Category - Books

1
Black Humour
2
Transgressive Fiction II
3
Transgressive Fiction
4
My Year In Books
5
Christmas Book Stampede
6
Amazon Versus Publishing
7
Famous Authors Who Died Poor II
8
Posthumously Famous Authors IV
9
Controversial Authors (Part 5)
10
Controversial Authors (Part 4)

Black Humour

My second book, Necropolis (Release date: April 24th) is a humorous work of dark fiction about a sociopath named Dyson, who works for the Burials and Cemeteries department in his local council.  This week’s blog post is dedicated to the black humour genre.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines black humour (black comedy) – As writing that juxtaposes morbid or ghastly elements with comical ones that underscore the senselessness or futility of life.

(Note: Click on links to read my review of the given book)

Prior to the 1960’s the term black comedy was not commonly used.  Early exponents include Joseph Heller, Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut.

It could be argued that the antecedents of the genre include the 5th Century BC Greek comedian Aristophanes and Voltaire’s seminal work, Candide.

Contemporary authors who utilise black humour in their writing include Irvine Welsh, Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less Than Zero & Glamorama), Andrey Kurkov (Death And The Penguin) and Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Haunted, Damned, DoomedChoke).

BlackHumour2

The following is a short extract from my forthcoming book, Necropolis.

Why, when I work in Burials and Cemeteries, is everyone always so alive?  Take this morning for instance.  Council workers mingle incessantly in the passageways, talking animatedly about the usual banalities; Christmas shopping, weekend plans and family updates – anything other than work.  The telephone rings remorselessly, the in-tray creaks under its heavy burden and there are requests too.  Frank asking me to proof-read a sheltered housing proposal document, the education department with a question about Sage, and Grace, appearing at my desk, crucifix dangling from her neck, requesting that I speak to a Guyanese council leisure facility user on the telephone in French.  On such a sunny day I only wish I were alone in Newton Old, perched on a grave, reading a newspaper and drinking a cafe latte extra hot with soy milk from Starbucks.

Transgressive Fiction II

My second book, Necropolis, is a humorous work of dark fiction about a psychopath, who works for the Burials and Cemeteries department in his local council.  Necropolis could be described as Transgressive fiction, and it is for this reason that I have dedicated two blog posts to the subject.

Transgressive literature is a genre that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways.

Protagonists in Transgressive literature are in one form or other rebelling against society.  Due to this they may appear to be anti-social, nihilistic or even sociopathic.  Transgressive literature deals with potentially controversial subjects such as sex, drugs, crime, violence and paraphilia.

Last week we looked at a number of early and mid 20th Century authors, who wrote books that could be labelled as Transgressive.  The authors were James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Vladimir Nabokov and William S. Burroughs.  This week we continue in the same vein with:

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski August 16th 1920 – March 9th 1994

Notable Transgressive Works: Post Office, Factotum, Women, Ham on Rye

Charles Bukowski’s writing could best be described as Dirty realism and/or Transgressive literature.  Heavily influenced by his home city of Los Angeles, Bukowski wrote about disillusionment, alcohol consumption, women, a loathing of authority and the dehumanising nature of low-level work, all presented in his unique visceral writing style.  His seminal work, Post Office, is a semi-autobiographical account of his years of drudgery at the post office prior to writing the book by the same name.  Bukowski is a cult figure, whose writing remains popular to this day, despite the fact that he has been accused by some of being misogynistic.

Click here to read my blog post about Charles Bukowski

Click on the links to read my reviews of Post Office, Factotum & Pulp

Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Thompson July 18th 1937 – February 20th 2005

Notable Transgressive Works: Hells Angels, Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary

Hunter S. Thompson was a controversial author and journalist with a penchant for alcohol, drugs and guns.  The Gonzo Journalist’s most famous work, the cult classic, Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, is about a journalist and his attorney consuming a vast array of pharmaceuticals in Las Vegas.  First published in nineteen seventy-one against the backdrop of Vietnam, and President Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs, the book can be viewed as a savage indictment of a corrupt, violent, ignorant, polarised and disillusioned nation, hell-bent on a path to self-destruction.

