You couldn’t think of a single other example of transgressive literature? Really? Because if you’ve only ever read that one book (and one is frankly left with the impression that’s the case), you’re not the best person to recommend literature of any kind to anyone.
And to do this you thought Curtis, a child, had to read about (WARNING POSSIBLE TRIGGERS) and eleven-year-old who “assumes the “bottom” role in these sex acts, either fellating the men, licking their anuses, or stroking their testicles”, who joins in the organized rape of women, and probably all kinds of other stuff that I don’t know about because I can’t make myself read any more of the Wiki page?
You used the Dope to push this stuff on a kid. And a mod knew about it and did nothing. Christ on a cracker. What a den of sexual predators this board is turning into.
You know, some time ago I literally said that I would make no further references on this board to “that book,” and I haven’t. You all are the ones who have been talking about it (including helpfully linking to a graphic, detailed description of it)! All I said was that I had a book to recommend him and that he could PM me for more info.
He did, and we had an interesting and abstract discussion about the concept of transgressive literature and the power of words. And I gained a little more respect for the guy instead of just thinking of him as an immature kid.
Anyway, I read all sorts of literature - Harlan Ellison, Vonnegut, Ballard, Tom Wolfe, Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry and many other kinds of poetry as well - but I think there is a value in transgressive literature because it challenges the reader and offers us important questions about what words and ideas are and how they can affect us. I stand by that. I think it’s important to keep your mind open even to things that are shocking and upsetting.
I think there is value in knowing your place in the world, and your place is most assuredly not to recommend Hogg to 13 year old boys on the internet.
AHEM.
This thread will be locked if there is any further discussion of the book in question or Argent Towers. If you have a personal problem with his suggestion, take it to the Pit, or a new thread about transgressive literature.
I will eighth (or whatever) The Economist.
But if that’s a little too heavy, Newsweek’s new format seems more geared toward serious content and analysis than before. It is at least a better option than Time.
Since we’re not discussing Curtis anymore, I’ll add another vote for The Economist. I’ve read various accusations of bias (in both directions) and it does take positions on a variety of political and economic issues, but AFAICT it doesn’t go for strict partisanship down the line. And it publishes dissenting opinions in the Letters pages (indeed, they’re pretty much all dissenting opinions). Plus you get actual world news coverage, not just dumb animal stories from Romania.
TIME is news pablum - tasteless mush to be spoonfed to the critically toothless. Newsweek - pretty much the same. Try the Economist, CSM, or even Foreign Affairs, as recommended by everyone else.
Ironically, considering the OP, I remember the days when your best bet for insightful, mature social and political commentary was *Playboy * (see? I really did read the articles).
I think he knows that, he just doesn’t want to look at boobs when he’s reading it…
Did somebody here not so long back give a link to google book’s archive of all published Time magazines? I found it fascinating to look at the adverts throughout the last century.
Unfortunately updating Opera this time has wiped all my bookmarks including that link.
Hmmm…that’s actually a pretty cute bathing suit – I like the little star clips. 
(If I were still in high school, I’d probably wear it without hesitation)
(Speaking of being a teen, when I was Curtis’s age, “naughty lit” was V. C. Andrews. How quickly times change! I’ve never even HEARD of “Hogg”, until recently. Now, I wish I hadn’t.)
I don’t know about you, Curtis, but I really hate all the Cialis and Viagra ads during the evening news.
Just to have this in words.
Words are never just words. Pictures are never just pictures. Symbols are never just symbols. Images are never just images.
I understand the argument that you think you’re making. Just as I’ve spent a lot more time studying history than Curtis LeMay, I’m going to make what is almost certainly the equally valid assumption I’ve spent a lot more time studying transgressive literature than you. (And I’ve been reading Delany for over 40 years. I know his work very well.)
George Carlin used to make the same argument in his Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television routine. ["(There are) no bad words- bad thoughts, bad intentions…and words." ] And yet, he made his living on the power of words.
He wasn’t a hypocrite. You can look at words from a meta perspective and rob them of their immediate power. Dictionaries do that every day. Carlin was smart enough to know the lines between words and meta-words, and he was neither the first nor the last to do so.
He would never have said something as sheerly stupid as “words are just words.” The plain simple fact is that they’re not.
Oh GOD. Where’s the fucking brain bleach? Gah! I think I need to go and read Anne of Green Gables just to get over that.
It’s just a swimsuit, dude. :rolleyes:
It was related to the article.
Yes exactly.
Time is a popular publication that, practically by definition, trafficks in the cheap and tawdry. I read it when I was your age and, though they didn’t advertise SI’s swimsuit edition in it 47 years ago, there was plenty that was cheap and tawdry within it, though it was usually covered by a modest hand or pie plate.
You will probably be less disturbed, morally, by The Economist. Politically? At your age I kept a well-worn copy of “The Communist Manifesto” in the back of my Boy Scout pants, both because it was what I was reading and to jerk the chain of my scoutmaster, the FBI’s bureau chief. Yeah, it might’ve earned me a file in the home office, though in retrospect I know that revolutionaries believe themselves far more interesting than anybody else does, but I was either Sticking It To The Man or just Pissing Off Special Agent In Charge Ray S., and I lean toward the latter. And I liked him, even as he pissed me off. Cranky and conservative, but his heart was in the right place.
And why is that?
I don’t understand why bikini-clad women are antithetical to the idea of an educated, “highbrow” look at things. Do wise people not like to look at (presumably) attractive, unclothed people? Are we to assume that only uneducated dullards are that shallow? Honestly, I consider the OP to be either holding “educated” people, or education, it too high esteem, or be committing something of a slight on those who aren’t.
There’s a reason 90% of Nobel laureates are eunuchs, you know.
Anti-Trinitarianism and Annihilationism-both heretical doctrines rejected by Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox churches.