Previously-
Some new info came to light on this...
So, I said in the Poe review...
And I swear, with the exception of one, the stories in "Creepshow" are all Poe rips.
"The Crate "especially is blatantly a mashup of "Rue Morgue" and "The Oblong Box".
Nope, "The Crate" is a Poe/Lovecraft mashup.
The crate-monster is both the monkey from "Rue Morgue" and one of the ghouls from "Pickman's Model".
The crate and the obnoxious wife are from "Oblong Box".
The crate says "Antarctic Expedition" so that ties in to "Mountains Of Madness" which itself is a sequel to "Arthur Pym".
I guess I'll flesh out the others too....
"Father's Day" is a variation on "M. Valdemar".
"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" is a comedy play on "The Colour Out Of Space".
"Something to Tide You Over" is kind of a mashup of "The Premature Burial" and "Ligeia"
"They're Creeping Up on You!" is kind of a modern anti-racism take on "The Masque of the Red Death".
And, that's that.
See you next time.
13 comments:
From "The Dispossessed," p. 119 in my copy:
"Most young Annaresti felt that it was shameful to be ill: a result of their society's very successful prophylaxy, and also perhaps a confusion arising from the analogic use of the words 'healthy' and 'sick.' They felt illness to be a crime, if an involuntary one. To yield to the criminal impulse, to pander to it by taking pain relievers, was immoral. They fought shy of pills and shots. As middle age and old age came on, most of them changed their view. The pain got worse than the shame. The aide gave the old men in Ward Two their medicine, and they joked with her. Shevek watched with dull incomprehension."
Hah, contrast this with the problems in our own society, where getting sick is a crime because you simply won't have the fucking money to pay for it! Just struck me as a very relevant passage.
From p.175-76 in my copy:
...."'You see, I don't write the way I was trained to write at the conservatory. I write dysfunctional music.' He smiled more sweetly than ever. 'They want chorales. I hate chorales. They want wide-harmony pieces like Sessur wrote. I hate Sessur's music. I'm writing a piece of chamber music. Thought I might call it The Simultaneity Principle. Five instruments each playing an independent cyclic theme; no melodic causality; the forward process entirely in the relationship of the parts. It makes a lovely harmony. But they don't hear it. They won't hear it. They can't!'
Shevek brooded a while. 'If you called it The Joys of Solidarity,' he said, 'would they hear it?'
'By damn!' said Bedap, who was listening in. 'That's the first cynical thing you ever said in your life, Shev. Welcome to the work crew!'
Salas laughed. 'They'd give it a hearing, but they'd turn it down for taping or regional performance. It's not in the Organic Style.'
'No wonder I never heard any professional music while I lived in Northsetting. But how can they justify this kind of censorship? You write music! Music is a cooperative art, organic by definition, social. It may be the noblest form of social behavior we're capable of. It's certainly one of the noblest jobs an individual can undertake. And by its nature, by the nature of any art, its a sharing. The artist chares, it's the essence of his act. No matter what your syndics say, how can Divlab justify not giving you a posting in your own field?'
'They don't want to share it,' Salas said gleefully. 'It scares 'em.'
Bedap spoke more gravely: 'They can justify it because music isn't useful. Canal digging is important, you know; music's mere decoration. The circle has come right back around to the most vile kind of profiteering utilitarianism. The complexity, the vitality, the freedom of invention and initiative that was the center of the Odonian ideal, we've thrown it all away. We've gone right back to barbarism. If it's new, run away from it; if you can't eat it, throw it away!"
Okay, Ayn Rand would have SHIT HER NYLONS reading this, if she had (and hey, she was alive in 1974! She could've!) This really has to be contrasted with when they grill Howard Roark in "The Fountainhead" where he says he's just doing his architecture because he doesn't like how buildings look and he wants to change it. The bits about how Salas makes music that makes sense to him, regardless of whether or not the powers that be understand it, but then we go from that to Shevek's conjecture that music is a social act, would make for a great topic for a class essay about individualism.