Click here to read my blog post about Hunter S. Thompson

Click here to read my review of Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas

Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh Born: 27 September 1958

Notable Transgressive Works: Trainspotting, The Acid House, Skagboys, Filth, Porno

As the titles of many of the iconic Scottish writer’s books suggest, Irvine Welsh’s controversial themes include, drug abuse, soccer hooliganism, sexual perversion, inner city poverty and brutality.  His first book, Trainspotting, about Scottish housing scheme dwelling heroin addicts, disgusted some in the literary world, was later adapted for the cinema and is now regarded as a cult classic.  Perhaps Welsh’s most controversial book, Filth, has a tapeworm afflicted, misanthropic, corrupt policeman as its protagonist, whose pastimes include sexual abuse and gorging on junk good, alcohol and cocaine.

Bret Easton Ellis

Easton-Ellis Born: March 7th 1964

Notable Transgressive Works: Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama, The Informers 

Disillusioned, nihilistic and even sociopathic characters are the staple of cult author Bret Easton Ellis’s books. His most famous work, the infamous American Psycho, caused outrage even before it was published, as many in the literary establishment were disgusted with the sexual violence and what some viewed as the misogynistic nature of its contents.  American Psycho went on to become one of the most influential books of the nineties and secured the author his legacy as an important literary figure.

Click here to read my reviews of Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama & Lunar Park

Chuck Palahniuk

ChuckPalahniuk Born: February 21st 1962 

Notable Transgressive Works: Fight Club, Haunted, Choke, Snuff

Palahniuk has constantly courted controversy with the content of his books.  Fight Club, which remains to this day his most celebrated effort, was viewed as extremely controversial when the film version was released in 1999, only six months after the Columbine school shootings.

Palahniuk’s dark and disturbing fiction has continued to scandalise ever since.  His book Haunted is often voted in polls as one of the most disturbing books ever written.  In Turkey, the translator of Palahniuk’s book, Snuff, was detained and interrogated by the police over what the authorities regarded as the book’s offensive content.

Click on the links to read my reviews of Choke, Damned, Fight Club & Haunted

 

 

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Transgressive Fiction

Transgressive literature is a genre that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways.

Protagonists in Transgressive literature are in one form or other rebelling against society.  Due to this they may appear to be anti-social, nihilistic or even sociopathic.  Transgressive literature deals with potentially controversial subjects such as sex, drugs, crime, violence and paraphilia.

Though fiction of this kind has only relatively recently been labelled as Transgressive, its origins lie in the literature of the past.  The writing of the Marquis de Sade, Émile Zola and even Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seminal work, Crime and Punishment, have been described as Transgressive, due to what at the time was perceived as their controversial subject matter.

The following 20th Century authors all wrote books that could be labelled as Transgressive.  They are presented in chronological order:

James Joyce

James Joyce February 2nd 1882 – January 13th 1941

 Notable Transgressive Work: Ulysses

James Joyce was a central figure in the modernist avant-garde.  His seminal work, Ulysses, embraced a revolutionary stream of consciousness style that influenced many later writers.  At the time of its publication, the masturbation scene in the book’s Nausicäa episode was viewed as so scandalous that it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the United States.  Ulysses came out victorious and the case is today remembered as a landmark in literary free speech.

Click here to read my blog post about James Joyce

D.H. Lawrence

D.H.Lawrence September 11th 1885 – March 2nd 1930

Notable Transgressive Works: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow

D.H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow faced an obscenity trial and was banned, all copies being seized and burnt by the authorities.  Perhaps his most famous novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, though published was heavily censored, due to what was regarded at the time as its pornographic content.  Thirty years after Lawrence’s death in 1960 Penguin attempted to publish the original version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but were forced to go to trial because of the ‘Obscene Publications Act’ of the previous year.

