Brace yourselves, another #writing rant incoming for the #FridayReads / #superversive / #WritingCommunity people.

Can we talk for a moment about evil books?

And I mean books that are corrosive to the soul.

I have read few books in my life that I would categorize as evil.

I don't mean a necronomicon. Those books you burn, & don't even ask questions.

No, I mean the books you need to take a shower over.

There are plenty of books I don't finish. Many I don't even start.

I will never read books about child rape. Never. Period. Done. We're finished.

If it's mentioned, a footnote in the crimes of the perp, that's one thing, but I will not sit through reading that.

I will never read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--I'm told the CHAPTER LONG RAPE SCENE is "soooo well written," & I don't care. Period.

If it's so important to the story that the readers need that much detail, screw that. I don't need that in my head, I'm screwed up enough. Thanks.

Rape and particularly child rape, will earn you a spot on my personal capitol punishment list.
http://apiusman.blogspot.com/2015/03/rape-is-not-entertainment.html#more

Meaning I had better not be aware of you within my general vicinity.

We won't even get into 50 Shades of Stupid. Who needs porn? Also, why did it have to be so badly written? Yes, take your pick over what offends me more, the porn or the bad writing.

Though I have heard enough excerpts being read in funny little voices that I do think it's hilarious bad.

There is, of course, crap writing.

George RR Martin seems to spend so much time on snow & ice & dead people I can't bring myself to care. And I tried. And I failed.

Far as I'm concerned, save the world from Martin and run from it. I expect the series to end with everybody dead. That's not evil, that's just a one-trick pony. The only reason people seem to be reading the books is to see who the last one standing is.

Then there's Dan Brown message fiction. His last one, Inferno, ended with 1/3 of the world being sterilized. Instead of our heroes stopping it, they shrug and go "Oh well, the bad guy was right, overpopulation is the real villain. Screw these people."
http://www.declanfinn.com/2015/07/the-politics-of-damned.html

No, that's not exactly how they put it, but it's what I walked away with.

One book I finished in my youth was called MacTeague, something film buffs would know of via the train wreck that was the 9-hour Eric von Strohiem film Greed.

Premise: big dumb dentist fell in love with best friend's girl. The best friend "magnanimously" allows title doofus to marry girl. Girl then wins lotto & clings to every penny like Scrooge. It ends with his wife for the cash, riding into the desert, pursued by former best friend

Ex-Best friend is interested only in the money).

The finale is the two of them, in the desert, with no water, both horses dead, still arguing about the money.

All the while I could hear Indiana Jones from Temple of Doom, screaming "You, are going, to DIE."

I think that was the second time in my life I flung a book across the room. Because evil and stupid people, all of whom you'd rather see die...all die. And you wonder "Why did I just burn brain cells on all of this?"

Answer: Because it was assigned reading in high school.

Sadly, most crap books I had to finish were due to "education." Lord of the Flies & Catcher in the Rye added nothing to my life. The first was just literary Thomas Hobbes (who sucks anyway); the other was a teenage a nervous breakdown because he couldn't handle becoming a grownup

Later, we have discovered that Lord of the Flies was pure BS-- we have a case where that situation occurred, and they all survived. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

As CS Lewis' demon Screwtape put it "Of course you can't tempt your primary soul today, that field that protects him comes from reading a good book. You must stop him from doing that. You want him to read "important" books. Books that he'll hate."

CC: @RDPaolinelli

So, do yourself a favor everyone. Go out, and read fun books. Books you're going to enjoy. Because life is too short because someone tells you "this book is important."

Now riddle me this, Batman, what makes good fiction? Or at least not-evil books?

Let's use a negative example.

Baldacci's Guilty has our hero Will Robie go home to rural MS after his father is arrested for murder.

Conclusion?

Robie's high school sweetheart had been repeatedly raped and molested by her own father, had a kid as a result, & spent decades on revenge on Robie for not personally rescuing her (though he himself had no knowledge of the abuse at the time).

Fun, huh?

No, not really.

I think this is a good example of something that is not edifying.

Seriously, it's right up there with how rape is not entertainment.

You need something that at least adds to you as a person, as opposed to crap in evil books, which at least makes you want to take a shower

Good fiction should at least be uplifting in some degree.

That was the nice thing about #SadPuppies, --the books were edifying: Neal Stephenson, John C Wright, John Ringo, good solid fiction.

Technically, edifying, or superversive, fiction, isn't new. It's very old fashioned, beginning /middle /end, good guys bad guys fiction.

Let's take a look at a classic film where the good guys and bad guys aren't exactly traditional:

For example, The Sting.

The protagonists there aren't "good" in the usual sense; they're all con artists. But there's the difference between the more standard rogue versus the film's antagonist, Doyle Lonagan (played by the impeccable Robert Shaw, who could do whatever the bloody heck he liked, really).

Our antagonists are murderous pricks, and our protagonists are simple thieves. In the hierarchy of sins, most people will go for the thief over the killer.

I won't say that The Sting is perfect, but as far as con movies go, it was one of the first.

Though I think White Collar and Leverage have done better since then. (Best car chase of all time: The Rock ... or The Dead Pool. Bullitt was just okay in comparison, though I will acknowledge it).

But at the end of the day, The Sting is just plane FUN. It's about pulling one over on a truly evil SOB.

That's 1 of my problems with Twilight--is anything uplifting? Best interpretation was John C. Wright; Twilight was about a man being uplifted & improved by a woman.

Sadly, I look at it and see a self-involved, petulant little girl who manipulates everyone around her in her quest to become a super-powered monster, as opposed to the plain old blood-thirsty creature she already was. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Wright are more perceptive than I am

Though I have trouble seeing beyond, well, The Nostalgia Critic version.

http://apiusman.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-are-sexist-books-best-sellers.html

Let's look at The Prisoner--as bizarre and as trippy as it was -- which it was one man versus society, or the system, & resisting all trips & traps and snares designed to make him roll over & play dead, to be just like everybody else. It's something that adds to your life.

Superversive fiction is basic, almost simple storytelling in comparison to some of the crap I've seen that tries to be "art."

It's the difference between Jackson Pollack & Alex Ross. Pollack splashes on a canvas, we're told it's art.

Alex Ross is "merely" a comic book artist ... hung in the Smithsonian.

At the end of the day, The Sting is better fiction than MacTeague. It's rogues versus a villain. It's Die Hard versus an art house film. One uplifts and edifies and builds you up.

Most of the "art" seems dedicated to tearing us down, punishing optimism and believing that you're anymore than the glorified meat machines of secular humanism.

At the end of the day, there is more artistry in Die Hard than in an Dan Brown or an Ann Leckie novel -- trust me, I did a two-part blog on it and barely scratched the surface.

http://apiusman.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-die-hard-is-most-perfect-movie-ever.html

http://apiusman.blogspot.com/2014/12/die-hard-is-perfect-part-2.html