Thursday, January 12, 2017

Hmm …

… The Decline of Western Civilization: Robert Coover’s HUCK OUT WEST : The Booklist Reader. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

And the world is wicked indeed. Tom has sold Jim back into slavery; Becky Thatcher, abandoned by Tom, is now a prostitute; and the general, a long-haired, dandy psychopath, wants to hang Huck for desertion despite the fact he never actually joined the army. As gold-crazed prospectors crowd the Black Hills, bison are hunted to extinction, and Indian nations face genocide, Huck plays helpless witness, less and less able to avoid people and towns to enjoy his precious loafing under the sky and stars. 
Sounds like PC boilerplate to me. I made a bison stew a couple of weeks ago.

2 comments:

  1. The novel sounds a lot like satire, in which boilerplate is exactly the point. Am I wrong?

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  2. I'm not sure. I just don't like the idea, implicit in PC, that people nowadays are so much more wonderful and enlightened than our barbaric forebears.
    Of course, if Coover is satirizing that, maybe it works.

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