Hedonist fiction

[African_Love]

Do you know of any novels where ethical/normative hedonism is a strong theme?

[kelby_lake]

The Great Gatsby

[African_Love]

The Great Gatsby

How so? By 'hedonism' I mean the view that happiness is the only intrinsic good and suffering is the only intrinsic bad, so an action is good or bad only to the extent that it minimizes suffering/maximizes happiness or vice versa.

In Of Mice and Men, George shoots Lennie in the back of the head after comforting him with the story of how successful they'll be one day because he doesn't want him to suffer a painful death at the hands of Curly and his lynch mob. Lennie had no idea that George was going to kill him and he was going to be killed anyways so George's decision was the one that led to less stress (if I remember the ending correctly, I don't know how George justified shooting Lennie if the mob wasn't going to kill him) . There was also an episode of Star Trek : TNG where two sentient holograms want to leave the holosuite but they can't so Picard and the crew create a computer program that will resemble the world outside of the holosuite and they lie to the holograms telling them that they found a way to let them leave the holosuite. The holograms never find out that the world they think is 'real' is just a computer simulation but they benefit from believing that they finally left the holosuite. I can think of at least 3 more ST episodes like this.

[Alexander III]

Check out De Sade's work

[lichtrausch]

The Picture of Dorian Gray

[Rores28]

Do you know of any novels where ethical/normative hedonism is a strong theme?

The one I'm writing... I'll send you a copy when I've finished

-Brave New World
-The Picture of Dorian Gray
(This theme plays very prominently in both of these works)

-The Sun Also Rises (To some extent), for the same reasons that another poster mentioned Gatsby

[African_Love]

Thanks

[Buh4Bee]

The Sun Also Rises is very Hedonistic. I loved that book!

[MicDainjah]

Molasses from Blaurock Press! A sensual sojourn into pleasure.
http://blaurockpress.blogspot.com/2010/12/molasses-by-antonio-michael-downing.html

[Stain]

"Brave new world" is indeed suitable!