I was thinking of starting up a few threads about specific components of books (best dialog involving multiple people, best descriptive paragraph about a person. I'll start with something a little different.
I could fill up this with at least 50 quotes from Fahrenheit 451, but here is my all-time favorite rant in the book. Anyone else have an example where the narrator does a great job of expressing frustration, exhaustion, apathy or just pure hatred?
quote: Fahrenheit 451 Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :
I rarely feel that a book is improved by rants and don't know of any that I would consider a favorite--even when I agree with it.
Posted by Vanderbleek (Member # 6535) on :
Not sure if it exactly counts, but I love what Howard says (in The Fountainhead, very beginning) about the Parthenon. I've actually said about the same thing to a few teachers prior to reading the book. So I totally agreed with it.
Posted by RMatthewWare (Member # 4831) on :
I don't like when the narrator develops into a character, unless its parody. If the writer feels an opinion needs to be expressed, they should put it into a character. Then I can see what a character thinks and why. The narrator shouldn't lecture me.
Posted by debhoag (Member # 5493) on :
Ayn Rand had one in Atlas Shrugged where the main character goes of for about five pages on why humans smoke cigarettes and links it to the taming of fire, which sets us apart from the beasts. It's a pure Jack Nicholson moment, even through John Galt is young, handsome and cool. And there are rants in Devil's Advocate and Scent of a Woman that would have been federal crimes if Al Pacino hadn't been allowed to deliver them on-screen. One is on the nature of evil, and how it's really good, and one is on the nature of good and how it's really evil. Major fun.
Vanderbleek, did you hear that Atlas Shrugged is being made into a movie? Angelina Jolie was being considered for the part of Dagny Taggart. No lie.
[This message has been edited by debhoag (edited December 09, 2007).]
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Well, in Heinlein's later novels, but starting in particular with Stranger in a Strange Land, any number of his characters would go on and on---Jubal Harshaw said his folks tried to make him a preacher and it showed---and on beyond that. Impressed me when I was younger---in the narrative context, the characters are in the right, but in so-called real life I eventually found myself in some disagreement with the expressed opinions.
(Couldn't get into Rand's work when I was younger---found either Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead impenetrable, I forget which. I might do better now, but I've probably philosophically diverged too much to appreciate them properly. (I did see the movie of The Fountainhead---and thought its premise nonsense.))
Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :
Well, philosophically I agree with at least some of what Rand believed. That didn't excuse her tendancy to preach and preach and then preach some more in her novels.
Posted by debhoag (Member # 5493) on :
If memory serves me correctly, the premise was based on an actual event in the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. So it was one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" implausible things. Cary Grant, right? I'd forgotten about the Jubal Hershaw, Lazarus Long rants. I just went to a workshop that Nathaniel Brandon was a featured speaker at. He is still getting mileage out of his relationship with Rand.
[This message has been edited by debhoag (edited December 09, 2007).]