Stanczyk is an unabashed bibliophile. Perhaps I am a bibliophage — bookworm. I certainly devour books — although my wife’s voracious appetite for books puts me to shame. Today’s meme is dystopian thoughts.
A few weeks back (August 15th) I wrote about Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), a dystopian sci-fi novel (which I was not enamored of, literately but has clearly has been a sales success). It has a movie coming out soon. I’ll pass on that too.
I am looking forward to Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road“, dystopian travelogue or dystopian Beat Generation screed upon a scroll movie. Despite, its appalling morality tale stories it was an enthralling novel and to think it was written in just three weeks! I bought its 50th anniversary scroll edition in 2007 and read it in almost a single uninterrupted session — somehow I was channeling Jack’s manic writing pace.
What appealed to me about “On The Road“, was its parallel to Hemingway. Here we have some bohemian types dealing with post-World-War-II issues. This was much the same way as Hemingway and his Paris bohêmes dealt with the post-World-War-I issues. So I read it in that context. This movie too will be out this fall — I cannot wait to see it!
But it is 2012 and we now have a new dystopian sci-fi work that needs consideration. This book too, took three weeks to write. But its author despised it, in spite of its success. The work was “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess. Well it is now the 50th anniversary of that novel’s publishing too. As a young man I was enthralled with the Nadsat (English-Russian) argot spoken by the protagonists again while appalled by the violence. I think Hollywood needs to remake this classic too. Hollywood, knock-knock, pick a director with a Slavic sensibility to capture Euro-Ruso trashy-ness of the mood. I did not care much for Stanley Kubrick’s version.
So this my Monday, Troika of Dystopia re-cast into 2012 … Hmmmm is it a coincidence that this is an election year? This election a bit dystopian too, n’est-ce pas?
Send me some Oomny messel in an email OK?
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