[keiferski]

It must be so exhausting to go through life only enjoying things that match one’s up-to-the-minute current moral views. I guess all biographies of influential people are basically out, as being successful in 1000BC or 1500AD required one to do things considered unethical today.

It feels a bit like religious fundamentalism with a different veneer.

[jodrellblank]

> up-to-the-minute current moral views

“You shall not steal” is the eighth commandment from the Bible, two thousand years ago.

[keiferski]

So you don't read or enjoy any books about people that have broken any commandments?

[jstanley]

You can enjoy a book while still noting that the characters in it are not doing good things.

[21asdffdsa12]

Yes, but the public denouncing of the books signifies that one views all books as moral instructions aka there are not fiction books.

[watwut]

Note that comment is toward "then going into rhapsodies about how free-spirited and unencumbered and holy and mad and visionary it all is". It is entirely valid comment. It is entirely 100% valid to make such comment even if you actually like the book.

What is bad is insisting that no one can point it out. That we all must pretend that acting like that is being cool free-spirit and visionary. That we cant analyze a book and make conclusions about what it celebrates, what it criticizes and what it just describes without any value judgement attached.

Somewhere along the lines people developed extremely thin skin toward what you can say about famous pieces of art. You cant really analyze them nor their characters. You must show only unfailing admiration of the characters and the book itself.

[21asdffdsa12]

You definitely should have the right- and there should also be a firewall to socializing such experiments damage and fallouts. I just had also very negative experiences, where the mere thought experiment was considered "heresy" and as an attempt to recruit people for such a lifestyle. I can defend the freedom while defending the freedom, while not pushing the freedom from consequences.

[jodrellblank]

I'm not dissing the book, I'm dissing your comment.

[roenxi]

Just jumping back to Scott for a moment though, one suspects he probably does enjoy books about people who have broken commandments. "A terrible book" about "terrible people" suggests both that the people are terrible and that the book itself is poorly written. There are two concepts there to grasp. He's leaving the option open of a wonderful book about "terrible people".

That was always one of the appeals of the Seinfeld show for example. Well written show about some really horrible people. Fun for the whole family.

[arjie]

Scott Alexander is a smart guy, but not everything needs to match taste. For instance, he describes the writer of the book Sadly, Porn as remarkably erudite and so on. The community he belongs to has the habit of describing each other as very smart, certainly, and particularly having pretensions to Hegel but overall he's quite trustworthy. In any case, on actually reading the book I found it less interestingly smart and more like something the character Salvatore in The Name of The Rose might say.

But text is a serialization of an idea and it's entirely possible I have the wrong deserializer. So that's one thing perhaps you and I now have in common. And I suspect Scott Alexander just lacks the deserializer for Jack Kerouac.

[watwut]

> It must be so exhausting to go through life only enjoying things that match one’s up-to-the-minute current moral views.

It is not that much exhausting to not celebrate abuse. In fact, most people are not abusers, most books are not celebrating it. But, there are subcultures that do treat abuse as a cool inspirable thing to do. That is what the quote references. And it is exhausting to be around such cultures once you have seen or understand consequences of what they celebrate. And that ideology is how one gets Epstein enablers.

Vice signaling and principled opposition against "acknowledging there are victims here" are weird and destructive taboos.

>I guess all biographies of influential people are basically out, as being successful in 1000BC or 1500AD required one to do things considered unethical today.

Maybe this means we should not celebrate success itself, but acknowledge harm many successful people do to make themselves famous, rich and powerful. But more importantly, this claim of yours is frequently just not true. It is something people say to defend their heroes, trying to defend unusually horrible stuff that back then people themselves found horrible back then, fought against and criticized a lot. You can write about bad stuff historical person caused without framing it as good or cool thing, really. You can even acknowledge that their opposition had a point.

We know that being abuser is something that makes certain people admire you more.

[mc32]

It’s true we should not judge people by today’s morals -one can’t be a visionary and predict tomorrows morals; but, that said it seems those people strayed well beyond what was acceptable even back then. So there is room for criticism.

[Jtarii]

Maybe try reading the review first before criticising it.

[keiferski]

I have, awhile ago. There isn’t much more to it than the quoted section.

It’s not really surprising to me that the author didn’t like it; Kerouac is probably the exact opposite person to him. But that doesn’t make it a good review.

