Books with insidious, personality-altering powers

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From the Magus thread:

my ex was obsessed with "the magus" and it informed his behaviour throughout his 20's in all kinds of negative ways.

I am interested in literature that has this kind of effect on people (not necessarily negative). I have an idea that Ayn Rand does this to some impressionable youths,though I have never read her myself.

Any examples from personal experience?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 10:56 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Colin Wilson's 'The Outsider' is culpable too.

I finished Coupland's 'Girlfriend in a Coma' late one insomniac night ("at 3am man permits himself to be lied to") and for a maybe half an hour was convinced I had to change my life UTTERLY. The strange potency of cheap fiction...

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 11:05 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think half an hour counts.

Tell me more about 'The Outsider'

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 11:05 (twenty-three years ago)

don't people who read The Diceman take to rolling dice all the time to decide what to do?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 11:07 (twenty-three years ago)

This website is apropos. (And scary)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 11:07 (twenty-three years ago)

"The Dice Man"? We must have had a thread about it at some point. It's the kind of idea only WACKED-OUT TEENS ON DOPE would ever think could work...

(cross posting with the Rev., but oh well)

― Mark C (Mark C), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 11:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't get me started on the effect Judy Blume's "Forever" had on me

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 11:09 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the proof that The Diceman has never ACTUALLY changed anyone's life came when a teen drunkard in HOLLYOAKS went all random on our long-suffering asses.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:06 (twenty-three years ago)

"Catcher in the Rye" apparently turns people into crazy homicidal maniacs.

― NA. (Nick A.), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:25 (twenty-three years ago)

Doesn't reading The Revelations Of Glaaki cause you to be possessed by Y'Golonac?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Hippies + psychedelics + Celestine Prophecy = Oh. My. God. *giggles*

I've noticed a great many folks become a little tweaked for a good span of time after reading Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati! trilogy, although not in a way that I would call "insidious", more like "enlightentertainingly open to possibilities".

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, similarly The Invisibles broke open my head and remade it with shiny brightness in the center.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Love the Illuminati trilogy (which is actually just one book). One that seriously broke my head was Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind by C.D.B. Bryan. Not a nutcase -- a respected journalist and critic. Anyway, this book gave me the willies like you could not believe. Read it, but not at four in the morning.

I'm over my alien phase now, but not because I became convinced that they aren't out there abducting people. I just kinda pushed that information down, much like the knowledge that I could die in a car crash any time I get into a car.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Ooh! And the Invisibles! Though mostly that was just kinky occult fun. Rather too impenetrable to really shake me up.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 12:59 (twenty-three years ago)

I've also noticed that Tom Robbins novels tend to make some people really horny.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And on that account, Hustler has insidious, personality-altering powers.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:01 (twenty-three years ago)

I've heard Deleuze's and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus might turn people into anarchists. Haven't read it myself, though.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:27 (twenty-three years ago)

I've known whiney bitches who were destroyed by Catcher In The Rye.

That said, I think The Bell Jar did worse things to me through me teens...

But, could it be argued that people whose brains are broken by books were fucked up to start with, and the literature was only a trigger of existing antisocial behaviour, in the same way that death metal doesn't turn people into ravaging psychos, but ravaging psychos tend to be drawn to death metal?

― kate, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:33 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, I think Kate is broadly right. I know someone who was messed up by reading too much DH Lawrence when she was a teenager.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:35 (twenty-three years ago)

John Irving depressed the living shit out of me as a teenager, but I kept reading his books.

― Mark C (Mark C), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Nobody should be allowed to read DH Lawrence as a teenager. Or ever. Well maybe just the poetry.

I think I might have a head made of a brick because I can't think of ANY book that's altered my brane/personality, even for half an hour.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Books like Walden and No Logo turn me fiercely optimistic and political for a few days. Then it fades.

