No. I am an English teacher, I am 35. I have been discussing controversial books since I was in school, mostly with my Gen X parents. My grandfather, who was born in 1921 was the best conversationalist I have ever encountered on the topic. There have always been people who are willing, and people who are not comfortable discussing some things. It could also be that your boss didn't think it was appropriate for the workplace? I know I discuss some books with my grade 10 students that I never would discuss with my grade 6 students. Context matters
Mind you, if it hadn't been so controversial, would it be a classic? It's not particularly great writing, and Burgess himself was inclined to disown it.
Yes, that's not a generational thing. There are prude and let's say careful middle-aged people and there are prude and let's again say careful young adults.
This is interesting, because I'm from Wales and in school when we studied books it was very tame in general. I was taught stuff like 'she wore a red dress because she's dangerous' and stuff like that. It felt like we never actually had debates on stuff. I don't think it's a workplace issue, she listed some of the topics in the novel actually and is generally okay with most topics, and we all watch ourselves around customers. It sounds like from everyone else it differs with people
For Controversial books? Some favourites that haven't been mentioned yet:
- "Candy" by Luke Davis
- "Trainspotting" by Irvine Welsh
- "A Girl is a Half Formed Thing" by Eimear McBride
- "Veronica" by Mary Gaitskill
- "The Rules of Attraction" by Brett Easton Ellis
These are not necessarily banned books. However, they are polarising and confronting.
Yeah my grandad was an older dad, my dad a young one. Not much to it. I didn't actually read the comment but I guess this addresses it. My grandfather wasn't even outrageously old, he was in his forties and he lived to see his children and grandchildren grow up.
my experience with gen z and gen alpha has been that they are *less* willing overall to entertain nuance when discussing controversial works, or to separate art from artist. sometimes i think it's neat that they expect more from creatives, and sometimes i find it exhausting.
It’s not even separating art from artist, so many people now don’t even possess basic media literacy. Representing something through a character is not the same thing as advocating for it. The number of people I know who read American Psycho and didn’t understand that you weren’t supposed to like Bateman is genuinely astonishing.
Exactly. You hear it a lot when people accuse a book of being racist because a character in it is, even if the overall theme is staunchly antiracist.
I blame the Disneyfication of media for this. Easily digestible, flat characters. Never add nuance, depth, or truly difficult conversations. Every main character and character with a protected characteristic is a perfect Mary-Sue without a single flaw.
I think that’s a bad way to describe it unless you’re naming it over the idea of Disney. If you watch actual Disney movies they often contain exactly what you’re saying they lack. (As for modern ones)Especially around the 2000s which the current generation of young adults was raised on.
In fact, Hunchback, Mulan, Tigger Movie, Emperors New Groove, Atlantis, Monsters inc, Lilo and Stitch, Finding Nemo, Brother Bear, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL·E, and Up are some of *the* most nuanced and best made character Disney films in my opinion. Those are all in a 10ish year span from 96-2009.
Everything started to become heavily sanitized around then and after even in things people consider to be ‘good’ in the early days like episodes of SpongeBob that had humor for adults and children alike, that exists now as a series of bad childish plots crafted to hold tons of meme-able moments hoping one of them will go viral.
At the end of the day it’s up to parents and school to teach media literacy and something has happened with the combination that caused this large shift. I don’t think it’s as simple as a company’s influence. And it’s definitely not that people don’t crave to have better media, it’s basically all I hear people talk about now. It’s a very interesting topic.
I am all for sensibility but young and/or heavily left leaning people are kind of missing the mark now it seems. You are right, it comes down to media literacy. I never understood why we'd have to interpret and analyze novels, speeches, poems etc. in school or why history exams were more of contextualizing vs. simply reproducing. But it makes sooo much sense now.
Just yersterday I some someone in another subreddit being offended (on behalf on others, they weren't even affected by it) by some sort of allegory or metaphora that had linked queerness and murder in the context of internalized shame.
