I’ll go with the low-hanging fruit: Mein Kampf. I’ve read it, cover to cover. As a piece of propaganda, it’s good. As an example of good writing? Absolutely not (though I will admit I have only read it in translation). Oh, and the whole fascist, racist, and generally shitty worldview of the author that he infuses into the text. And the fact that the author is literally Hitler. You 5-star that book? You’re a Nazi. Period. And as a Jewish person, I don’t look too kindly on them.

  • slvstrChung@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Well, I don’t know if the younger generations have to worry about it, but it came out while I was in college, so: Twilight.

    That piece of printed nonsense painted a number of people failing on a number of levels.

    • First off, Stephenie Meyer failed because she showed she doesn’t understand human nature. At some point you have to ask yourself if the world you’re trying to paint is one that anyone would particularly agree with – I’m not talking about the diamond dermis (“This is the skin of a killer, Bella!”), I’m talking about the fact that Edward shows textbook psychological abuse and the book still pretends he’s a perfect, awesome partner. I mean, the thing about fiction is that you can write anything you want… But at some point, the story has to be consistent with human nature. It has to involve people acting the way actual humans do, which Edward does… but also other people reacting the way actual humans would, which Bella doesn’t.
    • Second off, there’s all the research failures. It’s fiction, you can write anything you want… If you’re already making everything up. If I make up a story about an elf maiden named Lorelei whose wedding is interrupted because aliens invade in flying saucers, I can do anything I want – even if the aliens themselves end up being humans. But if you’re writing about actual people that actually exist, like the Quileute tribe, you should probably be careful about what you say. Some of them might think it’s cool that you describe them as bestial and cursed; others might not.
    • Third, there’s the fact that it’s just badly written. Crafting good prose isn’t easy – authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Patrick Rothfuss are known to spend hours, even days, tinkering with their exact word choice and word order – but crafting acceptable prose isn’t hard. (I was doing it in '05 when Twilight came out, and Meyer is 10 years older than me.) Unfortunately, the skill seems to have bypassed Meyer completely.
    • And last, there’s the fact that nobody bothered to edit this shit. Restriction breeds creativity, and apparently nobody thought Stephenie Meyer needed to be more creative. That’s a failure on the part of the publishing house, not her, but it needs to be added to the pile. Meyer had a bunch of chances to fix these problems, sure, but so did the publisher, and they let it all through.

    The same is true of 50 Shades of Grey. Christian is even more self-centered and harmful than Edward; there’s a sex scene in the first book alone where Ana never consents and he goes through with it anyway. Sure, she enjoyed it; sure, she had an orgasm; but that doesn’t change the fact that she never consented and he is, legally speaking, a rapist. The research failures concern BDSM, where – again – E.L. James just made shit up that would let her tell the story she wanted. The prose is better, but that’s not saying much. And, again, no editors caught any of this.

    It’s one thing if you want to study these books for literary purposes. But if you’re going to rate them five stars and proclaim them masterpieces, then we add one more person to the list of failures: You. You just failed at critical thinking. You were spoon-fed a pack of lies and bullshit and you swallowed it whole because the frosting on top happened to be pretty. And, no offense, but I’m not sticking my dick in crazy.