― NA. (Nick A.), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:58 (twenty-three years ago)

when so sucidally depressed ect is a life saving option, the bell jar is not, i repeat NOT, the novel to be reading.

that said their are a slew of catholic options, but city of god changed me, as did dorthoy days book of essays and de avilas i fucked god and he inspired me to new heights.

do you know who is truly scary-mormons who have read the power and glory agit prop, or anyone who thinks the left behind shit is good enough to buy the sell up acessories.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Love the Illuminati trilogy (which is actually just one book).

it is now. originally it was three separate ones. If you see them, buy them, as the What Has Happened So Far intros to vols two and three are very funny (and bear only a marginal relationship to what has happened so far).

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:06 (twenty-three years ago)

I just (six hours ago) finished The Count of Monte Cristo, unabridged. I have become an agent of Providence.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:09 (twenty-three years ago)

D'oh. The Bible!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Seriously. I'm just waiting for someone to persecute me, so that I can spend the next 14 years suffering, and then the following 10 years exacting my revenge.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Is this where we cross-link with the Gor thread?

(I'm too lazy to find it myself)

(the book that changed my life for at least three days when I was a teenager was an average novel about a teenage girl, a stone circle and some travellers. I can't remember what it was called or who the author was)

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Nickalicious-as-I-is-now wouldn't have been the same if not for...
http://64.95.118.51/images/opti/e1/cf/0553380648-resized200.jpg

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Ha. Me and my friends used to read that (Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) in high school and thought it was really awesome. Then I reread it a year or so ago and was disappointed at what a terrible terrible book it is. Now I just need to reread the Anarchist Cookbook and my disillusionment with '60's drug culture will be complete.

― NA. (Nick A.), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:31 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, when I re-read it I too was like "oh, ugh". I still like some bits (the 'film-everything' ethos, the 'check out the shoes' method-for-determining-trustability, etc), but the book itself, I'm like "come oooooon!".

The Anarchist Cookbook howevah = how high school kids learn to make bombs

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:34 (twenty-three years ago)

ON THE ROAD

― chester (synkro), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:36 (twenty-three years ago)

herman hesse, Casteneda, jonathan livingston seagull, zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, The Prophet, what color is your parachute, Beyond Good & Evil, Lord of the Rings, The Art Of War.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh. We just learned that if you ingest enough nutmeg, you totally get a buzz, dude! But my friends just got stomachaches. Ha, stupid pseudohippies!

― NA. (Nick A.), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:38 (twenty-three years ago)

most novels just make me want to write one myself. Fortunately, this feeling soon goes away.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:41 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm sure i could sue the estates of Kafka, Camus, and Hesse for making me such an insufferable human being as a kid. I was so sure that nobody knew the trouble I'd seen. Nobody knew the sorrow....oh, yeah, sorrows of young werther too.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:42 (twenty-three years ago)

ayn rand too. i should sue her ghost. cuz i really was a 14 year old genius and the world owed me something! Yeah, thanks a lot, Ayn.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:43 (twenty-three years ago)

most novels just make me want to write one myself. Fortunately, this feeling soon goes away.

Dorothy Parker or H.L. Mencken?

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:45 (twenty-three years ago)

plus, i really, really needed to learn how to be more selfish when i was 14.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Reading Peter Hoeg's "Borderliners" while being delirious with flu is unadvisable (but fiercely psychedelic).

― Frühlingsmute (Wintermute), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:50 (twenty-three years ago)

i should sue her ghost.

You can sue Alan Greenspan, maybe.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 14:52 (twenty-three years ago)

he did send a giant floral tribute the shape of a dollar sign to her funeral.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 15:18 (twenty-three years ago)

sadly i think most people are heavily influenced by JD salinger at that awkward age. i know i was. and i dont think it did me any good at all.

look at all us romantic roadkill hovering about the place - never trust a recluse!

― arthur woodlouse, Tuesday, 13 May 2003 15:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Moomin is mind-altering.