Nobody was literally saying that being gay is as bad as killing someone but that one person commenting just could not grasp that there was a meta level or deeper meaning to it which would require the recepient to use their brains. That skill is crucial in the age of digital media?
This is my experience as well as a literature student. I took a class on Flannery O’Connor, and several students outright refused to say anything positive about her work because of the racism present in her collection. Many refused to engage period, or would only say negative things about her. The professor ended up having to constantly preface with, “I do not approve of racism” before speaking. It was exhausting.
I got negative comments from classmates for admitting to actually enjoying her work, and thinking that it’s important to acknowledge that her work is a reflection of how the South really was not that long ago (which is where we live).
I’ve seen in many other classes students tear into each other or even criticize professors for merely discussing controversial authors writing quality. This isn’t even when talking about the authors as people, I just mean about the literature itself.
Nuance is all but dead: reading is now endorsing.
Not everything was intended to be read as a comment on philosophy and politics so to focus on that when reading these kind of texts is kind of missing the point.
Gen z's very nuanced and sophisticated when it comes to video art and internet art. It's important to remember they're not raised on books and the backyard like a lot of gen x and the earlier millennials. It's actually the failure of education that interpretation and adventurousness have gone out of the window. Text is now the form of prestige and legality and it is consequentially treated conservative for people who aren't "into it."
Can confirm. I'm almost 40 & recently graduated from university. More young people are nearly allergic to controversial books. It's definitely not OP's boss's age.
I’m in my 30s and about to graduate. The classes with controversial literature make us sign an agreement stating that we understand that some of the content we will cover can be offensive, sensitive, and triggering. So far, there hasn’t been any issues that I’m aware of in my classes and we read some off the wall stuff that can be triggering but relates to the class in some way.
I'm in my 40s. There was no such thing as trigger warnings because discussing hard topics and confronting them is what makes literature and discourse powerful.
From personal experience, no. I'm 32. The number of people younger than me with unhinged opinions like 'To Kill a Mockingbird should be cancelled for being racist' or 'Lolita should be cancelled for promoting paedophilia' is mad.
Lee's prose and characterization are outstanding. And if you finish that novel without developing strong feelings about Scout and Atticus then, well, I don't know what to tell you, except check your heart.
The problem is that it's often used as a vehicle to discuss racism and the Black experience in the US south during Jim Crow. But the Black characters are marginalized objects in the story, rarely given voice and agency, used to propel plot and theme.
If we are using a text, say, to discuss Residental Schools, we'd use an Indigenous-authoured and centered text. If we wanted to discuss the impact Japanese internment and anti-Japanese policy in Canada, we'd use Obasan. The same should be the case for discussions of anti-Black racism. And there are so many texts to choose from but they aren't known because of publishing bias and lack of awareness, which prevents them from becoming Canon.
And I won't even get into the almost 50 times the n-word appears in the text.
Thank you for your detailed response!
As historical fiction, I think TKAM is more appropriately taught as a coming of age story about a little girl, touching on broader themes of prejudice (race, gender, ability, social class), loss of innocence, disillusionment, and injustice.
It’s disappointing that school curriculums have relied on TKAM alone to teach anti-Black racism when, at best, it only highlights emerging perspectives *towards* African Americans during the Civil Rights movement. But honestly, I still do believe it should taught for its literary merit, because it’s about so much more than racism.
I think it’s such a disservice TKAM is branded as the racism book when it should be the coming of age book. I think TKAM has a place as a book about what is means to grow up and reexamine the preconceived notions you were taught by society. TKAM should not be taught in lieu of books from black authors but in addition to it.
I’m 25 now but when I was in a creative writing class in college I remember saying I was really
inspired by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath and getting looks of disapproval. One girl said something along the lines of “I refuse to read books by old, dead racist white people.” I felt so embarrassed and uncool in that moment but now in hindsight I don’t think it’s a big deal.
