What **elfkin477 **says is true, plus I like her books. I guess I don’t have much a problem with brother sister incest as I’m an only child. Either way, I don’t think she’s quite insane for using that theme.
I am trying to think of authors I think are insane. I think Heinlen is one, in some of his books, but in others he comes off as intelligent. And I’m no fan of Heinlin. I also think Piers Anthony is a sick fuck but I don’t know if that qualifies as “insane”.
(lissener, I think you kind of drifted of into pedantry there.)
Of course, as with white chocolate, one might assert that there is no such thing as “insane”.
BTW, I knew a white girl who had a lot of black friends, to the extent that I was once horrified to hear her repeatedly say the “N word” in a friendly way–to their faces. She explained to me that it was was OK, and their nickname for her was “White Chocolate”.
Not insane, but reading through the Sinfest webcomic, over time I came to understand that the humorous, assholish, mysoginstic main character wasn’t meant to be viewed as assholish and mysoginistic–and the author wasn’t poking fun at such people. That character was essentially what the author thought someone cool is like.
One author who I am relatively sure is a bit loopy is the guy who wrote Narutaru. But that was pretty obvious from the start, and not really something that took time to work in. (Note that I’ve only read the comic. I haven’t seen the animation.)
I’ve frequently gotten pings on the crazy-dar with philosophers. Some of them can get so far up their own asses or so obsessive about an idea that their prose can turn into psychobbble. Nietzsche gives me a lot of that kind of obsessive, disordered vibe.
That’s a bit shallow. I’m a big fan of Sinfest, and it’s always been clear to me that there a …er, comedic tension, if you will, between Slick’s obviously pathetic “pimp” aspirations and what “cool” really is. Yeah, I think Tatsuya Ishida has something invested in the whole “ghetto” vibe, but he’s also a self-mocking, comic-drawing dweeb who got beat up in school.
I get this. I really do. I love fiction. I devoured Stephen King when I was way too young to do so. I get the way a work of fiction works. I know I am *coming off * quite dense about it, but I’m not.
It is just that the stuff that Toni was coming up with…the madness that was spouting from her pen, made me think, 'someone has to be nutty to think this stuff up.
Diogenes, as far as philosophers being mad, I have always thought that too. I have always been fascinated with philosophers. It is like the topic alone will drive insane anyone who dedicates his life to studying it! The meaning of life? You want a pat answer to that? I think I will go ahead and write volumes and volumes trying to answer the unanswerable, and in the mean time, go stark raving mad.
I never really had a problem with the rape aspects of it. I think most fantasy in general is a little dishonest when a city is sacked and rape/brutality isn’t mentioned (I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t directly addressed I’m just talking about white washed fantasy where it’s not mentioned at all). What I had a problem with was how Richard became more and more a mary-sue as the books went on and how he just became a mouthpiece for the author’s views on culture. I don’t need yet another 5-page lecture on being a strong individual who makes up his own mind to follow Richard without question! But if you’re stupid enough to believe any other group then you deserve the total destruction and carnage that will befall you. I also hated that the author didn’t even understand his own ‘wizard’s rules’ I never once read him use the First Rule correctly (people are stupid enough to believe something that’s false or disbelieve something that’s true because they are afraid) I don’t want to get into examples and make this post even longer but whenever it’s brought it it’s ALWAYS because the person tricked by the rule didn’t have complete information and was relying on the information that was available NOT because of fear. Actually I made that sound better then it’s put forth in the book. People are usually tricked by this rule when given dishonest information by a normally honest character (Richard usually) they believe it because there’s no good reason not to at that point not because they’re afraid of his information or different information.
I’d say The Dark Side of Christianity by Helen Ellerbe would be mine. I was almost gleeful when a friend lent me that book. I love history. I love religious history. I love tales of people being bastards. What more could I want? Not that crap. For most of it I was merely pissed at the author’s poor research (though every page was covered in citations quite a few seemed pretty questionable) lack of full disclosure (blames the burning of the Great Library on Christians without mentioning the controversy of who really burned it is in question) general lack of putting anything into context etc etc. But what started bothering me was a subtext that grew more pronounced as the book went on. More and more it seemed like the true crime of the church wasn’t burning books, burning scientists, hell even subjugating women received less and less attention. Turns out separating us from nature is the REAL problem here. The church is joined in this horrible act by it’s unwitting allies scientists (I guess the church was right after all when it burned them make up your mind already), Darwinists and atheists! The last few chapters is just a long rant against how we’re becoming separate from nature and had little to nothing to do with the ‘dark history’ of Christianity or much of anything else for that matter. Went from a bad book to a hilariously bad book in a very short period of time. Makes me want to re-read it just typing about it.
I don’t know the author at all, but when I was about 13 I did a report on Richard Burton. In one of the books I was reading (non-fiction), the author (I think a she) seemed obsessed with any and all sexual exploits he’d had.
Sure, he did translate the Kama Sutra, but what really got to me was the entirely invented stories she threw in. Any city that he visited where there was some secret meeting not fully reported, or where the city wasn’t widely known to Europeans, must have led to some incredible sexual escapades, in her opinion. She always described them in great detail, even while saying that she was speculating. Now I was at an age when that talk seemed a bit more disturbing, but even I could see she had gone rather overboard.
You know, since he was exploring parts of central Africa, too, that means … she must have been obsessed with the black man’s penis.
Dick had some “episodes,” probably drug related, but to my knowledge was never thought to be insane. Certainly not while he was writing the bulk of his oeuvre.
True, he was a heavy drug user, but he had some episodes that weren’t always attributable to drugs, and also speculated on whether he might be schizophrenic.
I read two books by Jerzy Kosinski, Being There &**The Painted Bird **. The latter made me realize he was really messed up, probably because of his childhood<<<shutter>>>
In college, the research I did on Mark Twain convinced me that by the time he was writing Connecticut Yankee he had fallen victim to some very significant mental problems. Not straight-jacket insane, but definitely not the same mind that wrote Huckleberry Finn.
I think Piers Anthony is the only one whose fiction writing made me wonder about their sanity. Especially his apparent obsession with underage sex.
L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction could be very strange, but it was his non-fiction that made me question his sanity. Other non-fiction writers I’ve read that are crazy tend to write on topics like religion, politics, philosophy, health, and science. I’m just waiting for a book that gives you the whole shebang inone place: The philosophy of modern physics is a Satanic plot by Marxist Jews to destroy our health.
