Misery Memoirs

[User]

 

[swee'pea99]

They answer to the same kind of atavistic instinct that makes people rubberneck at road accidents, or watch Jeremy Kyle. They appeal to the walking wounded, who do not appear to be exactly thin on the ground.

 

[swee'pea99]

I don't want to even think about it...it's too depressing!

I think the mention of Angela's Ashes is telling.....I think the entire genre was a spin-off from that one book, whose runaway success, I suspect, took the publishing world totally by surprise. It's a bit like the way the world of paperbacks is currently awash with 50 shades of shite me-toos.

 

[Boris Bajic]

My wife onvce came to bed and found me propped up by pillows, watching a Cop Shoot Chase Car! show of the kind that freeview vomits at us regularly.

She asked (quietly) "Does watching this sort of stuff help you feel more restful at bedtime?" I hurrumphed and switched off the telly. She was right. How I resented it.

I think Misery Lit falls into a similar category. It cannot be nourishing to the soul to read how hard-done-by people had rotten lives. Having said that, I am guilty of elevating some of these works while I deride others.

For example, "Se questo e un uomo" seems a remarkable piece of literature to me. Is it misery lit? I'm not sure. Some might say it is.

But I wouldn't want to read the dull private miseries of Constance Briscoe and her miserable cohorts of 'Aren't I Sad'.

Or... we could cut out the middle man and watch daytime telly.

 

[Archie_tect]

Never heard of it before... but you don't have to read it.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

[QUOTE 2684228, member: 1314"]There’s a reason I ask. My cousin wrote a book about growing up in Wolverhampton from the 60s onwards. It’s about poverty, racism, mental illness, love, wife-beating, unfulfilled ambitions etc..,[/quote]

Chuck in drinking and driving and we've got the basics of a good country music song, not sure about Wolverhampton though.

Wolverhampton oh Wolverhampton, I still hear your sea winds blowin'
I still see her dark eyes glowin'
She was 21 when I left Wolverhampton...

Innit

 

[Saluki]

A friend lent me 'A boy called it' a few years back and I got about 1/4 of the way through and decided that life was too short and cheered myself up with a nice Jasper Fforde. This friend has read all the Dave Pelzer books (a boy called it and 2 or 3 others) plus books with titles such as 'no mummy don't' etc. I cannot see the fascination of misery porn, I really can't. I see such books regularly on my client's bookshelves but I am not sure if they read them. I know quite a few are unwanted pressies from the rellies so they don't feel that they can chuck them out.

I am not sure if anyone actually enjoys reading misery though, do they?

 

[Boris Bajic]

@User1314, I'm not sure whether you're warning people off the books in post #7 or using some subtle form of marketing to help flog them.

Whichever it is, there's no need to trouble me with these mid games.

My reading starts and stops with the French classics, with Goscinny and Uderzo topping my list. The closest these chaps come to misery lit is mention of one of their characters having fallen into a cauldron as a child, with the risk of drowning that act involes.

 

[swee'pea99]

"My cousin wrote a book about growing up in Wolverhampton from the 60s onwards."

That's just taking it too far.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

My reading starts and stops with the French classics, with Goscinny and Uderzo topping my list.

 

[EltonFrog]

I'd had enough when George lost Timmy the dog on Kirrin Island, that was it for me.

 

[Boris Bajic]

You may mock my literary taste, but these are books whose graphic (literally) and violent portrayal of ethnic hatred, invasion, occupation and subjugation led to their being banned from the public libraries of Brent in the 1980s.

Topics covered include the following:

Religious cults (Druidism inter alia).
PEDs (the sole basis of the unlikely tactical miltary victories won by the protagonist).
The role of women in society (Chieftain's wife and others).
The coming of the industrial age and its impact (The blacksmith).
Social snobbery and its harmful effect (Chieftain's wife, fishmonger's wife).
Life under occupation (always a current theme and covered in a graphic and honest way).
The true consequences of armed insurrection (no flinching in the horror and violence of the portrayals).

I am now beginning to think that Goscinny and Uderzo probably do qualify as Misery Lit.

I am now also beginnng to worry about the motivation behind Georges Prosper Remi's harrowing tales of the misfortunes befalling a cub reporter for a Brussels newspaper.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

You may mock my literary taste...

Mock?! Still got mine, in fact I was just refreshing my memory of Belgian customs the other day and also Vercingetorix's defeat in Alesia, not that anyone knows where that is.

As for Remi, his first wife was called Fanny Rodwell. Titter.

 

[Boris Bajic]

Mock?! Still got mine, in fact I was just refreshing my memory of Belgian customs the other day and also Vercingetorix's defeat in Alesia, not that anyone knows where that is.

As for Remi, his first wife was called Fanny Rodwell. Titter.

That messenger chap in the Belgian tome, he bears a striking resemblance to a well-known Belgian athlete and doper, doesn't he?

 

[Maz]

I am currently reading a novel called Djibouti by Elmore Leonard. All about modern-day Somali pirates mixed with Oxbridge-educated Muslamics with a dash of Al-Qaeda thrown in for good measure.
It doesn't make for comfortable reading...Leonard's style of writing in this book feels disjointed and takes some real getting used to!