Click here to read my blog post about D.H. Lawrence

Vladimir Nabokov

NabokovApril 22nd 1899 – July 2nd 1977

Notable Transgressive Work: Lolita

Lolita, Nabokov’s most famous work, is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century.  The book is also amongst the most controversial books of all time due to its sensitive subject matter.  To this day Lolita continues to court controversy.  In 2013 the producer of a long-running one-man show in Saint Petersburg, in which Leonid Mozgovoy reads out passages from Lolita on-stage, was assaulted after being accused of being a paedophile.

Click here to read my review of Lolita

William S. Burroughs

WilliamBurroughsFebruary 5th 1914 – August 2nd 1997

 Notable Transgressive Works: Junkie, Queer, The Soft Machine, Naked Lunch

The writers of The Beat Generation wrote about disillusionment and rebellion.  One of its most famous exponents, William S. Burroughs, was a controversial character with a penchant for rent boys and heroin, who rebelled against the social norms of his era by writing about disillusionment, drugs and homosexuality.  Arguably his most famous book, the non-linear Naked Lunch was viewed as so scandalous at the time of its publication that it underwent a court case under U.S. obscenity laws.  In 2012 a Turkish publisher faced obscenity charges after releasing a Turkish translation of The Soft Machine.

Click here to read my review of Queer

Click here to read Transgressive Fiction Part 2

My Year In Books

Shortly before Christmas goodreads emailed me a report listing the 22 books that I had read during the calendar year.

2013(Click on the book links to read my reviews).

Transgressive Fiction/Black Humour

As my second book, Necropolis, due out this spring (date to confirmed soon) is a work of dark fiction, a significant proportion of the books (27%) that I read last year were of the Transgressive Fiction/Black Humour variety.  They were:

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Haunted by Chuck Palahaniuk
Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis

Beat Generation

Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Queer by William S. Burroughs

Indie Books

Barry Braithwaite’s Last Life by A R Lowe
The Earth Shifter by Lada Ray

Others

Candide by Voltaire
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Red House by Mark Haddon
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Pure by Andrew Miller
Pulp by Charles Bukowski

Biggest Disappointments

I enjoyed 19 of the 22 books that I read last year.  The exceptions were Pure, The Red House & The Men Who Stare At Goats.  The following 2 shared the honour of Biggest Disappointment of the year.  I appreciate that many readers will disagree with me on these, especially regarding my choice of Pure, the winner of The Costa Prize in 2011.

PureParis’s oldest cemetery, Les Innocents, is overflowing, the city’s deceased having been piled in there for years, resulting in the surrounding area having been permanently permeated more….

The Red House

Having greatly enjoyed A Spot of Bother and The Curious Incident by the same author, I was very much looking forward to reading The Red House more…

Favourite Book of 2013

This was a difficult decision as I really enjoyed so many of the books that I read last year.  After much deliberation I decided that Fight Club, Maggie Cassidy and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich were my favourites. The one that made the biggest impression on me was Solzhenitsyn’s controversial and morose novella, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a book that I am yet to review.

Ivan Denisovich

I look forward to hearing about your 2013 reading experiences.

Christmas Book Stampede

With approximately 14% of the year’s total book sales being made in the final four weeks of the year, the Christmas period is crucial for the publishing industry.

Today’s blog post looks at some of the titles expected to compete with my humorous tale of the unexpected, Charles Middleworth, for centre stage this festive period.  Here in the UK, the bookies anticipate that the following three books will be found jammed into stockings and underneath Christmas trees in greater numbers than any other this year.

Xmas Books(Courtesy of Cogito Books)

 In order they are:

1).  Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

Comment: You know its Christmas when everywhere you turn a sport star/celebrity stares back at you from a shiny front cover, a beaming smile upon their countenance.  This year the former Manchester United manager’s imaginatively titled memoir is expected to give the hairdryer treatment to all challengers (by mid-December it had already sold over 79,000 hardback copies).

