that very thing. After all, we don't resent things that have no claim on us. We just ignore them. You might have more accurately said something like this:
"Although I really resent the Hebrew/Christian uber-narrative of a patriarchal God, who is transcendent to the material universe he creates and who fashions man in his special likeness to subdue and populate the earth and who eventually enters this human world as a creature of flesh and blood to redeem his special creation by vicariously dying for him, my imagination is filled to the brim with it. In fact my imaginative faculties are so utterly determined by this culturally defining narrative, that I've grown to resent its strangle hold upon me. It skoffs at me. It annuls my claims to originality by virtue of the fact that it is such an imaginatively gripping, not to mention seemingly onmipresent, ur-text that poignantly speaks about, well...just about everything.
"That is why I dislike the Bible - not because it's so stupid, imaginatively barren, and uninfluential, but because it's the most damned influential thing imaginable." That's my interpretation of your comment.
Actually, if you think about, "His Dark Materials" is based on a quote from Milton's "Paradise Lost" (a reworking of the Adam and Eve story) and can be read as a opposing comment on the biblical ur-narrative. So even though Pullman clrearly resents the implications of the biblical narrative, he depends on the recognition of that narrative to drive home a contradictory point. Like it or not, the book that you claim to have influenced you the most is itself hugely indebted to the Bible. And, on top of that, you noted Pullman's reworking of biblical material and used his countervailing take on the story to deconstruct biblical tales that, although they had no affect on you whatsoever, you saw the need to go back and deconstruct.
Yes, clearly the Bible is an overrated influence and has had no affect on you.
__________________ And the good Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister.
Fair enough, Bardock. But I would still bet my bottom dollar that the Bible haunts this poor poster's imagination like no other conscious influence, which was the point of my post. He seems to frame his preference for Pullman's "His Dark Materials", and I presume everything else he likes as well, by it's posture vis a vis The Bible. A negative influence is still an influence - intellectual, imaginative, emotional, and otherwise....
For the West, I think it goes without saying that the Bible is the central, inescapable culturally-informing text.
__________________ And the good Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister.
The Married Man by Edmund White. Truth behind AIDS / HIV illness and homosexuality. It took my breath away and it's so well researched.
Another would have to be To Kill A Mockingbird. Such a touching story of youth that I couldn't put it down.
Finally, Cry To Heaven by Anne Rice. She used to be my idol, someone that I wanted to become. However, her work slipped after 1990. I no longer felt her, but this one of her's depicts the Italian opera singers and the castrati to perform on the stages. A splendid read!
The five people you meet in heaven is good.
I just finished eden's atlantis by dawn bergemann and it is quite good, bout a girl who's sister commits suicide and then a journey to try save her soul.
One of the most subtly disturbing books. A fictional book written as if it were a commentary on an existing set of video tapes. Very unsettling and even now I still become extremely uneasy in the dark/in dark hallways because of that book.
I recommend it though.
__________________
I have no speech, no name. I live in the action of death, blood cry and the penetrating wound. I am destruction. Absolute and alone.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.
also
A Joseph Campbell Companion which is a collection of essays, lectures, sections of novels, etc. The final product is magnificent, however, though it needs the former of these two books to be fully appreciated.
Others include "In Our Time" by Hemmingway, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and various other novels from different genres.
The Dark Tower. I just finished Wizard and Glass, and I think it helped me to let go of things that are going on in my life that I don't have control of. It's all the work of Ka. More than anything it was just relevant to whats going on in my life now.
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Jun 1st, 2007 03:26 AM
Lava_wacky_j
