/lit/ - Literature

>>15026563
I've read excerpts of this posted on here and I don't really get the appeal. what do you like about it?

>>15026578

As far as the contents go, I don't think that there's anything redeeming about it. I really enjoyed the prose, though - I think that that's as far as I'll allow myself to go in praise of it. It's immersive and disgusting, and through the writing, you almost feel like you become the narrator, the 11 year old boy being abused. Nearly every page is just violence (either sexual or violence for the sake of violence) and you become so numb to it that it's jarring if there's a paragraph without someone being raped or eating shit.

>>15026563
>>15026627
I really don't want to sound like an edgelord, but damn dude. It's over the top, I couldn't stop myself from picturing it in some kind of mad max style dystopia.
>Nearly every page is just violence (either sexual or violence for the sake of violence)
The only part I think this is true for is the last third (or so. It's been a while since I read it) on the docks, where the kid is getting passed around. If there's a point here, I don't get it.
>I don't think that there's anything redeeming about it.
Hard disagree. I think with an open mind Hogg, both the character and novel, can be seen as pro-feminist. He has a line after one of the gangrapes about how women are crazy for not just killing every man they see because of the danger they represent.
After a different gangrape, the one the boyfriend (? again, it's been a minute, sorry) sort of gets involved in, then gets iffy and Hogg kills him? He has this speech about hypocrisy and misalignment between your words and actions and how poisonous it is.
Lastly, the whole sequence at the end where he helps out that kid who pierced his dick and went crazy and murdered all those people. The whole time it seems like Hogg is gonna murder him for inconveniencing him, and you're just waiting for it to happen, but Hogg actually takes pity on him and goes far out of his way to help him. It's extreme, but it's almost Christ-like in his lack of judgment for sinners and his charity. I think it's making a point about judgment and alternative lifestyles, and multiple routes to happiness and fulfillment other than the ones laid out before you.
>reply to me fucker I spent a lot of time on this post

>>15026793
>can be seen as pro-feminist. He has a line after one of the gangrapes about how women are crazy for not just killing every man they see because of the danger they represent.
you find this redemptive?

>>15026840
>you find this redemptive?
What board are we one? It's a character in a novel, not a person. If he was real, absolutely not. As it's fiction, I can glean meaning from an extreme situation. Hogg does whatever he wants. He expects others to do the same. He wouldn't begrudge a woman for murdering him, in fact he finds women stupid as a whole for not killing men pre-emptively en masse. This is like SCUM Manifesto stuff.

>>15026793
>on the violence
It's impossible to not see the inherent violence in this book. It's scattered throughout the pages in varying doses, but even something as simple as the narrator being taken and sold off to Big Sambo is a violent act. Hogg masturbating him is a violent act. It doesn't have to kill or injure to be violent: it need only damage in some way. This book erodes the reader and the narrator constantly.

I mean given the time period that produced it and the author himself, I didn't consider a feminist-edge to the novel. If anything, to me, it seemed to be a way of releasing all of the vitriol pent up in Delany over the nuclear family/the 'straights'/the active oppressors of homosexuals in the 60s and 70s. When Hogg is actively discussing sexuality and why he commits his crimes with the bartender once they're done with the rapes, it all seems to lead back to how men and women are wholly incompatible in his eyes in one way or another, yet he and his friends are all active participants in homosexual acts with one another, and he loves (?) the narrator.

This book reads more like a testament to the cycle of abuse, in my opinion. I think that Hogg sees Denny as a means of redeeming himself somehow, saving someone before they end up the same way that he is -- but I wouldn't call it Christ-like. He deliberately helps Denny but continues to keep the protag as his companion, selfishly so.

>>15027270
>This book erodes the reader
not me
>and the narrator constantly
Doesn't the last line kind of imply that the kid is bummed out that Hogg found him again and took him away from the docks? At most he's indifferent to the indignities of his life, I don't think he "erodes" over the course of the novel.
Denny, that's his name, thank you. My point was, Hogg didn't need to save him, he didn't need to do anything for him, but he still chose to do so.
> it seemed to be a way of releasing all of the vitriol pent up in Delany over the nuclear family/the 'straights'/the active oppressors of homosexuals in the 60s and 70s.
I haven't read any other Delany, so I don't know if this theme comes up anywhere else. I dunno, this interpretation seems pretty base level to me. Just a guy going "heh heh peepeepoopoo take that normies!" Lame.

>>15026793
>It's over the top, I couldn't stop myself from picturing it in some kind of mad max style dystopia.
Yes, it's Burroughs fanfic, but it's also a great book. You need to appreciate the Beats to understand it.

>>15027664
>Burroughs
I've only read Queer, but I remember feeling the same feeling that it took place in some kind of lawless wasteland. I don't know if that's a strength of the dreamlike quality of the writing or if my brain is just broken from years of shitty post-apoc fiction.

>>15026856
I view the scum manifesto much the same way as Elliot Rodgers diatribe

>>15027718
As what, a cultural artifact about an extremist subculture? All I was trying to say is "kill all men" could be considered the logical endpoint of any type of belief that men are generally a danger to women.