2).  Save With Jamie: Shop Smart, Cook Clever, Waste Less by Jamie Oliver

Comment: Middle age and an expanding girth has done nothing to dampen the nation’s appetite for everything Jamie.  Could the pucker chef top the Christmas bestseller charts for the fourth year in a row?

3).  Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy – Helen Fielding

Comment: Oh no not again, haven’t we all had enough Bridget Jones for one lifetime.  Evidently I am in the minority on this.

The popularity of these three titles is not a big surprise, especially the inclusion of Jamie Oliver, whose annual Christmas cookbooks have become as predictable as a visit from Santa.  Having featured in the top three Christmas bestsellers in the UK for seven of the last twelve years, to mention nothing of his endless festive period television exposure, it would come as no surprise in several thousand years time if historians studying early twenty-first century man concluded that Christmas was in fact a Jamie Oliver celebration day.

Xmas Kindle(Courtesy of ContentBox Blog)

Across the pond comedian and Twitter deity, Rob Delaney, is making headlines with the release of his first book, Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.  The bizarre titled book is purportedly a comical account of the funny man’s struggles with alcoholism in his youth.

Whilst America has embraced Delaney with open arms, they have been less enamoured with former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin’s, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas, in which the geography challenged hockey mom warns of the dangers to Christmas posed by seculars, whilst at the same time attempting to make a fortune out of it.  The book could best be described as part theological statement, part recipe book.  There is nothing I would less like to find in my stocking this year – with the possible exception of an incendiary device or David Hasselhoff’s album, The Night Before Christmas.

With some claiming that up to six million e-readers could be bought as presents this Christmas, vast quantities of ebooks will also be purchased.  There seems little doubt that a surprise Christmas bestseller will be unearthed as a result.  Here’s for hoping my humorous and insightful work of fiction, Charles Middleworth (£2.02/$3.29) will be one of them.  Charles Middleworth is available from all regional Amazons in paperback and on Kindle.

Happy Christmas

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(Click on image to read the great reviews)

 

 

 

Amazon Versus Publishing

The ongoing battle for dominance of the publishing industry saw Amazon emerge victorious from the ‘Ebook Wars’, its heavily armed Kindles decimating Barnes and Nobles’s woefully under-equipped Nooks.  The ‘Pricing Wars’, which included an ambitious offensive by vigilante book retailer Overstock, who implemented an aggressive bestselling titles discount campaign, is now little more than a skirmish after Overstock made a predictable tactical retreat thereby avoiding being annihilated by Amazon.

Amazon’s ambitious empire expansion plans have entailed a campaign to lure customers to switch allegiances to them.  The company’s strategy of rolling-out a series of new programs has had the dual purpose of distinguishing themselves from their competitors while crucially keeping Amazon in the media spotlight.  Recent innovations include – Kindle First, Kindle Matchbook, Amazon Smile, Day One, Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Kindle Freetime subscriptions.

Tank2(Courtesy of www.clker.com)

Kindle First and Kindle Countdown are arguably the two programs that offer the most benefit for readers, authors and publishers alike.  Kindle First allows Prime Members the opportunity to download one free ebook per month ahead of an official launch, whilst the Kindle Countdown, which is open to all customers, highlights discounted ebooks, at the same time putting pressure on customers to make quick purchases due to the timer which ticks down the days, hours and minutes until the deal expires.  As with Amazon’s Kindle Select offering, publishers are only eligible for inclusion on the condition that the given title is exclusive to the Kindle platform (i.e. the title has been removed from competitors platforms) and is discounted by at least a dollar (£0.62).

Amazon5 copyAmazon’s approach has no doubt been successful to date, the fact that they control about 75% of the ebook market in the US and Canada pays testimony to this.  Amazon is also striving to expand its empire into new markets, particularly Asia, as well as various other territories, including countries like Poland, where ebook sales are expected to increase more than ten times between 2011 and 2016.

