Burning books isn't ALWAYS bad!

Not when it is this particular book of whose imminent publication I warned you some time ago.  Happily, I am saved the bother of actually reading the wretched thing before I rush off for the petrol and the matches because someone else has read it for me.  Mr. Sam Kriss at The New Inquiry has earned my gratitude by not only reading the ghastly thing but also writing a superb and stinging critique.  His essay is suitably entitled "Book of Lamentations" and as he takes us gently through the vast, winding, inverted corridors of mirrors that go to make up this book one can see how appropriate it is.  Allow me to give you his second paragraph which will give you the flavour of his criticism:

Great dystopia isn’t so much fantasy as a kind of estrangement or dislocation
from the present; the ability to stand outside time and see the situation in its
full hideousness. The dystopian novel doesn’t necessarily have to be a novel.
Maybe the greatest piece of dystopian literature ever written is Theodor
Adorno’s Minima Moralia, a collection of observations and aphorisms
penned by the philosopher while in exile in America during and after the Second
World War. Even if, like I do, you disagree enthusiastically with his blanket
condemnation of all “degenerated” popular culture, it’s hard not to be convinced
that what we are living is “damaged life.” It’s not an argument so much as
revelation. In Adorno’s bitterly lucid critique everything we take for “The libidinal achievements demanded of an individual behaving as healthy in body and mind are such as can be performed only at the cost of the profoundest mutilation … the regular guy, the popular girl, have to repress not only their desires and insights, but even the symptoms that in bourgeois times resulted from repression.” – Minima Moralia granted is suddenly revealed in all its hideousness. The
world Adorno lives in isn’t quite the same as ours; he’s coming at his subjects
from a reflex angle – they’re a bunch of average Joes and Janes, he’s a
misanthropic German cultural theorist with a preternaturally spherical head –
but his insights are all the more relevant because of this. Something has gone
terribly wrong in the world; we are living the wrong life, a life without any
real fulfillment. The newly published DSM-5 is a classic dystopian
novel in this mold.

And there, right at the end of his second paragraph he gives you the title of the 'novel' he is reviewing - DSM-5.  The numeral at the end indicates correctly that there have been four previous 'novels' in this genre, almost as though Lewis Carroll had written 'Alice Through the Looking Glass: Part I, II, III, IV and V'.  In fact, judging by Mr. Kriss's review there are some distinct similarities between this 'novel' and those of Lewis Carroll. 

This book, like its four predecessors, is a truly evil book.  It is the 'go to' manual for all the Nurse Ratcheds of this world and their white-coated supervisors.  Perhaps the most evil thing about it is the in-built certainty and pretend scientism that these practitioners of gobbledegook insist is factual.  The psychobabblers are the medical equivalent of the global warming non-scientist sect.  This book should be burnt and if I hear so much as a squeak from Nurse Ratched she can be flung on the fire, too!

 Hat tip to the always superb: http://www.aldaily.com/

 

Comments

[dearieme]

We tried watching Cuckoo's Nest on the telly: hammy, predictable and altogether lame. We abandoned ship.

[David Duff]

I disagree, DM! Yes, it was the softest of soft soap in some ways but it had a message worth repeating - and repeating. Not, of course, just the iniquities of psychiatric (so-called) medicine and practice but also for the deeper meaning that in society we should not just accept our 'meds' quietly, saying 'thank you, doctor'. The director, Miloš Forman, was a Czech and knew where-of he spoke. I thought it was a great film - and Louise Fletcher was superb as Nurse Ratched. It's definitely in the 37 films which constitute my Top Ten!

[Dom]

Forman also did Amadeus, which had a psychiatric setting, sort of. Amadeus and Cuckoo are two of my favorites. The end of Cuckoo, first sad when Nicolson is brain-dead, then happy / sad when he is killed, then happy at last when the Indian breaks free, is remarkable.

I didn't care for Hair, but I think Forman was attracted to the idea of outsiders and the theme of freedom.

[David Duff]

Glad you agree with me, Dom. I think DM misses, as do we all, the impact of seeing a film in a cinema as opposed to watching it on TV. Yes, I, too, enjoyed 'Amadeus', especially Murray Abraham. I once played Count Orsini-Rosenburg in the stage play, a performance of which it was said that 'marvellous isn't the word'!

[dearieme]

Amadeus was a fine thing.

[David Duff]

Crikey!

[dearieme]

Well, it was hammy too but the music was wonderful and, somehow, the whole lot was blended together into an impressive whole. Great fun.