Worst liberal/left wing book that you forced to read in High School or College?

My Squash ^ | 10/31/02 | Burkeman1

[Burkeman1]

Everyone has their horror story about some PC or Left Wing book they were forced to read in High School or College. My worst book was in High School. It was "The Fixer" by Bernard Malamud. It was the tale of a Russian Jew being falsley accused of the rape and murder of a Christian Russian girl just before the Communist coup of Russia. He was innocent of the crime and the book details his time in prison and the torments he was subjucted too. OF Course during his time in prison he becomes a Marxist and hopes for revolution! The entire book was one giant communist propaganda piece. Since I had already read Solzenitsyn by that time and questioned the book in class I was told to shut up by the teacher. I did- to my shame- and got my "A".

What is the worst piece of Left wing crap that you were forced to read in school?

[Sicvee]

The movie is great too, I saw it on TV a couple months ago. We know it's a lot of hokum about what the glorious and good government might accomplish as opposed to the heartless capitalistic system, but you can't help but feel for the poor bastards that suffered through the Dust Bowl and the migration to California.

[SpencerRoane]

"What's PC / lefty about " The Lottery " ? "

In the words of my favorite former President, "I'm glad you asked that question. Let me say this about that." The Lottery is a leftist novella of ideas because, although it is very well written, it denigrates the concept of tradition. It implicitly says that typical American small-town values are not based on any moral structure, but just exist because they have always existed. Now, I know that not every tradition is a good tradition. But I think that Jackson was saying a little more than that. Perhaps I am wrong. It almost never happens, but it is a remote possibility. I very much admire some of her other works, such as, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived In The Castle.

[Burkeman1]

Thanks. I often have wondered what ever happened to the evil "rural banks" in the heartland whose owners often lived only a hair above their clients if not less. Banks back then were not inusured by the Feds. And when a gang of killers like Bonnie and Clyde or Dillenger came through and robbed a rural bank they killed farms and families.

[wardaddy]

I found Grapes of Wrath tedious and moanful.....more tedious even than my brethren Faulkner. It read like some early labor union movement docu-drama.

When I think of Huxley, I think of psychedelic drugs....I think he and Hoffman (of LSD discovery fame) were pals were they not?


We go for an ultrasound Monday to determine if to induce. The Nurse P/A who saw my wife 3 weeks ago while the doc was on vacation really overreacted and got my wife all concerned about a truly early arrival. It will in all probability be a couple of weeks early if delivered next Tuesday but not because of any crisis other than the fact that the young lad is runnning out of room....my wife being 5'2" and 95 lbs in normal times. I'm sorry we reacted to the fears of the nurse and sort of jumped the gun here. If the baby is over 7.5 lbs, the doc has already said he'll go C-section. OBs these days are very very cautious and deliberate....and with good reason. Trial lawyers await any mistake with baited breath.

You will be one of the first to know.....we went to a neighborhood Halloween party tonight and Wade's first trick or treat....a nice crisp autumn evening. The moments for which life is meant to be lived....it was wonderful and nice to feel a sense of community.

Warm Regards.

[nutmeg]

ping!

[Captainpaintball]

Our Ecological Footprint (Reducing Human Impact on the Earth) by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees. this was in the "Humans and the Environment" class at WCU. Full of junk science, subtle yet aggravating class-warfare, anti capitalist tendencies, and "Marxism for dummies" preaching.

There are other books, like Michael Parenti's Inventing Reality and Daniel Rossides Social Stratification(The Interplay of Class, Race, and Gender), but my all-time P.O.S. Liberal textbook has to be...

Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera. Picture a bilingual, Marxist, Lesbian, half Mexican, half Mestizo living on the border of Mexico and the US. If that is not a recipie for confusion, anger, and the inspiration for third-rate poetry/literature, I don't know what is! Now imagine a college course built around "culture crap" like this!

[VetoBill]

Looking Backward

A name I had forgotten but a plotline I still remember in nightmares.

Socialism is good, socialism is the future, socialism brings peace, only a person from 1887 can appreciate how far society has evolved....

[Media Insurgent]

"The Diary of Anne Frank"

You beat me to it Hennepin. It's not necessarily liberal, but I will always remember it as THE book that I was forced to read so many times throughout school. It was assigned four or five times between 6th grade and the end of high school! Talk about overkill.