And then, of course, the next paragraph is about Shevek ruminating on how one has to reassert the validity of the Annares way of life: "one need only act, without fear of punishment and without hope of reward: act from the center of one's soul."
That turns Randroidery right on its head, huh? Neat trick, that.
I wonder if there are any pot shots at $cientology in this book; by 1974, L. Ron would have had plenty of money...
I almost did a post on Le Guin's research reading for "Dispossessed". I wasn't sure anyone would be interested. Shevek is mostly based on Paul Goodman. She read all the anarchists, but Goodman was her favorite. There's some Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman in the mix too. In "The Day Before The Revolution", Odo is all Emma Goldman. I did Wikipedia reading on their stuff, but I'd like to check out their whole books someday. Particularly Kropotkin and Goodman. Goodman would have made school less horrifying for me. Oh, and William Godwin (Mary Shelly's dad!), was one. He inspired Kropotkin. Godwin was buddies with Thomas Paine, and helped him get published. You never hear about that. Our "winners vs losers" "get rich or die in the streets" society kinda keeps that under wraps.
I'm no expert on the history of the anarchist movement in America, didn't it peak around 1915-1930? Sacco and Vanzetti, Red Scare, J Edgar Hoover showing up, that sort of stuff? I know the names you mentioned but not that one about them. I thought "Reds" was a fairly good movie, but haven't revisited it.
P. 203:
"Oiie shrank from that thunderbolt of contempt. He said no more, and Shevek said no more, but Oiie never forgot it. It lay imbedded in his mind thereafter as the most shameful moment of his life. For if Shevek the deluded and simple-minded utopist had silenced him so easily, that was shameful; but if Shevek the physicist and the man whom he could not help liking, admiring, so that he longed to deserve his respect, as if it were somehow a finer grade of respect than any currently available elsewhere--if this Shevek despised him, then the shame was intolerable, and he must hide it, lock it away the rest of his life in the darkest room of his soul."
This passage made me laugh really hard with the grinding tone of the whole thing. For some reason I thought of Le Guin predicting people who lose online arguments or something with this passage. I dunno. Maybe I was identifying with it myself.
P. 245:
"Many people felt that this idea of fidelity was misapplied to sexual life. Odo's femininity swayed her, they said, towards a refusal of real sexual freedom; here, if nowhere else, Odo did not write for men. As many women as men made this criticism so it would appear that it was not masculinity that Odo failed to understand, but a whole type or section of humanity, people to whom experiment is the soul of sexual pleasure."
To some extent UKLG has to be talking about herself here. Heh, this is why the Odo prophet character has to be female.
....right? I could be wrong. Ah hell, somebody could write a whole book about that one.
P.284:
"He had never seen a rat, or an army barracks, or an insane asylum, or a poorhouse, or a pawnshop, or an execution, or a thief, or a tenement, or a rent collector, or a man who wanted to work and could not find work to do, or a dead baby in a ditch."
Okay, that's got to be Omelas/My Lai. I was wondering when I was gonna see that. Not surprised if this isn't a response to general attacks on "ivory tower" types, specifically from someone who'd want to tell some college professor that he has "no idea what combat was like" in Vietnam, etc.
I was discussing the book with some other people on another board who had recently read it and one said that the pseudo-rape scene where Shevek blows his wad prematurely struck him as totally out of character and weird, and I had just finished reading it when that post was posted. It certainly was a strange moment!
Yeah, the original wave of anarchists fizzled out by the 30's.
The guy who shot McKinley was a random nut like Jared Lee Loughner who claimed to be anarchists, but he wasn't officially in the club. In fact, Emma Goldman told him to buzz off, cuz she could see he was Loughner level Cocoa Puffs.
None of that stopped Teddy Roosevelt from using it as propaganda.
Lotta crappy historians still roll over for the propaganda.
BUT! There was a resurgence from the 60's to 70's under Paul Goodman.
He got swept under the rug because he blended into the overall hippie movement.
"Dispossessed" is the only obvious trace that it was ever a thing.
Occupy was ostensibly anarchist.
Ehh....