However new threats to Amazon’s continuing dominance of the ebook market have emerged in the form of supermarkets.  In the UK, Sainsbury’s have declared a discount war against Amazon.  Last month Sainsbury’s offered ebook titles from bestselling authors at 99p for periods ranging from one day to an entire month.  These ebooks are accessible through Android, Adobe Readers, Kobo devices and Nooks, but crucially not via Amazon’s kindle offerings.  Sainsbury’s nemesis Tesco are also getting in on the action, having recently brought out their own-brand tablet, the Hudl (modestly priced at £119).  To date the Hudl has been well received by customers and analysts alike.

KindleFire(Courtesy of www.droid-life.com)

Despite the fact that Amazon have established a position of dominance, the future remains uncertain.  It was not so many years ago that Microsoft were in complete ascendency of their market yet now that supremacy is being eroded.

Click here to read my post about Amazon’s Asian expansion.

Famous Authors Who Died Poor II

The following post is dedicated to two world famous and iconic authors, who died poverty stricken.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

(October 16th 1854 – November 30th 1900)

Notable works: The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian  Gray.

The flamboyant Oscar Wilde was a writer, poet and playwright, acclaimed for his enduring wit and writing abilities.  At the height of his fame in the early 1890s’ Wilde was a successful playwright and a mainstay of the London social scene.

However his world was to come crashing down with his arrest for gross indecency with other men in 1895.  A guilty verdict and the resulting legal fees forced the author into bankruptcy.   Sentenced to two years of hard labour, the intellectual Wilde, who was used to a life of relative luxury, suffered terribly, his health going into marked decline.  Many of his friends deserted him, his name was removed from marquees where his plays were showing and the sale of his tragedy Salome fell through.

The Irish playwright was to never recover and at the age of forty-six Oscar Wilde died virtually destitute of cerebral meningitis in Paris.  His final address was made from the squalid Hotel d’Alsace where he had taken up residence.  He wrote:

‘This poverty really breaks one’s heart, it is so sale, so utterly depressing, so hopeless.’

O.Henry

O.Henry

(September 11th 1862 – June 5th 1910)

Notable works: The Gift of the Magi, The Ransom of Red Chief, A Retrieved Reformation. 

Born William Sidney Porter, O.Henry is remembered as a renowned and prolific short-story writer.  The author published hundreds of short-stories during his lifetime, many of which contained his trademark surprise ending.

O.Henry’s early writing career included founding Rolling Stone, an unsuccessful humour weekly and writing a column for The Houston Daily Post.  In 1898 Henry was sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling funds whilst employed at First International Bank.

On being released early in 1891 for good behaviour Henry moved to New York City where he made a comeback.  In the ten years prior to his demise  he published over three hundred stories and became America’s favourite short-story writer.  However when he died in 1910 Henry was virtually penniless.  This was no doubt due in part to the alcoholism that afflicted him in later years and the fact he was carefree with money, on several occasions spending his advances, but not delivering the promised story or script.

Click here to read Part One.

Posthumously Famous Authors IV

This is the final instalment of the Posthumously Famous Authors series.

Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau

(July 12th 1817 – May 6th 1862)

Notable works: Civil Disobedience, Walden, The Works of Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod.

An author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, environmentalist and transcendentalist, the multi-dimensional Henry David Thoreau’s prodigious writing output consists of nearly twenty volumes of writing.  Thoreau was well known as a transcendentalist, naturalist and ardent abolitionist during his lifetime and even succeeded in having two books published, neither of which were very popular.  He famously self-published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but only sold three hundred of the one thousand copies that he had printed.

It was only after Thoreau’s death in 1862, aged forty-four, from tuberculosis, that the respected but largely under-appreciated writer began to receive the attention that he deserved.  The event that was to herald this transformation was the publishing of his journal in 1906.  Thoreau’s works were to become increasingly popular over the course of the twentieth-century.

