Does anyone think Dean Koontz might be a wee bit nutso? Not just because of the creepy horror-ness of his books, which is bad enough, (and if he was, then King, Straub, et al would also have to be nuts–maybe they are.) But this whole kick he’s on in recent years of repeating religious and intelligent-dog themes in his stories.
Morrison–not insane–I believe she was influenced by the “magical realism” trend wafting up from Latin America–subtle magical realism can look pretty daft.
Nietzsche–yeah, you get an insane vibe.
Gogol–probably personally insane, but Dead Souls and The Overcoat are nonetheless pretty mainstream Russian–which had a real absurdist tinge for a while because of the surreal environment it addressed.
Ezra Pound–actually certified, but went insane mid-writing career. His later work, while far inferior to his earlier, is not so much insane however as just uninteresting (and also unfiltered as far as his prejudices went).
All IMHO, of course.
Whoops, sorry about the typo. I was posting from work, and a little tired. :smack:
I find it appropriate that he was the first author mentioned after the OP. As I said in another thread:
It isn’t just that the sexual violence is there, it is the fixation on it to the exclusion of any normal sexual interaction. He actually has an entire elite force of female tight-red-leather-wearing magic-stealing sadomasochists. This guy has some serious issues.
And he is a bad writer.
“Recent years?” Watchers was published in the 70s IIRC. What would make me doubt Koontz’s sanity is the whole religious theme, which isn’t just the idea that God exists or you should have faith, which would not be abnormal at all, but his fixation with the more weird frings aspects of fundamentalist Christianity that has indeed seemed to take up more and more of his work the last few years.
I realized that Sheri S. Tepper was a crazy Rand-ian freak after reading about “Fidipur” in her book Beauty.
She shows a highly distopian future where charitable acts of trying to grow food for the poor have literally eaten up the planet and taken up all the land. Because as you all know, unless you let the shiftless (and their children) die of starvation,which is exactly what they deserve, they will eventually require every inch of arable land in order to stuff their worthless faces. :rolleyes:
Not insanity, just something I disagree with: She also subscribes very firmly to the belief that men and women are inherently different (other than the obvious ways), which I find problematic in this age of trans/genderqueer/intersex/non-gendered individuals.
I’ve recently been on a Stirling kick, and I can think of only one main character who was gang raped, which was Swindapa from the Nantucket books. The other sexual violence is plot or character-driven. Like the ritual rape of the woman who wanted to play nice with the Olmecs, which I think was specifically set up to show how incredibly nasty that culture was. The asian nurse makes Kali look like a candystriper from the start, and he shies away from portraying much of anything that she actually does. It’s more effective that way because the reader’s brain supplies the details.
Other Stirling books, like the Draka and the Dies the Fire ones, mention rape as part of conquering, but it’s mostly as an aside. Historically, what he shows is about what happens in those situations. If anything, he’s quite sparing in the details. I think you’re way off base on this. Besides which, the author’s own opinion of reading too much into the characters is: “There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is ‘idiot.’”
I have trouble reading stories from the point of view of crazy protagonists because I’m prone to more or less falling into the book. Seeing through their eyes disturbs me, particularly if their hang ups are uncomfortably close to my own. I was way too given to excessive introspection in my late teens, early twenties, which is unfortunately when I had to read Dostoevsky. The character in Notes from Underground, in particular, is a bloody basket case. I later found out that Dostoevsky’s characters were all more than a little askew, and it was probably because he was a bit crazy himself. Not that you can hold it against him, considering the epilepsy, imprisonment, hardships, and probable brain chemistry problems, but I have an intense dislike of his books because of his crazy characters.
I’ve had to read hundreds, to possibly thousands of pages related to philosophy since I was a Lit. major and I’d have to agree that philosophers as a group are way the hell out there mentally. My personal opinion is that most of their arguments are specious and their writing is deliberately opaque in order to confound analysis; in other words, they’re generally completely full of shit. I’ve never experienced any epiphanies about the workings of the universe or religion through reading philosophy, but I have learned that it’s entirely possible to ramble on for pages in a less coherent manner than your average psych patient and actually be respected for it, as long as you use enough big words.
There are probably more whacko Japanese authors than sane ones. Standout crazies are: Mishima Yukio, whose imbalance glares forth from just about every page of every story he ever wrote. He committed seppuku after failing to incite an uprising against the “Western-imposed” post-War government. Osamu Dazai, whose No Longer Human featured a character who was, to me, almost unreadably nuts, offed himself after finishing this, his last book.
(Naturally, No Longer Human is my wife’s favorite piece of literature because she felt that “someone finally understood me.” :rolleyes: What does it say about my mental state that I married her despite this?)
Part of the problem I have with Stirling is that his “Leaf Eater” stories in the Man-Kzin Wars books are incredibly disturbing to me for what happened to the female human character in them. They’re very well-written stories, don’t mistake me - just disturbing in ways that I can’t set aside. Then, the major female character in The Reformer was also gang raped. (Granted as part of a pirate raid - completely legitimate description of what did happen in those situations.) It may be I’m tarring his works unfairly. I should back up, a bit, though, and admit I’ve not read more than a tithe of his works - so you’re more likely to right than I was. I’m not about to do the reading I’d need to do, however, to prove the point one way or the other.
I can’t explain why, but every time I read John Irving or see a movie based on his work I get this overwhelming feeling that he is, in fact, mad as a hatter.
Funny, I was going to mention Leo Frankowski. His Crosstime Engineer books just got creepier and creepier. It’s that whole, you know, obsession with sub-human female sex objects. And how a real man should want a 14 year old girl.