[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 165 KB, 400x600, how_communism_works.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186336 No.1186336 [Reply] [Original]

Communist(or just generally far-leftist) fiction.

I need some.

Recommendations?

>> No.1186346

china mieville loves proletarians and shit

>> No.1186354

ayn rand

>> No.1186367

Upton Sinclair

>> No.1186409

Bump.

>> No.1186414

Well it was so bad, that almost nothing is translated into English. Maybe some "bigger" Soviet authors like Mikhail Sholokhov and Maxim Gorky. I tried remember some more famous communist from here (Czech Republic - former Czechoslovakia) but I really don't know. Maybe Julius Fučík, he was journalist and was imprisoned by Nazis, so he wrote something called "Notes from the Gallows". It isn't really fiction, but it sure has a lot of communist ideas in it. They made him communist hero and his work was probably the biggest non-soviet thing in here.

>> No.1186424

>>1186336
I bet you can find phonebook size anthologies of "Socialist Realism" stuff that was mandated by the government. It's all terrible though.

>> No.1186435

i readed gorki but i dont understand how it is commie, still related

>> No.1186484

>>1186435
Oh he was. He helped to Bolsheviks a lot with his work. It's a bit complicated to determine what was only Soviet propaganda, but he was definitely commie. i.e. his novel - The Mother

>> No.1186509
File: 34 KB, 312x475, The Dispossessed.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186509

>> No.1186510

Kim Stanley Robinson writes from an admittedly socialist POV, if that counts.

>> No.1186511
File: 40 KB, 240x249, 1277266012557.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186511

>>1186484
> heavent read the mother
WOW i miss a lot

>> No.1186516
File: 48 KB, 599x328, Mars trilogy.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186516

>> No.1186538

>>1186510
>>1186516
Wait wut? Really? I put it on my wishlist, because it looked promising with all that "best sci-fi with colonization of Mars" etc.. But fuck that if it is full of socialist ideas, revolutions and shit like that.

>> No.1186569
File: 44 KB, 576x432, joker.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186569

>>1186538
are you shitting me?

>> No.1186580

>>1186569
no, are you?

>> No.1186605

>>1186580
nope, for real
Science Fiction is at its best when it is using it as a platform to explore ideas about people and society.
The Mars series is both about colonizing Mars AND Anarcho-Syndicalism / Libertarian Socialism* and a bunch of other shit

(inb4hurpydurpyAmericansshoutcontradiction - you dont own words motherfucker look it up)

>> No.1186620

>>1186605
Sounds like total garbage only fit for teenage boys who haven't worked a day in their life.

>> No.1186627
File: 47 KB, 460x276, chomskycarp460.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186627

>>1186620
oh you

>> No.1186630

the USA trilogy by Dos Passos

>> No.1186648

>>1186605
Well I see your point and I kinda agree, but I haven't read much sci-fi yet and thing is... I really don't wanna start with left-wing author. Not a fan of socialism, not a fan at all. I understand why his work might be appreciated by some readers, but I think I wouldn't be able to stomach it. So thanks for the warning guys. I'll put his work on hold for now.

>> No.1186662
File: 16 KB, 323x500, dreams_from_my_father..jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186662

>> No.1186664

Crawl through Soviet Literature, it is well reviewed at
http://www.sovlit.com/
Keep in mind that Soviet left authors can be roughly divided into outright vomit, id est indigestible lurid leftist drivel in the fashion of a bad ayn rand (Gorki's "Mother", "Childhood" or Ostrovsky's "How the Steel was Tempered") and into honest to god communists who wrote things that couldn't be pidgeonholed so easily and got occassionally banned, shot or starved to death in siberian camps.
Personally I'm not too keen about fiction pushing any agenda at all but to people of good taste I can recommend "the Red Cavalry" by Isaak Babel documenting the deeds of a cossack army (=antisemite rapist horde) fighting for the bolsheviks on Polish soil from the POV of the Jewish journalist from Moscow that Babel was.
"For Whom the Bell tools" does roughly the same to the locals and volunteers of Catalonia but not as poetically as Babel.
Every great Russian novel features Socialists in an ambiguous light. Bulgakov gives you a fine insight on what those bolsheviks were all about. All Russian novels from the 1920s are obsessed with the fruits of the revolution as well as with it's discontents.
American readers will recognize "Happy New World" or "Fahrenheit" in Zamyatin's 'We' or Olesha's 'Envy'. There the anachronist romantic is thrown into a world of mindless Utilitarians rather than one of mindless Hedonists.
Orwell wrote fiction showing the world through a Trotskyist lens. Böll and Günther Gras documented bourgeois hypocrisy during after fascism in their respective countries.
Büchner and Brecht are the dramaturgists known by everyone on the left by heart. The Russian pendants are Evgeny Shvarts and Mayakovsky. The latter is better known as a poet but I am not sure wether his poetry translates at all.