Today Thoreau is recognised as being one of the greatest writers America has ever produced.  His views on politics and nature, in addition to his modern prose style having assured him of a place in history.  Thoreau’s memory is honoured by The International Thoreau Society, which is both the largest and oldest society dedicated to an American author.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

(January 19th 1809 – October 7th 1849)

Notable works: The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death, Tamerlane & Other Poems.

Edgar Allan Poe was an author, poet, literary critic and editor who flirted with fame for much of his working life.  If it were not for his rather premature death, the cause of which is debated to this day, with theories ranging from tuberculosis to rabies, Poe might indeed have become famous.

Poe relished the macabre, a reoccurring theme in much of his writing.  Unfortunately there was little appetite for the genre during his lifetime.  However he did achieve a degree of popularity though not financial success with his poem, The Raven.  (Poe was reportedly paid $9 for The Raven, a very modest sum even in the 1840s).

Today Poe is remembered not only as being one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, but is also generally considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre.  Evidence of the writer’s endearing popularity is the fact that an original copy of Poe’s Tamerlane and Other Poems sold at Christie’s in New York for $662,500, a record price for a work of American literature.

Controversial Authors (Part 5)

This is the final instalment of the Controversial Authors series.  Initially I planned for the series to have only three parts, but there are so many authors that have been regarded as controversial through the course of history that I added an additional two.

Thomas Paine

ThomasPaine

(January 29th 1737 – June 8th 1809)

Notable works: Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason

Thomas Paine was a political activist, author, political theorist, revolutionary and one of America’s Founding Fathers.  He arrived in America from England in 1774, just in time to participate in The American Revolution.  Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), sold an estimated half-a-million copies during the course of the revolution and is regarded as one of the most influential works of the eighteenth-century.

However when Thomas Paine died in 1809, his funeral was only attended by six people and his obituaries were universally scathing.  Abraham Lincoln’s friends even burned a booklet he had written and over a hundred years after Paine’s demise, Theodore Roosevelt referred to him as a ‘filthy little atheist.’  If Paine had been martyred in The American Revolution there seems little doubt that his face would be gracing bills today.  It was the controversy of his later writing, particularly The Age of Reason (1794) that were to seal his remarkable fall from grace.

In The Age of Reason Paine defended freedom against what he regarded as religious dogmatism, in the same manner that he had defended freedom against political tyranny during The American Revolution.  The book was essentially a critique of The Bible, in which the author aired his own personal views on organised religion.  These views were extremely controversial at the time of its publication and were to remain so over the forthcoming years.  Though the author stated his strong personal belief in spirituality in the book, he was accused of being an atheist, something that was to cost what many view as his rightful place of honour amongst the The Founding Fathers.

Chuck Palahniuk

ChuckPalahniuk

(Born: February 21st 1962)

Notable works: Fight Club, Haunted, Choke

Born in Pasco, Washington state, the American novelist and freelance journalist of Ukrainian descent, has constantly courted controversy with the content of his books; no mean feat in today’s era of tolerance.  Palahniuk’s first novel, Invisible Monsters, a fictional story about a model who is shot in the face, was rejected by publishers for its disturbing content.  His next effort, Fight Club, which remains to this day his most celebrated, saw the author attempt to be yet more controversial and scandalous than in his first effort.  To Palahniuk’s surprise the book was published.  It went on to become an international success, in no small part due to it being adapted for the big screen.

The film was extremely controversial at the time of its release in 1999, only six months after the Columbine school shootings.  There had been much publicity over the perceived role of violent media in relation to the incident and Fight Club was viewed by many as glamourising violence.  Real fight clubs soon began appearing throughout the United States and beyond, only adding to the furore.