[saagarjha]

Ok but you do realize that he was alive in the 1900s, not 1000 BC.

[keiferski]

The moral views of the average person circa 1930 are very different from one today.

But I read old books for their interesting stories, viewpoints on life, literary quality, etc. – not to tut-tut someone for having different moral views than me, a hundred years later.

So it doesn't bother me. Like I said, I really cannot understand the mindset of someone that reads a book from another era/civilization and focuses on critiquing the author's ethics. Just feels like such a limited way to interact with the world.

[saagarjha]

Please point to the things being described in that comment and explain what the average person in 1930 would have felt about them.

[breezybottom]

I don't see it. The 1930s weren't that long ago, there are still people alive who lived through them. If you were talking about ancient Egypt, you might have a point.

[keiferski]

The 1930s had radically different opinions on race, gender, religion, and a host of other things as compared to today.

[breezybottom]

Define "radical"

[keiferski]

The world has entirely different values today than circa 1930. This is...obvious? Read a book or Wikipedia page? I don't know what else to tell you.

[NooneAtAll3]

it's usually inappropriate to feed a troll, but I'll just say "olympic gold champion was congratulated by literally Adolf Hitler, but not his own country the Unite States - because he was black"

[watwut]

You had your fascists and you had your anti-fascists where antifascists were blamed for what fascists did.

[achenet]

I recommend you read the book "Pimp" by Iceberg Slim, about a Black America in the early/mid 20th century.

Personally speaking, I found the book very 'awe-inspiring'/it made me go 'wow' a bunch, because I found the author's experience so completely different from my own :)

[pixelatedindex]

As a brown person in the US, I certainly would have felt a difference between then and now…

[breezybottom]

The United States isn't the entire world.

[smogcutter]

It is, however, the setting of On the Road.

[21asdffdsa12]

Its quite simplifying though, if you can discount a ton of people and experiences.

The best person to ever have lived, was thus a baby born to a prisoner in the 1600 which spend his life in prison doing nothing. We should all aspire and be inspired to be like that. Childlike and horrifically controlled by external systems.

[bshepard]

It is less exciting than religious fundamentalism!

[huhkerrf]

You're jumping to some wild conclusions there. This isn't about wokism (if you know the author, that would be clear) or political correctness.

It's more: wow these guys are jerks, and they get on my nerves.

A protagonist doesn't need to be perfect. But, ultimately, you should be rooting for him.

[keiferski]

I wasn't making it about wokism at all.

And I don't agree that you should be rooting for protagonist. That's an extremely limited way of looking at literature, much less history. I can think of half a dozen books offhand that have unpleasant or anti-hero type protagonists.

[huhkerrf]

Fair enough, I withdraw the "rooting for" comment. More accurate to say that you shouldn't be actively annoyed at the protagonist.

[cassianoleal]

Isn't art supposed to elicit an emotional response in the audience?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> I can think of half a dozen books offhand that have unpleasant or anti-hero type protagonists.

I was not a fan of Thomas Covenant. What a prick.

[keiferski]

I just finished American Tabloid and I don’t think there was a single honorable character in the whole novel. Not one, out of dozens.

[tclancy]

That’s interesting. I was a huge Ellroy fan and I think that’s probably my favorite book. I always got the impression in his books the idea was the protagonists were heroes or, more accurately, could have been if there was any place for them in the Ellroy universe. Instead, they do sordid stuff because there really isn’t another way in the rigged game they live in. To feel like they have agency, they try to find a third way between the options of “good” and “evil” but usually wind up doomed, so who can say if they have agency at all. Except for Dudley, who is definitely not a hero in anyone’s universe. Though even he is a bit of a nod to the trope of heroic Irish cop who gets things done in spite of the system.

I don’t know if it’s him or me, but the last book gave me the feeling Ellroy has fully embraced the man-o-sphere. I can hardly judge him, given the story of his upbringing, but I think I am going to catch the next stop on his bus line.

[keiferski]

I haven't read any of his other books, but Tabloid definitely didn't have that feeling you mentioned. It's more of a pervasive matter-of-fact "everyone is corrupt" vibe, even people like JFK, the FBI, cops, etc.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

In A Song of Fire and Ice (the series that spawned Game of Thrones, and has yet to be completed), you get to really hating on a character, then, their story gets told from their side (usually, before they are killed), and you find that maybe you don't hate them so much.