parasites in fiction

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can anyone add to what is already a rather long but not quite perfect list of examples of parasites in fiction?

any genre, any parasite [even (para)site/para(site)], any 'telling'.

you can even review the text if you can be arsed.

― Rita, Monday, 26 September 2005 01:28 (twenty-one years ago)

http://cyberread.com/files/_xml_import/politicianspartisans_lg.jpg

― _, Monday, 26 September 2005 01:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Heinrich Boll's The Clown comes to mind here, as the main character spends the duration of the book calling up friends and family asking for money.

― pr00de, where's my car? (pr00de), Monday, 26 September 2005 01:31 (twenty-one years ago)

viruses

and human subjection

― Rita, Monday, 26 September 2005 01:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay. I thought you meant it more metaphorically.

― pr00de, where's my car? (pr00de), Monday, 26 September 2005 01:44 (twenty-one years ago)

The tapeworm in:

http://www.thegline.com/book-of-the-week/images/filth.jpg

― John Justen (johnjusten), Monday, 26 September 2005 02:27 (twenty-one years ago)

capeks war on the newts maybe?

― anthony, Monday, 26 September 2005 02:44 (twenty-one years ago)

stephen king's dreamcatcher

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 26 September 2005 02:54 (twenty-one years ago)

http://members.iinet.net.au/~jaherne/alienhost/xenomorph/facehugger-attach.jpg

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 26 September 2005 03:17 (twenty-one years ago)

(duh)

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 26 September 2005 03:17 (twenty-one years ago)

but do you mean literary fiction?

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 26 September 2005 03:18 (twenty-one years ago)

paracite in fiction

discus

― kurt broder (dr g), Monday, 26 September 2005 03:52 (twenty-one years ago)

he, he

― pr00de, where's my car? (pr00de), Monday, 26 September 2005 15:38 (twenty-one years ago)

alien

― ken c (ken c), Monday, 26 September 2005 15:40 (twenty-one years ago)

The main characters in The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin are mosquitoes.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 26 September 2005 15:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Why fiction? Redmond O'Hanlon has a great description of parasitic infestation in almost everything he writes. The one that sticks out in my mind is a nasty worm men get from peeing while swimming (where? I don't remember. Maybe a swimming hole near YOU). It swims up the urine stream, then attaches itself to the urethra lining with hooks. Victims end up begging doctors to cut their penis off.
It was in a Granta travel writing issue.
Men—to be safe, apply duct tape to your entire penis before swimming. Even in your health club pool.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, 26 September 2005 16:18 (twenty-one years ago)

candiru fish

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 26 September 2005 16:25 (twenty-one years ago)

i mean literary fiction, certainly. especially, at this point, sci-fi. but metaphorical take is also good - actually great.

― Rita, Monday, 26 September 2005 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Check out the Clown, then. Maybe Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend too.

― pr00de, where's my car? (pr00de), Monday, 26 September 2005 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

there's also some kind of parasite in dan simmons's hyperion.

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 26 September 2005 20:26 (twenty-one years ago)

At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Mathiessen has a child die of Blackwater Fever, which is a complication of malaria.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, 26 September 2005 20:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Maleria in The Poisonwood Bible as well.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 26 September 2005 20:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Dog Life
by William Matthews

Scuffed snout, infected ear, ticks like interest
on a loan. Butt of jokes that would, forgive me,
raise hair on a bald dog. Like the one about the baby

so ugly that to get a dog to play with it,
they had to tie a pork chop around the baby's neck.
Or, get this, when you're not working like a dog,

you're dogging it. Yet those staunch workers,
human feet, are casually called dogs, and they're
like miners or men who work in submarines,

hard men who call each other sons of bitches
when they're mad. No wonder it's not loyalty
to dogs that dogs are famous for, since it's men

who've made dogs famous. And don't we under-
stand about having masters, and having food?
Masters are almost good enough for us.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, 26 September 2005 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

THE FLEA.
by John Donne

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

― emilys. (emilys.), Monday, 26 September 2005 22:18 (twenty-one years ago)

are vampires parasites?

― isadora (isadora), Monday, 26 September 2005 22:22 (twenty-one years ago)

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