What are your Favorite Politically Incorrect Books and Stories ?

[RX-79G]

PC is about protecting marginalised groups, not majorities. I've heard it chapter-and-verse out of the horse's mouth.

I'm not sure how that fits with marginalizing a majority.

 

[Extollager]

I've not read the novel discussed in the linked item; in fact I've only glanced at the review....but this book was by a fairly well-known early-generation sf author.

World Without Men « The Thinking Housewife

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I have not read it, but Love Conquers All by Fred Saberhagen, by everything I can find out, is a dystopian satire on free love, birth control, abortion, and so on.

 

[MWagner]

Flashman. It's all done in a knowing, satirical way, but the one where Flashman is an enthusiastic plantation overseer (Flash for Freedom) is jaw-dropping.

Jack Vance, while my favourite writer, demonstrated zero concessions to late 20th century (let alone 21st century) sensibilities. Given the tone of his books, it's not a big issue. Except for the Gray Prince, which is cringe-worthy in its politics.

I'm also a big fan of Kipling's, and frankly don't understand why he's reviled as an imperialist. He was a man of his times, but the stories themselves are astute, nuanced, and sympathetic in their depictions of non-Europeans.

 

[Extollager]

MWagner, thanks for the words about Kipling, a great craftsman of the short story.

 

[Inari Writer]

Conan the Barbarian and H P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories.

Both hugely influential and imaginative bodies of work. Both with a whole lot of hang-ups about race.

 

[Tannin]

Not sure that we are all using the same definition of "politically incorrect", or indeed whether anyone here knows what it really means. (I certainly don't!) But one should never let one's ignorance stand in the way of fun. So ...

Many of the same ones aready mentioned, especially Kipling. (I agree, MWagner, he was certainly no worse than any of his era, and much better than most.)

Plus (of course) the wonderfully incorrect EE Smith. Like Biggles, he's best read as parody. Robert Heinlein who was an inconoclast in his mid period (Stranger was banned in many places and Starship Troopers was a startler) but then in his late period began working very hard indeed to overcome his rampant sexism, managing only to produce the classic demonstration of the old saw "when you are in a hole, stop digging!"

Pretty much anything in the sword and sourcery arena written before about 1980, and many (most?) since then.

Outside of SF, all of the readable Tom Clancy books. (Yes, both of them.) Oh, and does anyone remember Edmund Cooper? (Apparently I used to enjoy them. There are a dozen or so on a shelf here, and I probably read most of them. In my defence, that was 40 years ago.)

Dorothy L Sayers is another interresting one. She seems to get quite a bit of criticism these days for not being PC enough, which is quite frankly insane. Sayers was a good 30 years in advance of her times and a genuine pioneer. So I mention her here only to rule her out.

 

[Toby Frost]

It depends what you mean by “politically correct”. Many accounts of the Burma or Pacific wars will include un-PC terminology for the enemy, but will be broadly accurate in their portrayal of the Japanese Army as maniacs – probably more accurate than modern revisionist writers burdened with colonial guilt (George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here is a good example). Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim is ragingly sexist when you look at it objectively, but it is also a very good portrayal of the male mind and probably a pretty decent indictment of how men think, whether or not it was meant to be.

The “man of his time” defence is often seen as an excuse for back-sliding readers to indulge their atavistic instincts, but I think it holds. The fact is that, even recently, people weren’t much like us, even the “good” ones. Raymond Chandler was very hostile to gays in The Big Sleep but had harsh words about police failing to look into the murder of a black man in Farewell My Lovely. George Orwell disliked gays, feminists, socialists, vegetarians, most religious people, Scottish and Irish nationalists, the middle class and plenty of others, and probably would have hated “progressives” if the word had existed. Both are remembered as writers against injustice.

Then there's the question of when a view actually becomes politically incorrect. The writer who claims (for instance) to find effete men irritating probably isn't saying anything immoral, although it wouldn't get him a column in the Guardian. It's hard to know where to draw the line.

That said, there are many instances where books clearly do fall short and their time can’t excuse them. Lovecraft and W.E. Johns’ children’s books fall way short of, say, King Solomon’s Mines, which was written 20-30 years earlier (although Biggles Defies the Swastika is, as the title suggests, a work of great philosophical importance). In short, if you want to find faults, you will with virtually anything. But I think there is a vast difference between using dated words and helping to spread what are ultimately dangerous lies.

 

[Toby Frost]

Gosh, now I think about it, what about Dune? Baron Harkonnen is pretty much a personification of corruption and indulgence and, as the only gay character in the novel, seems also to have pretty much every vice imaginable. Talking about dangerous lies in my previous post, it occurs to me that the conflation of homosexuality and paedophilia was pretty common in those days: the idea seems to be that if you'd sleep with the same sex, you'd sleep with anything. And of course the Fremen don't just have multiple wives but inherit them in fights, which I suspect a modern writer might gloss over. And all that jihading isn't terribly in vogue right now.

