Quote Originally Posted by Saph View Post
The problems start when you get a story that is a piece of politics, ie it's written in part or in whole as a piece of social/political advocacy. These tend to be pretty annoying if you don't share the author's opinions, and their overall quality also tends to be bad, since the events in the story are specifically chosen to prove the author correct. They also tend to steer away from hard questions or ambiguous morals (like the ones you get in, you know, real life).
Right, I recall how vapid and preachy Guilliver’s Travels and Alice in Wonderland were for their contemporary political angles. Off with their heads, indeed.

Also hated being tortured with the socialist propaganda of Grapes of Wrath, or the communist-hating 1984. Then there’s the liberal preachiness of Catch 22. I can’t believe that anyone ever found Atlas Shrugged to be any good, given its unabashed libertarian message by its Social Darwinist author.

Did I mention how “Cry, the Beloved Country” left me in tears from boredom, when I wasn’t ranting about how dare they turn a naked attack against apartheid into a novel?

Mark Twain’s anti-slavery screeds and other contemporary political commentary ruined his novels like “Huck Finn.”

While we’re at it, “A Handmaid’s Tale” was trash. In fact, the entire literary output by the politically concerned English-majors and anyone in English departments have not produced a single worthwhile piece of literature in the last half-century or so (ignore the Nobel Prize committee and international best sellers lists, what do they know).

Its good to know that social advocacy doesn’t belong in literature. It allows me to throw out a good portion of my personal library, and most of what I read in a college-level lit classes.

I suppose the political messages in “The Hunger Games” and the current crop of teen novels is just fine since there is no clear political advocacy to it. You know, I thought of “The Hunger Games” when I learned how housing and other welfare benefits in the United States are partial entitlements, which means only a fraction of the eligible poor get it or even how full entitlements keep narrowing their eligibility criteria. You know, how filling out eligibility forms, signing up for lotteries, and making certain (seemingly arbitrary or counterproductive) lifestyle choices becomes, in effect a literal game about warding off hunger.

Also this game often involving children, since eligibility and amounts depend on how many you have. I’ve even sponsored some in their annual battle to claim their children against rival claimants.

Now I just ruined the book.