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 16:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I can't belive no one's said Dr. Seuss books. My little cousins have their own Dr. Seuss-inspired language that they break into when they're playing. They make up names for things as a result of reading his books. It's so damn awesome. Example: A couch becomes a "flifferdoodle." They make themselves laugh till they fall over. Love it.

― Jeanne Fury (Jeanne Fury), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 16:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Pynchon.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 16:53 (twenty-three years ago)

the horned man

― Clare (not entirely unhappy), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 19:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Are you reading the books properly, people? Surely the correct answer is ALL of them?

― Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 19:13 (twenty-three years ago)

i read the dice man as a wacked-out-on-dope 20 year old and it helped to make me even more obnoxious.

― dan (dan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 19:16 (twenty-three years ago)

book I recommend to all narrow-ass white people = Iceberg Slim's Pimp

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 19:17 (twenty-three years ago)

book I recommend to all fat-ass non-white people = Tom Arnold's Autobiography

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 19:18 (twenty-three years ago)

ayn rand. in a MILD WAY, yes, that's possible! also the once and future king, which i don't think is very applicable to very many people but it has basically made me very dreamy for the last six years.

― Maria (Maria), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 19:52 (twenty-three years ago)

It's as corny as anything, but I once had a near-religious epiphany while reading 'A Scanner Darkly' on a bus going from Brockley to Lewisham. It wasn't so much a mind-altering/expanding bk as a text capable of bringing back certain lived lysergic experiences. Powerful and unsettling - ditto 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch'

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 20:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom Robbins - everything he's published, pretty much.

Lenny Bruce's autobiography.

Ender's Game.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.

Anything by Judy Blume, but especially Forever and Then Again, Maybe I Won't.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 02:24 (twenty-three years ago)

book I recommend to all narrow-ass white people = Iceberg Slim's Pimp

You better dodge raindrops, bitch!

― jonas lefrel (jonas lefrel), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 02:35 (twenty-three years ago)

The Gulag Archipelago cured my bitching about having to walk to school in winter. Meanwhile, The Liar by Stephen Fry had effects on me that I'm still trying to work out.

― Poppy (poppy), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 04:29 (twenty-three years ago)

when so sucidally depressed ect is a life saving option, the bell jar is not, i repeat NOT, the novel to be reading

I read this in the spring of 2001, when I was at pretty much the lowest point of my entire life. It didn't harm me at all: I enjoyed Plath's dry humor and found her relative detachment from her situation a lot easier to take than, say, Wurtzel's poor-poor-me routine in Prozac Nation.

Perhaps it says something about how messed up I was at the time that I thought SYLVIA PLATH seemed relatively sane compared to me, but I still find the early New York chapters to be quite funny and well-observed, almost worthy of Salinger.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 05:36 (twenty-three years ago)

The Wind in the Willows and A High Wind in Jamaica made me indescribably happy for several summers running.

― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 05:44 (twenty-three years ago)

justyn
sallinger is not connected to real life, nor has he ever been.

― anthony easton (anthony), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 05:49 (twenty-three years ago)

maybe not YOUR life.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 06:06 (twenty-three years ago)

i dont get it, prep school whinging does not make gr8 lit, its like he hasnt progressed passed the 8th grade.

― anthony easton (anthony), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 06:18 (twenty-three years ago)

reading celine made me be a collaborator when the nazis invaded

― duane, Wednesday, 14 May 2003 07:32 (twenty-three years ago)

The Anarchist Cookbook howevah = how high school kids learn to make bombs

No, it's how high school kids learn how to kill themselves trying to make bombs that wouldn't even work in the first place. It's notorously inaccurate.

― Christine "Green Leafy Dragon" Indigo (cindigo), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 08:44 (twenty-three years ago)

45 is inspirational in a positive sense (Plath, Salinger et al being inspirational in an irritating idiot-poet sense). American Psycho's non-murderous parts added a respectable sheen to my current lifestyle.

― Affectian (Affectian), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 18:45 (twenty-three years ago)

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