Americans generally read John Reed. South Americans read Galeano. Everybody reads those boring classics even if quoting them is currently not en vogue.

>> No.1186681

Being the vanguardists they were the Bolsheviks chose not to stick only to /lit/. The scientific approach to cinema was pioneered by Eisenstein. Make sure to watch his movies and that of his contemporaries like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7qiVMgom8g
, anon.

>> No.1186694

>>1186648
What a pussy.

>> No.1186695
File: 44 KB, 436x600, 1278277894162.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186695

>>1186664
>implying that "days of childhood" by gorki is bad

>> No.1186697

>>1186414
I hope the Czech is still there. Russian speaking. I liked Stoppard, Kundera and Bohumil Hrabal. Can you recommend anything else?

>> No.1186703

>>1186627
>Academic who hasn't worked a day in his life.

>> No.1186705

http://www.tangledwilderness.org/

>> No.1186720

>>1186695
lurid leftist drivel isn't nescessarily shit. you can develope a taste for it, especially when pursueing a career in the communist party. reading this there is like blowing cocks in a corporative bureaucracy. you just have to be open minded.
students from china told they're still force-fed with stalin era court writers. and you are doing it out of free will?

>> No.1186731
File: 60 KB, 471x694, 1286254353624.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186731

>>1186720
>implying gorki is political and not social

>> No.1186743

>>1186703
>implying working doesn't numb the mind
>being a banausos
yuck

>> No.1186749
File: 15 KB, 400x322, maximGorky.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186749

>>1186731
>implying Maxim Gorky wasn't an airplane.

>> No.1186753

>>1186697
Hey there! I've read some in school years ago, I don't remember much, but if you enjoyed these guys you might wanna check out Ludvik Vaculik (i.e. his novel called "Morčata"), I always thought he had to be the biggest badass of all of those, who wrote against the regime. And I don't know, probably Pavel Kohout, I remember reading part of his "Katyně" and it looked interesting.

>> No.1186761
File: 38 KB, 604x483, 1283996301303.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1186761

>>1186749

>> No.1187282
File: 235 KB, 460x276, chumskyohyou.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1187282

>>1186627

>> No.1187301

Iain M Banks and various British playwrights like Carol Churchill/Trevor Griffiths.

>> No.1187318

Get some Bulychev. Soviet and post-soviet era sci-fi. I really enjoyed it.

>> No.1187647

Glad to see someone else shout out to The Dispossessed, which is pretty much the best political novel ever.

>> No.1187654

>>1187647

you don't say. why do you think so? (i'm being sincere!)

>> No.1187890

The culture novels have high tech socialism

Delany's Trouble on Triton is written in dialog with The dispossessed, it is anarchistic

William S. Burroughs: Cities of the Red Night

Ken Macleod: The Star Fraction

>> No.1188058

>>1187647 This
Also, yes, Mieville loves the proles, read him.

BUT: The best of the best has not been mentioned yet. Read 'The Foundation Pit' By Andrei Platanov and you will be in love. Best. Mwa!

>> No.1188068

Doing this for a college course?

A class I took a year ago had us read and tear apart communist literature.

At the end of the course, we got together and individually, in front of everyone else, decided to either keep or burn the literary works.
I burned mine.

>> No.1188073

>>1188068
American? Must be American.

Proud of book burning. Awesome...

>> No.1188074

>>1188068
You did the right thing son.

actually you didn't, world needs to be reminded how stupid these books were

>> No.1188079

>>1188068
>burning literature
where the hell were you at college?

>> No.1188081

>>1188073
Yes, I'm an American.

We would have burned a communist, but none of my peers decided to keep the books.

>> No.1188086

>>1188074
Book burny'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. You'll be the second.

>> No.1188099

>>1188081
Hmmm. You just keep making this better. Mob mentality. Book burning. American. Lynching. You wear a pointy pillow case over your head too?

>> No.1188102

>>1188099
No, but I did have a Catholic cross around my neck.


u mad, eurofag?

>> No.1188109

>>1188102
Catholic Canadian.

Your move.

>> No.1188119

>>1188102
u mad, canuck?