I guess one leftist spin that always seemed to get put on it by my teachers is heavy emphasis on Frank's statement that even after all she went through, she still thought of people as being basically good. My liberal teachers always loved that because it reinforced their naive, utopian, 60's era worldview.

I've always thought that one of the distinguishing traits of us conservatives is our knowledge of and willingness to accept the idea that humanity is very flawed and capable of great evil if allowed to go unchecked. If Nazi Germany didn't prove that nothing does. It's understandable that a teenager who never had a chance to experience a full life would be so naive to believe this (although the cynic in me thinks she may have wrote it because it sounded noble more than because it was a sincere belief.) It does seem that my adult teachers, with full knowledge of the holocausrt and everything that happened in the second half of the 20th Century should have known better.

[nopardons]

You've only seen , in this work, what you wanted to see. Your own explination, of " THE LOTTERY " , has absolutely nothing , whatsoever, to do with this novella.

Read the bio about her. That'll explain just how VERY wrong/misguided your supposition is. Actually, this work and some of her other ones, was writ ten at a time when her husband was a college prof, at a VERY liberal / lefty college. I bet that this comes as a total surprise ( shock ? ) to you. LOL

I read " THE LOTTERY " when I was seven. As is my wont, I then went on ( when I was a wee bit older ) to read ALL of her work. She was a great writter, but a rather troubled soul.

[rwfromkansas]

I don't think it was a mistake in what they were trying to do necessarily, as they were just doing what they believed was God's will. Compared to Europe, America was very careful in launching witch trials.

The mistake was relying too much on the hysteria as proof that something was going on, as well as having a very low bar for conviction.

Something weird was going on (you should read some primary source documents about how people could not even be moved in bed....they were rigid and stiff), though modern historians gloss over this and ignore it. The doctor checked for epilepsy as an explanation for the seizures/convulsions. Something happened that caused things to get out of control. I don't think it was witchcraft, despite the fact that the servant of the minister was from Barbados and had a heritage of practicing magic. Her telling stories of magic to the 'afflicted girls' may have helped lead to the hysteria, but I don't believe there was any real coven of witches up in Danvers or Salem. I don't know what really was the cause of the weird happenings.

The aspect of the whole mess that really gets me is the execution of Rebecca Nurse, a wonderful, caring, strong Christian woman. She was found innocent, but the afflicted girls went nuts and eventually the court found her guilty without joy. I remember reading the trial transcript and she cries out to God to declare her innocent...I can only imagine the pain she went through.....for being accused, as well as seeing the difficulties the accusing girls were going through. I have no doubt she found peace in Christ at the end, however.

Anyway, I better get to bed. You kind of led me to open my big mouth and talk a lot though....lol.

[general_re]

Socialism is good, socialism is the future, socialism brings peace, only a person from 1887 can appreciate how far society has evolved....

Another fan of Bellamy, I see. Thank goodness they were able to eliminate that evil capitalist system, and thus fully realize mankind's potential ;)

[Rainbow Rising]

When I was a college freshman (in 1986) I had to read The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart. It is a collection of stories set in some bleak future where women are worse than chattel and men rule the world in brutal fashion. A number of women escape to the wilderness and form a feminist Utopian enclave. After a couple of generations these women develop psychic powers such as telepathy and healing, because they're in harmony with nature. Eventually, of course, they have to contend with the encroachment of the evil men. The politics come right out of the "All heterosexual sex is rape" school of thought. The women, of course, love each other in a beautiful, nurturing, giving, sharing, caring way. The only men who possess even a shred of decency are the "gentles", who are, of course, homosexual. They have developed psychic powers of their own, because they have embraced their feminine sides. That's all I can remember about the book.

At the time I liked the book because it appealed to my sense of adventure, but when I revisited it a couple of years later the clunky, heavy-handed politics left me cold. The professor who taught the course was a lesbian -- although, in all fairness to her, she made no reference to her sexuality during class, and unlike another feminist professor I had she did not mistreat the male students in the class. (I found out about her lesbianism long after I graduated, in an article she wrote for our alumni magazine.) It was actually a pretty good course, because we also got to read Huxley's Brave New World, Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and Orwell's 1984. Looking Backward was also part of the curriculum, and it was one of the most horrifically boring books I ever read -- so boring, in fact, that I don't even remember what it was about, LOL.