Palahniuk’s dark and disturbing Fiction has continued to scandalise ever since.  The short story, Guts, about masturbation accidents, contained in his book, Haunted, was met with such shock that people even passed out at public readings, only adding to the author’s notoriety.   Haunted is often voted in polls as one of the most disturbing books ever written and has been banned along with the author’s other works in many schools.  In Turkey, the translator of Palahniuk’s book, Snuff, was detained and interrogated by the police over what the authorities regarded as the book’s offensive content.

There seems little doubt that the author’s graphic depictions of violence and sex will cause more controversy, especially with further adaptations of Palahniuk’s books due for the silver screen in the near future.

Click on the links to read my reviews of Fight Club, Haunted and Damned and Adam’s (resident book reviewer’s) review of Survivor.

Click here to read Part 4 of Controversial Authors.

Controversial Authors (Part 4)

I initially said that Part 3 of the Controversial Authors Series would likely be the final instalment, but I have since changed my mind.  It seems fairly likely that there will also be a Part 5, possibly next week.

John Steinbeck

JohnSteinbeck

(February 27th 1902 – December 20th 1968)

Notable works: Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden

Born in Salinas, California, John Steinbeck went on to become a prolific novelist and short-story writer, and one of the most acclaimed literary figures America has ever produced.  Steinbeck’s accolades include The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1940) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1962).

Steinbeck was and still is, though to a lesser extent, regarded as a very controversial author.  Arguably his greatest work, The Grapes of Wrath, has been banned by many school-boards down the years.  The book was even burned on two separate occasions in the author’s home town of Salinas.  According to The American Library Association, Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004.

The author’s left-wing leanings are a reoccurring theme in much of his writing.  Steinbeck was very critical of capitalism and a supporter of unionisation, as witnessed in In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath.  Unionisation was highly controversial at the time of their publication, as it was viewed by many Americans as being inherently communist, a label incidentally often levelled at Steinbeck himself.

Steinbeck’s most famous book, The Grapes of Wrath, is about a poor family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their land during the 1930s’ Dust Bowl and The Great Depression.  In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck advocates for the under-privileged, concentrating on social injustice, poverty and criticism of the nation’s economic plight, something that was fiercely debated at the time of its publication and beyond.

Click on the links to read my reviews of In Dubious Battle, The Wayward Bus and Sweet Thursday.

George Orwell

GeorgeOrwell

(June 25th 1903 – January 21st 1950)

Notable works: Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Born Eric Arthur Blair in British occupied India, author and journalist George Orwell was interested in social injustice, opposed to totalitarianism and committed to democratic socialism; ideals that resulted in the author often courting controversy, something which appears to have appealed to the opinionated writer.  So strongly was Orwell opposed to Fascism that he even volunteered to fight in The Spanish Civil War against the Fascists.  His experiences there gave rise to his book, Homage to Catalonia (1938).

Orwell’s most famous work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, a book that warned of totalitarian censorship, has been viewed as controversial since its publication due to its themes of nationalism, censorship and sexual repression.  The book was banned in Russia shortly after the translated version came out there, as it was deemed to be a thinly disguised attack on Stalin’s Soviet Union.  Ironically however in 1981, parents in Jackson County, Florida, challenged that the book was ‘pro-communist’ and contained ‘explicit sexual content.’

Animal Farm, a blend of animal fable and political satire was finished in 1944, but so controversial was the subject matter that it was not published until more than a year later, so concerned were the British government that the content would offend the country’s communist allies.  The book is widely viewed as being an attack on Stalin and his totalitarian rule.  Not surprisingly Animal Farm was banned in Soviet countries due to its perceived political content.  The book was often used for propaganda purposes by anti-communist factions in the U.S., something that concerned the author greatly.

It was not only his two most famous works that were viewed as being controversial.  Orwell’s portrayal of the life of English industrial workers, particularly coal-miners, in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier, was regarded as such at the time of its publication in the U.K.

Click on the links to read my reviews of The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London.

Click here to read Part 3.

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