 

[Werthead]

"Political correctness" started off meaning "the prevailing political ideology of the day". It first gained traction in the 1980s. Comedians like Ben Elton and Harry Enfield enjoyed being called "politically incorrect" because they mocked the Thatcherist idea of people making lots of money and screwing over everyone else in the process. It was actually "politically incorrect" to be fair-minded and progressive at that time, and pop groups like Culture Club and Frankie Goes to Hollywood (with their strong advocation for gay rights and fair treatment in the age of AIDS) were described as politically incorrect at the time.

When the switchover happened is unclear. I suspect it was in the late 1990s when a more progressive - if often in name only - government took power and being fair and progressive became mainstream. Then people being homophobic, racist and misogynistic claimed the label of "politically incorrect", possibly to make them feel cool and edgy. That's pretty much continued, even with the Conservatives coming back to power, because although economically conservative, they're actually pretty socially progressive these days.

All of this is from the UK POV, although I suspect the US position is not a million miles away.

 

[Werthead]

In SFF terms, it does really depend on what you mean. I think you have to separate the work from the writer: George R.R. Martin is pretty liberal and progressive but his books feature sexual assault, murder and treachery. However, he is careful to present these as bad things that are not to be lauded and are to be fought against. I've seen people call his books non-PC and rage over them and I've seen other people call them ridiculously liberal and getting angry with the "feminist agenda" that has seen the female characters gain prominence (even dominance) by the fifth novel (and sixth season of the TV show).

You also have someone like Scott Bakker with his Second Apocalypse series, which features enormous amounts of sexual assault and only a small number of female characters of note. This is because the world is presented as corrupt, amoral and even evil, and the protagonist begins "healing" the world, giving more power and rights to women as the series progresses, but only due to an amoral and uncaring desire to use all available assets to save the world from destruction. By the end of the sixth volume, arguably the most important and powerful character in the book is female (MRAs, who previously lauded the series by misreading it as some kind of misogynistic power-fantasy, were predictably upset). The series is immensely "problematic" on this basis, as those who criticise it as misogynistic and those who laud it as liberal are both kind of right and both kind of wrong.

With regards to the "writers of their time" argument, it is something to bear in mind. Robert E. Howard, for example, is often described as having a troubling attitude to women and black people. However, his calling black people "negroes" was widespread in Texas at the time. He actually has black characters in the stories helping Conan and being allies (such as Belit's pirate crew, although Belit herself - rather ludicrously given she's from Shem, a far southern country in what is now Africa - is white), although also as "savage" enemies, and of course never presented as Conan's equal in battle. Many of his female characters are presented as weak and simpering, but there are a few who are stronger and fight alongside Conan (such as Belit) and even save his life. Howard himself had a very strong bond with his mother - killing himself when he learned she had a terminal illness - and I think that colours his odd attitude to women in the books, putting them on pedestals to be rescued and adored, but also occasionally being strong, domineering figures.

Lovecraft, on the other hand, was an actual white supremacist and despised black (and most non-white) people, writing at length on the subject and treating them disparagingly in his stories to a degree that was certainly far higher and more prevalent than Howard. He even deigned to marry his wife, who was Jewish, only after judging that she was "well assimilated". He was, basically, an arsehole. It's up to the reader if that colours the reading of his stories.

J.R.R. Tolkien, born two years after Lovecraft and fourteen years before Howard, despised apartheid in South Africa (where he was born), had a fascination for non-Anglo cultures, wrote a searing letter to a German publisher inquiring about any possible Jewish ancestry when they were assessing The Hobbit for publication in the 1930s (telling them he'd have been honoured to have been part of that religion and rich culture and to take their prejudices and shove them where the sun didn't shine, in more polite terms) and spent considerable time after writing The Lord of the Rings feeling guilty that the only black people in it had been bad guys serving Sauron and that he had characterised the entire orc race as evil and irredeemable, which he realised (belatedly) conflicted with his Catholic outlook. So the "product of their times" argument is less convincing because you do have people like Tolkien (and, earlier, Swift and Tolstoy) who did overcome the dominant prejudices of the day.

 

[MWagner]

Gosh, now I think about it, what about Dune? Baron Harkonnen is pretty much a personification of corruption and indulgence and, as the only gay character in the novel, seems also to have pretty much every vice imaginable. Talking about dangerous lies in my previous post, it occurs to me that the conflation of homosexuality and paedophilia was pretty common in those days: the idea seems to be that if you'd sleep with the same sex, you'd sleep with anything.

Baron Harkonnen is styled on the all-powerful, decadent rulers of history. Tiberius, Caligula, the Sultans in the period of Ottoman decline. It's the popular theme that despotic rulers become so glutted with power and pleasure that they must indulge in ever more exotic and depraved behaviours to sate their appetite for novelty.