[dogbowl]

"Columbus and other Cannibals" by the resident loopy Indian at UC Davis, Jack Forbes.

[MHT]

Zinn also denies alot of basic economic principles in his constant canonization of societies' underclasses. Unless a student understands why socialism fails everytime it's tried, Zinn will be convincing. Maybe high school is a good time to read Zinn (if there ever is a good time to spend any more time with him than necessary) because by the time you have had Econ 101 in college, you can see the holes in his arguments.

[nopardons]

We argree utterly, about the abominable " GRAPES OF WRATH ". :-)

Huxley and Hoffman were pals. Huxley was also friendly with Timothy Leary and an LSD user. Since he used " soma " , in BNW , I assume that he was part of the cocain using crowd, of the " bright young things ", in the teens. He was a minor ( perrifferal ) part of the Bloomsbury Group and as such, would have been an early proponent of such things as the " free love " movement, Bohemianism, and all that that entailed. Things I had absolutely NO bloody knowledge of at 14 and a good thing too. Heck, I had to spell out contraceptive, to my mother, and ask her what that was ( whilst I was reading that book ) , because I had no idea what THAT was. I was deathly embarassed, when she explained what the word meant. Now, 14 year olds know what that word means. How times have changed !:-(

Well,dear friend, you certainly gave me quite a turn, when you over reacted to what the nurse had said. You and your dear wife deserve only the VERY best ! Tell her I said so and the present, for the new wee one, will be on it's way, as soon as I hear. I just hope that he doesn't have large feet ... the booties look so tiny to me. :-)

[nopardons]

Huxley was a bloody MARXIST ! He used " BRAVE NEW WORLD " and most of his other books, to push lefty opinions. That you are unable to acknowledge / see this fact, is your problem, dear. He didn't see the end results of such a Utopian society as distateful; on the contrary,this was all part and parcle of his Fabian push leftwards. That birth control was not only used, but proscribed to ALL ( not to mention the fact that sex ed was given children from toddlerhood onwards ), in this book, was actually his way of putting down the suppression of it, in England.

" BRAVE NEW WORLD " is one of Hitlery's most favorite books ( she said so in the " SAINT HILLARY " N.Y. Times Magazine section mush pice, written shortly after their first election ) and I can gaurentee you, uncatagorically , that she doesn't see what you claim to see, in this novel. You see what a Conservative sees; lefties do NOT see it this way at all.

It would appear that you are abjectly lacking any knowledge about Huxley, the times he wrote in, and his work. Neither do you seem to know how the left views this and his other fiction and nonfictional works. It's best to not attempt discussions about what you don't know. Just a helpful hint. :-)

[nopardons]

Right you are ! Mead has been discredited, though some profs probably still make students read her junk.

[Burkeman1]

Wow! Maybe you are right. But, for me, Huxley's "Brave New Wworld" was one of the first nevels that made look elswhere for answers. Most critics would say that "Brave New World" was the first anti socialist, anti left novel in the 20th century.

[GOPyouth]

By far it was the Poisonwood Bible. I detested that book. We had to read it just after September 11th last year. I totally respect the professor that made us read it, and I keep in touch with him at least once a month, but that book was extreme anti-american and anti-white. I told him this as we turned in the report on it the day of our final. :)

[nopardons]

Absolutely NO book reviewer, not a one, not a single, solitary soul,at the time the book was published, said that " BRAVE NEW WORLDS " was the first anti-Socialist, anti-left wing novel of the 20th century. You still will not find such a critique ! This is how you see the book. By-the-by, this was NOT , by anymeans, the " first " bit of Marxist / Socialist fiction written in the 20th century. I can name you quite a number of others ; some of which are even older. As a matter of fact, a lot of Dickens' work is overtly bleeding heart LEFTY ... just not quite Marxist.

You are not only rather young,but literature and the crituqe thereof, is obviously not your area of expertise. Please refrain from posting about things which you know very little to nothing about. You just keep embarassing yourself and you shouldn't, since your view of this novel is in keeping with Conservative thought. It's just that it is not and never has been the prevailing position of critics, teachers, etc. !

On FR, you're going to continually run into people who actually ARE " expert ", on topics discussed. Your bad fortune, is that I ( who am an " expert " in this area ) found this thread. LOL