Re: The spiritual beat-down on Shevek's rival.
Yeah, could be applied to internet flame wars easily.
I've been on both sides of of it.
Paul Goodman also had the flaw of being self-righteous to the point of obliviously hurtful.
UKLG portrays all her characters warts-and-all.
She could never have written for "Little House on the Prairie" 😏
Re: Odo being UKLG self-insertion.
Probably. She says in the intro to "The Day Before The Revolution" in "The Wind's Twelve Quarters" that "Dispossessed" bummed her out because Shevek was so isolated, so she had to do the Odo prequel, because she would have been loved and cared for.
Re: The Shevek almost-rape.
Yeah, that bugged me too. I think it was supposed to be the culmination of Urras culture insidiously corrupting him, or something, but I thought it was a bit much.
Had to be a better way to get there.
"Self-righteous to the point of obliviously hurtful" - Honestly, I'd sort of wonder if people in the position of being anarchists in this country wouldn't sort of have to be that to begin with just to survive. But what do I know.
P.333:
"He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his 'cellular function,' the analogic term for the individual's individuality, the work he can do best, therefore his best contribution to his society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely, in the coordination of all such functions finding its adaptability and strength. That was a central idea of Odo's Analogy. That the Odonian society on Anarres had fallen short of the ideal did not, in his eyes, lessen his responsibility to it; just the contrary. With the myth of the State out of the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice--the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind."
One last blow to Ayn Rand. Imagine that stupid 60 page rant at the end of Atlas Shrugged being based around this instead of the shit filth cock cheese it was based off of.
P.334:
"For after all, he thought now, lying in the warmth of Takver's sleep, it was joy they were both after--the completeness of being. If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home."
Ahhh, Ursula, you had to go there. Well, she did. But it's the one right-wing moral co-opted by leftists that I always cringe at hearing, even though they're correct. Well, the book had to really hit me in the feels at some point, didn't it.
How did I easily pick up on the fact that there's a character named "Aisenstein" or something like that, but somehow missed that part of The Dispossessed is set in the year "168," which I didn't realize was meant to be "1968" until she referred to it as " '68" at some point towards the end? Facepalm, facepalm, cringe. Silly me.
The Wikipedia article for the book says that Le Guin said she modelled Shevek after Oppenheimer, not Paul Goodman.
Four stars out of five overall for the book. It's pretty good for a book that's more about ideas than plot, but it would be good reading for a college class about various political-philosophical ideas, and it doesn't date badly to its age. I did feel that it was sort of starting to drag its feet in the last 50-75 pages or so, something seemed vaguely missing in the aftermath of the pseudo-climactic event involving the helicopter machine-gunning the protesters (for starters, I'm not sure why Le Guin had the bit with Shevek getting stuck with a poor helpless nameless survivor guy, whom he berates in a manner reminiscent of that part of War Of The Worlds where the narrator gets stuck with the guy who wants to fight back? Who knows) and the ending wasn't much to write home about either. But it was mostly a good book.
Reading "Lavinia" next and will report.
On a final note, I'd seen these guys get shit wrong before, but they HILARIOUSLY missed the point here...
https://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/2090/oneswhowalka.htm
RIP Rob Reiner, got made fun of a lot in his later years over politics but his first few directed movies still find audiences all these years later which is nice. I'm guessing you've probably already heard what happened to him by the time you read this.
Okay!! Catch-up time!
"Honestly, I'd sort of wonder if people in the position of being anarchists in this country wouldn't sort of have to be that to begin with just to survive. But what do I know".
No, that's a fair point.
"One last blow to Ayn Rand. Imagine that stupid 60 page rant at the end of Atlas Shrugged being based around this instead of the shit filth cock cheese it was based off of".
Think I mentioned it before, the online libertarian dipshits pretend they either don't know about Rand, or that they hate her, even through they spout her speil practically verbatum.
Their brilliant counter-move to her stuff being so easy to knock down is to just hunker down, wait, and say it all over again, and hope you forgot.
Hollow mindless fucking people.
