Lee Hunts

Let's talk about immigration. The fun topic. We can brush up on shit-hole countries, invasions, people in need, and whether we should be more empathetic on this topic. In other words, we can talk about the recent novel, A Better Life, by Lionel Shriver. I have already reviewed one book by this author, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and to this day I consider it among my favorite novels ever written. It has probably some of the best character work that I have ever read, and it compares to Better Call Saul, actually. Just know that she did it first. If you are familiar with Better Call Saul, then you know that Jimmy's development into Saul over time—his corruption—may or may not have been caused by his brother; it is all ambiguous, and this is on purpose. We Need to Talk About Kevin has the same complexity with the central question that it asks: did the mother drive her own son to commit a mass shooting? The reader is left to think over the questions, and put the evidence together....

There has been a long-running debate among writers between how to best write prose. Simplifying a little, it can be broadly characterized as a division between those who argue for minimalism and those who argue for more ornate prose. Both sides have been derided—the former as "beige" or "dry," the latter as "purple." But I would say that minimalism is probably the most common form of writing, if only because it is easier. As a result of this, the debate almost always takes the form of someone like myself criticizing Sanderson for his prose, and a fan of his replying that his prose doesn't need to be ornate or poetic to be good. In other words, I usually find myself on the snotty "ornate" side of the debate. But I recently came across a few videos by Joseph V. Logsdon that seem to embody the literal caricature presented by the simple prose side, and I find myself on the other side of the argument. Now I want "minimalist" prose. Obvio...

I wasn't planning on writing anything for Piranesi, if only because this is one of those books that I thought you should go into completely blind. I'm in agreement with pretty much everyone else on that because you can't really talk about this book without spoilers. I also balked at doing a spoiler review because I tend to do them when I have a lot to talk about, which is usually when I have issues with the book. It is safe to say I did not have many issues. But as I looked at some of the reviews and saw some of the interpretations of the book, I thought I would at least write something providing my take of the ending of the book, and also my interpretation of the story as a whole. Spoilers Ahead Greatest Strength The greatest strength of the book is the perspective shift. I don't mean that there is a shift during the plot of the book (part way through), but that the book's foundations are built on the "shift." We get the story from one perspective, and th...

I just finished reading Submission, by Michel Houellebecq. This book is French, though I read the translated version, for obvious reasons. The book is rather infamous for its content, which is naturally why I chose to read it. And perhaps, how you describe it says a bit about your attitude regarding it. I wanted to make a joke about how this was basically The Handmaid's Tale in France, except you replace the Far Right with radical Islam (assuming there is a difference?); as such, many on the left don't like it. But while it does depict a near future, where a Muslim Brotherhood group takes over France, in coalition with the socialists, all because they could not bear to let the Far Right party win, the focus of the story is actually elsewhere. What is this book about? Well, as it is often stated in right wing circles, empires are not defeated, they commit suicide. This book is about France's suicide. It is about the West's suicide. The reader is placed within the head of...

I just finished reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by—I want to censor myself for the audience's sake—Phillip K. Penis. This is a science fiction novel written in the 1960s about 2021, a world where the Soviet Union still exists, where video calls have replaced phone calls, where cell phones don't exist, where hover cars are commonplace, and the world has largely been left in desolation due to some undisclosed nuclear conflict. At this point, mankind is now moving on, colonizing the wider solar system, namely Mars. Part of the incentive structure are androids, which are given out to people who leave earth. That is the carrot. The stick is the state of earth, itself. That said, many people remain, and Earth is where the novel is set. This is the book that inspired the movie Blade Runner. I have not seen it. I have seen the occasional out-of-context clip. And I've heard much about it. The biggest thing is that the movie is nothing like the book. I will probably watc...

It was inevitable that I would write something on the topic of politics and fiction. I hate the way it is talked about, because people are often so shallow in how they approach the topic. We are regularly treated to gems like, "Art shouldn't be political," and equally shiny gems like "All art is political." Invariably, I find the discussions to be particularly annoying and, at the heart of all of them, there is a rather obvious problem. They do not define what it means to be political. How else do you think people could be making such ridiculously contrasting statements? They have different understandings of what it means to be political. In this post, I want to unpack multiple senses of what it means for art to be political, and draw out the implications. What is Politics? I subscribe to a particular form of power politics, so my understanding of politics places power at the center. Politics is the set of activities individuals, groups, and institutions engage ...

I There was a book that was essentially purged from all the markets in society around 2017 in America. If you are familiar with recent history, this is around the time of the rise of the Alt-Right and the Charlottesville protests and riots. The book is known as The Turner Diaries. It was easily available leading up to those moments. You could actually find a copy of the official audiobook for free on youtube. It disappeared shortly afterward. The content makes clear why. The book opens with a far-left government taking control of America. They claim that because laws against murder and rape have a disparate impact against black people, they are racist—and so they abolish them. As a result, crime runs rampant; the book operates on the added assumption that black people are inherently violent in everything they do. This triggers a white nationalist revolution, where the white population seeks liberation, not just from black people, but also from the government, and of course, from the Je...