Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

good anarchist and left-wing fiction writers?

fiannanahalba said:
Who told you that, the treasurer? He wasnt even a member according to the Edinburgh SSP i know. SSP is a Brit party.
Click to expand...

No, the person who interviewed him many years ago. He certainly didn't give anything like he could that is certainly true. He didn't and doesn't live in Edinburgh, he lives on the other side of the bridge. He also signed the Declaration of Calton Hill which is quite avowedly pro-independence.
 
Fair play to Banks for signing the Declaration of Calton Hill, like most of the artists associated with the SSP, however - not too much money was forthcoming. Edgar Prais QC, millionaire brief and SSP member in Edinburgh paid derisory subs. Anyway thats enough about this shit - this thread is about fiction writers of the left.
 
fiannanahalba said:
Fair play to Banks for signing the Declaration of Calton Hill, like most of the artists associated with the SSP, however - not too much money was forthcoming. Edgar Prais QC, millionaire brief and SSP member in Edinburgh paid derisory subs. Anyway thats enough about this shit - this thread is about fiction writers of the left.
Click to expand...

Agree with the above wholeheartedly btw.
 
Dillinger4 said:
Does it have to be sci-fi?
Click to expand...

nah, i just brought it up to begin with as that's what i'm mainly reading right now. would be good to hear about non sci-fi writers actually, as it seems almost every sci-fi author i read nowadays has some kind of radical viewpoint.
 
strung out said:
nah, i just brought it up to begin with as that's what i'm mainly reading right now. would be good to hear about non sci-fi writers actually, as it seems almost every sci-fi author i read nowadays has some kind of radical viewpoint.
Click to expand...

OK cool, I will go and have a look for you.

I don't really get sci-fi. I don't have a problem with it, I am sure a lot of it is great. I would really like to be more into it but it just doesn't work for me at all.

Off the top of my head though, I would probably recommend Roberto Bolano. His shorter stories are good, Distant Star and and By Night in Chile. 2666 is his best, and it is probably one of the best things I have ever read.

I wouldn't say he is explicitly left wing in his writing, but it is much better for that, and a sense of it does come through. Roberto Bolano himself was very left wing, of the very best kind (IMO).

Doris Lessing would be good as well. Again, I don't think she is explicitely left wing (for the most part). The Golden Notebook is pretty great (except for something that would be a spoiler) and well worth a read.

Erm.

Off the top of my head, that's it. I will go and have a look on my bookshelves for you because I know that I have loads more.
 
ta, sounds great. will have to check some of those out and see if it's sounds like my kind of stuff!
 
Dillinger4 said:
Off the top of my head though, I would probably recommend Roberto Bolano. His shorter stories are good, Distant Star and and By Night in Chile. 2666 is his best, and it is probably one of the best things I have ever read.

I wouldn't say he is explicitly left wing in his writing, but it is much better for that, and a sense of it does come through. Roberto Bolano himself was very left wing, of the very best kind (IMO).
Click to expand...

His book Nazi Literature in the Americas sounds fascinating. Heard about it a good few years back and thought it sounded fantastic, then forgot about it. Got plenty time to read a book now, think i'll buy it....
 
Fedayn said:
His book Nazi Literature in the Americas sounds fascinating. Heard about it a good few years back and thought it sounded fantastic, then forgot about it. Got plenty time to read a book now, think i'll buy it....
Click to expand...

Oh yeh, definitely, that one is very very very good. No idea how it slipped my mind!
 
Dillinger4 said:
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon is also worth a mention, now that I come to think of it.
Click to expand...

has a car stealthed to invisibility by being so high on the index of refraction (whatever that means). Sci Fi.

or at least, american fantasy. sooooort of.
 
DotCommunist said:
I've not, and I've been awaiting the online text of that linked book for ages

e2a get in! http://www.tangledwilderness.org/?p=301
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link DotCommunist! There's a list of Anarchist writers at the end of the book.

I really recommend Sirens of Titan.

Dillinger4 said:
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon is also worth a mention, now that I come to think of it.
Click to expand...

Vineland is great. So much easier than Gravity's Rainbow which I never could finish or properly start.

I'll see if I can get Roberto Bolano from the library.
 
DotCommunist said:
has a car stealthed to invisibility by being so high on the index of refraction (whatever that means). Sci Fi.

or at least, american fantasy. sooooort of.
Click to expand...

All his other writing contains a lot fantastical stuff, but I wouldn't say it is sci-fi. Fantasy at a long stretch, but Thomas Pynchon is pretty undefinable really.
 
Almost anything from the La Comédie humaine by Honore de Balzac. Balzac wasn't really 'left wing', but his insights into the conditions of life in France at that time has had a lot of influence over Marxists. There a a lot of subtle references to Balzac in Marx, for example, and I think he was one of the favourite writers of both Marx and Engels. Engels himself said:

"I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists and statisticians put together."
Click to expand...
 
Philip Roth's The Plot Against America is pretty damn fine. It's an alternate US where FDR is defeated by Lindbergh, who appoints fellow anti-semite Henry Ford as Vice President.
 
Here is another one: The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN.

It is wrote in wrote in a 'four hand' method, where one of them would write a chapter, and hand it over and then the second writer would write a chapter, and so on.

Its a crime story told through two different detectives trying to solve a crime and find out much more. It deals with mexican politics and the effects of neo-liberalism.
 
Dillinger4 said:
Here is another one: The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN.

It is wrote in wrote in a 'four hand' method, where one of them would write a chapter, and hand it over and then the second writer would write a chapter, and so on.

Its a crime story told through two different detectives trying to solve a crime and find out much more. It deals with mexican politics and the effects of neo-liberalism.
Click to expand...

that sounds pretty cool actually. will definitely try and check that one out.
 
I think crime/detective stories are an excellent genre for left-wing radical politics. Murder, political and economic corruption, sleaze, etc. Follow the money.
 
Fedayn said:
His book Nazi Literature in the Americas sounds fascinating. Heard about it a good few years back and thought it sounded fantastic, then forgot about it. Got plenty time to read a book now, think i'll buy it....
Click to expand...

Arrived today from Amazon. :cool:
 
News From Nowhere by William Morris. Technically science fiction, written by the great wall paper designer himself, about a man who falls asleep after arguing with some anarchos and wakes up in utopian London. Fab!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

T & P
Pulp Fiction at 30
2
Replies
40
Views
1K
Mrs Miggins
Mrs Miggins
B
Yara Rodrigues Fowler - left wing South London author
Replies
8
Views
377
Brainaddict
B
danny la rouge
Underused tropes in fiction, TV & film
2 3 4 5
Replies
133
Views
3K
Agent Sparrow
Agent Sparrow
DaveCinzano
TV shows (dramas/comedies etc) about TV shows (real and fictional)
2
Replies
46
Views
874
stavros
S
danny la rouge
When does Buffy get good?
2 3 4
Replies
117
Views
3K
emanymton
emanymton
Back
Top Bottom