"Ahhh, Ursula, you had to go there. Well, she did. But it's the one right-wing moral co-opted by leftists that I always cringe at hearing, even though they're correct. Well, the book had to really hit me in the feels at some point, didn't it".
Glad it had an impact.
I know I'm not deluded to have dug it.
"The Wikipedia article for the book says that Le Guin said she modelled Shevek after Oppenheimer, not Paul Goodman".
Hmm, maybe in basic concept, but she did say somewhere he was her favorite anarchist, and when you read up on Goodman, the parrallels are striking.
Especially when Shevek is complaining about his striving status obsessed students.
That shit's straight out of Goodman.
That chapter gave me nightmare flashbacks to when high school put me into a college prep English class, and it was anything but a reward.
What a goddamned disaster.
Did not fit in with that lot.
I'd've rather they sicced Pinhead on me.
"...the ending wasn't much to write home about either".
She kinda deus ex machina-ed it, but she was painted into a corner of it being a prequel to the rest of the Hainishes.
Shevek had to invent the ansible, and it had to end up in the hands of the League, and not Urras corporations.
Only a small handful of ways to get there.
Re: Rob Reiner.
Yeah, I'll do a thing for it.
It's too raw right now.
I finished "Black Tom" "Vellitt Boe" and "Ring Shout".
Working on the blog for those, then I can start on the Stephen Kings.
What did you read in this college prep English class?
I can only remember Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I liked it all right. I liked all the material all right. I just didn't like the vibe of the other kids, and the teacher made it known he hated my guts. Oh, and my ex-best-friend the sex predator was there. That didn't help. He had his "aren't I such a good boy?" mask on tight. God, he was sickening. I wanted to drop out and get my GED. My mother wouldn't have it. What a nightmare.
I read "Julius Caesar" in high school too. Decent, but it's one of the easier Shakespeare plays. I only vaguely remember the sex predator you're talking about.
Watched "The Luckiest Man In America," that movie based on Michael Larsen, the beardo ice cream truck guy who memorized the board on "Press Your Luck" and cheated the show out of a couple hundred thousand big bucks. It's...pretty weird as it goes along. Very fictionalized. I'm not sure I liked it much. Paul Walter Hauser who plays Michael, is going to play Chris Farley in an upcoming biopic, God knows how that'll turn out. He's a pretty good actor but that's going to be one big sad cringe of a movie.
I also rewatched the "Evil Dead" trilogy for the first time in twenty years--these were some of the first movies I rented when I finally got a DVD player of my own at age 23, and DVD-rental places were still a thing. The first one's the best!!! The approach was freshest and it's amazing what mileage Sam Raimi got out of his budget of two dollars or whatever it was. The other two films maintain that student-film vibe even as Raimi had more money. I had actually forgotten EVERYTHING about "Army Of Darkness" and cackled at the stop motion animation. Kids today probably are too used to heroes who crack one liners, it's like listening to Big Star, you've heard so much stuff derived from it that you might find it hard to like the original thing.
The "Evil Dead" TV show was pretty damned good too. Oh! I was wrong when I said "The Dispossessed" was the only trace that there was an anarchist revival in the 70's. The syndicalist dung collectors in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"! Clearly, the Pythons didn't care for the syndicalists if they made them dung collectors. Everything Dennis said about King Arthur was right on though. Maybe the Pythons were saying "they talk a good game, but they don't have their shit together"?
I think that the dung-collector bit was written by John Cleese, and if you listen to commentary tracks on DVDs, it's either over that bit or the "Life Of Brian" Judean-Popular-People's-Front bit that Cleese says that he thought a lot of the political student groups in the late 60s were full of shit. This isn't entirely out of character for him--Cleese in recent years has voiced a lot of disgust at the woke crowd (so has Terry Gilliam) and I know he got in trouble for going back to the UK to visit his old neighborhood and he said something like that he couldn't recognize it anymore because all the immigrants had changed it or something? He got raked over the coals pretty hard over that as far as I recall. Well, he's still better than Morrissey at any rate...
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