 

[MWagner]

All of this is from the UK POV, although I suspect the US position is not a million miles away.

In North America, the term entered common usage in the late 80s, and it referred to language policing and codes of speech originating in leftist academia. The liberalising movement of the 60s and 70s, where hedonism and a defiance of conformity ruled the day, had given way to a more doctrinaire approach to progress, with its origins in modern Marxism, and its insistence on culture and language as the key battleground in the power struggle of groups against the status quo. Gadflies and provocateurs who had always found themselves in the cross-hairs of the traditional, religious right were surprised to find themselves under attack from a new left every bit as earnest, conformist and moralizing as their counterparts on the right. This new policing of language outlawed modes of speech and behaviour not out of religious piety, but out of a particular theory of politics. Hence the term 'political correctness.' The avid searching out and denunciation of incorrect attitudes spread from academia into the arts and media, and found fertile soil in a corporate world that has always been eager to avoid or suppress anything controversial.

 

[RX-79G]

Gosh, now I think about it, what about Dune? Baron Harkonnen is pretty much a personification of corruption and indulgence and, as the only gay character in the novel, seems also to have pretty much every vice imaginable. Talking about dangerous lies in my previous post, it occurs to me that the conflation of homosexuality and paedophilia was pretty common in those days: the idea seems to be that if you'd sleep with the same sex, you'd sleep with anything. And of course the Fremen don't just have multiple wives but inherit them in fights, which I suspect a modern writer might gloss over. And all that jihading isn't terribly in vogue right now.

Didn't you just conflate homosexuality and pedophilia by calling the Baron gay? Is there anything in the novels to indicate that the Baron had consensual relationships with adult men?

As far as multiple wives go, is it not PC to refer to real and common marriage practices, regardless of whether Westerners disapprove of them? I had gotten the sense that Fremen didn't "win" wives, but became responsible for the families of the men they killed.

 

[Bick]

Given its modern definition and usage, PC is the last thing any work of art ought to strive to be, and that would certainly apply to novels of any genre. Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, the 'requirement' to be PC and tip toe round all sorts of language and human behaviours drives me nuts.

 

[RX-79G]

Given its modern definition and usage, PC is the last thing any work of art ought to strive to be, and that would certainly apply to novels of any genre. Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, the 'requirement' to be PC and tip toe round all sorts of language and human behaviours drives me nuts.

On top of that, it is troubling when the dictates of inclusiveness imply that a work doesn't reflect reality unless it contains an unrealistically high representation of minority characters.

I don't offer that as a defense for prejudice of any kind, but in the case of a book like Dune which only has 20 or so central characters, and the sexual preferences of only 8 of those characters is discussed, how is it reasonable to complain that those 8 don't include a member of a group that is less than 2% of the population? In the US you are more likely to be Native American/Alaskan than LGBT.

It would seem that "PC" often implies that an over-representation of formerly or currently marginalized groups is a necessary redress for a lack of inclusiveness in the past. And when your goal is to reflect the world as it really is, this is a gross distortion.

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't believe that I did and for the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever, that was certainly not my intention.

 

[hitmouse]

"Political correctness" started off meaning "the prevailing political ideology of the day". It first gained traction in the 1980s. Comedians like Ben Elton and Harry Enfield enjoyed being called "politically incorrect" because they mocked the Thatcherist idea of people making lots of money and screwing over everyone else in the process. It was actually "politically incorrect" to be fair-minded and progressive at that time, and pop groups like Culture Club and Frankie Goes to Hollywood (with their strong advocation for gay rights and fair treatment in the age of AIDS) were described as politically incorrect at the time.

It is interesting. I remember alternative comedy being the exact opposite of politically incorrect, from where I was, at university, at that time It was a sort of reaction, in part, against the casual racism, sexism, and homophobia of mainstream standups like Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson.

 

[RX-79G]

I don't believe that I did and for the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever, that was certainly not my intention.

I don't think that was your intent, either. But why do you think the Baron represents a "gay" character?

And Dune contains many vice-filled and cruel characters - the Baron is just the only one that prefers to rape and murder male children.

 

[Toby Frost]

Only because he only ever refers to males sexually, and there's a moment where he says something like "You know that's not what I like" when Feyd mentions slave girls. Admittedly, he was seduced by a woman once, but I'm fairly sure that someone observes that it was a lapse. I think MWagner's point is good: the baron seems like an exaggeration of a debauched Roman emperor, and I think Herbert plays off the sterotype of the older, powerful, Roman and his young male slaves. The impression I got was that the baron's taste was for young teenage men (such as Paul, at least at the very start).

Dune is definitely full of awful people, and even the good guys (sort of!) are pretty brutal (and weird). I always wondered what life was like among House Atreides. I suppose the baron is the personification of evil indulgence, where as Rabban stands for brutality, Piter for cunning, and so on.