Books which caused you to raise your eyebrows

[kev67]

Which books have caused you to raise your eyebrows?
(Discusses A Town Like Alice, Tom Brown's School Days and Jane Eyre).

I am thinking mostly books written some time ago, although not necessarily. For example, I was slightly surprised by some of the casual racism in A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute, which I still think is a good book. I was also surprised by chastity of the protagonists.

I was very surprised by Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes. I did not think that was a great book, but it was an interesting one. Attitudes have certainly changed a lot since those days. I doubt health and safety would sanction some of the fairground attractions. What seemed like childish high-jinks or acceptable pass-times would be looked on very doubtfully these days. On the other hand, the religiosity of some of the characters was also surprising. It would seem laughable now, but apparently not then.

Another book that surprised me recently was Jane Eyre. What took me aback was the short life expectancy. It was just assumed. Death in childhood was commonplace, I knew, but it is still disturbing to hear it described. Even if you reached adulthood, it seemed you could not count on living more than ten years, twenty years at most. When Jane is considering going to India, she thinks it is almost certain death. That was very surprising considering that many British people obviously did decide to go there.

However, even more recent books do not seem entirely up to speed. Kurt Vonnegut obviously considered himself progressive and enlightened, but his books did contain some Mad Men like sexism. He didn't seem to be aware of it.

[Volya]

I'm not entirely sure if it counts, but one of the Tintin comics in which there are some very odd depictions of Africans - they're drawn like monkeys who are all in awe of the white mans magical powers.

[kev67]

I'm not entirely sure if it counts, but one of the Tintin comics in which there are some very odd depictions of Africans - they're drawn like monkeys who are all in awe of the white mans magical powers.

Not Tintin in the Congo, was it?

I am getting an edgy feeling this thread could get locked.

[kasie]

Do you think maybe your surprise is due to a 21st century perspective?

I haven't read A Town like Alice but I know it was written in 1950 and as such would reflect the current standards. There was a certain amount of casual racism especially towards the Aboriginal peoples in Australia at the time. Chastity was the rule until well into the 60s - fear of pregnancy may have been at the heart of it but it was nevertheless the norm.

The portrayal of school-life by Thomas Hughes was based on common experiences in Public Schools. The concept of 'Health and Safety' is of very recent origin. Church/chapel going was the rule among all levels of society and religious precepts formed the basis of many social attitudes.

Jane Eyre reflects the fact of life in Britain - life could be short. Charlotte Bronte's two elder sisters died before she was nine, her brother and two younger sisters died before they were thirty and Charlotte herself did not reach her fortieth birthday. There were many diseases that could be and usually were fatal - cholera epidemics were frequent and devastating, tuberculosis was all too common, small pox not only marked but killed thousands. Scarlet fever, diphtheria and polio still killed children in my youth. People have forgotten how serious childhood illnesses were - and can be still: look at the panic the outbreak of measles is causing because complacency set in and children were not given the appropriate vaccinations.

It is good imo that books open one's eyes to the conditions and mores of the past or of different countries. It's one of the reasons for reading to find out that 'The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there.'

[kev67]

Do you think maybe your surprise is due to a 21st century perspective...


It is good imo that books open one's eyes to the conditions and mores of the past or of different countries. It's one of the reasons for reading to find out that 'The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there.'

Yes, I agree. It's one of the good things about reading books from the past. It also makes me slightly suspicious of modern writers of historical fiction. Can they really reproduce the attitudes of the past? Would they dare make their heroes sexist, snobbish or racist? If not, maybe their writing is anachronistic.

[chrisvia]

I don't seem to be easily shocked (chalk it up to an unhealthy diet of horror movies for most of my life), but Georges Bataille has raised my eyebrows with some of his depictions of bizarre sex acts, and H. P. Lovecraft has caused me to raise my eyebrows on more than a few occasions out of sheer bewilderment.

[mona amon]

Hamlet - Gertrude's bedroom scene. Who talks to their mom like that?

[mal4mac]

Another book that surprised me recently was Jane Eyre. What took me aback was the short life expectancy. It was just assumed. Death in childhood was commonplace, I knew, but it is still disturbing to hear it described. Even if you reached adulthood, it seemed you could not count on living more than ten years, twenty years at most. When Jane is considering going to India, she thinks it is almost certain death. That was very surprising considering that many British people obviously did decide to go there.

I watched an excellent programme on the Bronte family recently. It made clear that their life expectancy (and actuality...) was very bad even by Victorian standards. The main problem was that the village water supply was below the graveyard, which meant it was badly contaminated. The Bronte sisters died very young compared to most other major authors... Dickens died at 59, and George Eliot was well into her 60s... and I think that was pretty typical.

[kelby_lake]

Hamlet - Gertrude's bedroom scene. Who talks to their mom like that?

Yes. I studied Othello for A-Level and my class and I quite enjoyed Iago's homoerotic passage on sleeping next to Cassio. Very DH. Lawrence.

Moby Dick has plenty of homoeroticism although I don't know how much of that was my thirteen-year-old mind.

I actually spat out coffee during Lady Chatterley's Lover and it caused outrage amongst my fellow classmates.

Jane Eyre because it's actually pretty raunchy in parts- perhaps epitomised by the 1944 film in which Orson Welles struts around decked out in all sorts of Freudian cliches. Suggestive raunchy rather than explicit but still...

Hunchback of Notre Dame...did not resemble the Disney version. To this day, I haven't found a novel as uniquely disturbing as Hunchback of Notre Dame (or Notre Dame de Paris- the French title giving a better description of its focus but less of a crowd-pleaser). Hugo makes Hardy look like a barrel of laughs.

[Volya]

Not Tintin in the Congo, was it?

I am getting an edgy feeling this thread could get locked.

That's the one.

[Scardanelli]

Anything written by Ernst Jünger. Disturbingly fascinating. His stunning talent for prose poetry outdoes his otherwise unbearable right-wing radicalism.

H. P. Lovecraft has caused me to raise my eyebrows on more than a few occasions out of sheer bewilderment

Same here. I've recently read The Music of Erich Zann, probably one of his best short stories. Simply amazing.

[MementoMori]

The poems of Catullus. After reading nothing but Early Modern and 19th century poetry his poems were an eye-opener.

[ashulman]

If you like Jane Eyre, how about Wuthering Heights? That was a seriously bizarre book for its time and even today.

[Dean W.]

Hmm...there are so many. I just finished The Song of Roland, and while it was incredibly engrossing, there was an intense amount of gore...more than I remember there being in Beowulf. Here's a couple examples of what I mean: "He breaks his gilt, fleuron-emblazoned shield, bursting both his eyeballs from his head- his brain comes tumbling downward to his feet -..." or "the count swings down with such tremendous force , he shears away his helmet to the nasal and slashes through his nose and mouth and teeth, his trunk and through his coat of jazeraint, his gilded saddle, both its silver bows and deep into the backbone of his horse..." Yikes! I can totally picture this poem being recited around a camp fire, the mesmerized listeners eating whatever the equivalent to pop corn was in 1140 and being completed engrossed. It's better than a movie! I actually think it makes perfect camp fire reading.

On another note, I usually make a point to finish all books that I begin as I slowly work my way through the Western Canon...but one book I drew the line at was The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. I'm not really into wife abuse no matter how pertinent it is to the story...

[Inky]

Well, there were the scenes in Snow Falling on Cedars where paragraphs were used to describe the excellence and perfection of a character's penis.

I mean...Did we really need to know that in such detail?