I think we found the vegan that ruins it for all the other ones. This is a post in r/books, for God’s sake, and the discussion is utterly derailed. Way to poop the party.

Idk what you’re getting downvoted for, I love chickens and this is absolutely true. They’re violent little dinosaurs. It’s great.

>>> Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely— having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

Perfect preparation for the rest of the book. “Hi, I’m your narrator, let’s get into it. First up, I’m very wordy, melodramatic, and fundamentally unhinged. But most importantly, I love the ocean and think it can fix all my problems.”

God, what an effectively horrifying little paragraph. Imagine not knowing what Lolita is about and encountering that. “Light of my life, fire of my loins,” oh okay so he’s describing his girlfriend or wife, then the “four feet ten in one sock” starts to set off warning bells, and then “at school” hits and those bells are deafeningly loud, and then he reminds you he’s talking about this individual, this Lolita “in my arms…” and it’s ABORT ABORT OH NO.

I didn’t feel the need to read that book more than once but damn, he can write. That “one sock” detail is such tragically childish imagery.

I think of Small Gods like how Terry Jones described Life of Brian: it’s heretical, but it’s not blasphemous. In other words, it has plenty of negative stuff to say about organized religion, but no particular problem with the idea of faith or God(s).

If I know one thing about Victorian erotica it’s that flagellation will be heavily featured. I always wonder whether it was a genuinely more prevalent kink at the time, whether authors at the time just automatically assumed their audiences would want a whipping scene, or some combination of both.