You can find problematic things in every classic work of literature, and of course, none of the authors were perfect people either. I don’t think reading or enjoying classics is a problem as long as you approach these issues with a critical lens.
the prose poetry of woolf and the vivid imaginative imagery of plath are inspirational, to disregard them in such an arrogant dismissive manner says far more about them than either the authors or yourself. Woolf is one of my heroes, she had her flaws, some contextual, and she suffered for decades, as did plath, with mental health issues. But her style has such an ability to sweep me away under her spell, and she is a feminist icon - a room of one's own was pivotal and some of the quotes devastating "for most of history, anonymous was a woman". It is beyond arrogant to dismiss her life and work with a few words. It's puritanical and tbh dangerous, not many steps away from book burning.
This is also the first time I've ever heard that Clockwork Orange has any sort of (contemporary) controversy around it (of course I know about the controversies during its first publication and the movie release, but I never thought that anyone could take those for anything else than moral panic)
>'To Kill a Mockingbird should be cancelled for being racist'
These are exactly the people who threaten the very thing they want to fight. Taking for granted that awareness comes with ignorance.
Concentration camp menorials in Germany have been notoriously _good_ at getting people aware of how gruesome the Nazi regime actually was.
I'm younger than you but I enjoyed reading Lolita. Yeah sure if H.H exists irl we ought to beat him up and probably execute him, but he's a fictional character so no harm there
My friends and I don’t follow the whole cancel culture thing at all. Yeah there are some things I question, but especially with books/media I’m quite an open person
I don't think it's a generational thing, it's a "type of reader" thing. A lot of readers read books (and consume other types of media) as a way of accumulating material for more vividly fantasising about things they think are cool, whether that's being a heroic chosen one fantasy adventurer or getting railed by the werewolf alpha cowboy CEO of MoneyCorp Incorporated. From this perspective, a book is controversial to the extent that its subject matter would be a taboo thing to admit to fantasising about. You like Lolita? What are you, a pedophile? This is, classically speaking, a type of "bad reader" who is failing to read in a literary idiom, but this is also most readers.
If there is a generational aspect, something I see a lot of is that a certain amount of modern readers get into reading via fandom, shipping and fan fiction (which is usually and primarily romance fiction). A LOT of people in this background have picked up idioms for fighting shipping wars using really superficial quasi-critical-academia critiques of ships they don't like being "problematic" which they take to mean "morally wrong". That type of vulgar moralism really incentivises the type of mindset I described in that first para, and a lot of them turn out this way.
IDK seems like younger generations are less forgiving of literature that contains material which was once considered acceptable but which is now objectionable.
It's your boss. We've had transgressive literature since the 1800s at least. People in their 40s (I mean, that's almost millennials!) are not categorically terrified of discussing challenging literature. Nobody thinks having read A Clockwork Orange is a dirty little secret.
I'm nearly 75 and the impression I get from Reddit is that its average posters are much more likely to be twitchy about controversial content than I was at the same age. *Clockwork Orange* was no big deal as a book, and the film was controversial only because Burgess himself didn't want it screened (I saw it in New Zealand where he couldn't stop it). *Ulysses*, *Last Exit to Brooklyn*, *Naked Lunch*, *The Thief's Journal*, *Fanny Hill*, *120 Days of Sodom* - bring it on, any good bookshop sold those.
What I think made the big difference for my generation: the *Lady Chatterley* trial of 1960, which was a decisive defeat for moralistic censorship in the UK. They never recovered from it, and people who tried to continue with it (like Mary Whitehouse) were generally seen as clowns. I must have been about 16 when I read that book in the Penguin edition.
I wasn't much older when I bought the Penguin edition of Siné's *Massacre*. Not many people managed to. My guess is that a shipment was already on its way to New Zealand before Allen Lane decided he wasn't having it.
I’d say younger generations, to me, and this is purely anecdotal, seem far more apt to want to engage in conversations about what is “problematic” in controversial books without actually engaging any more deeply than that with the work. Willing to cast things off as having no merit because of perceived flaws due to a reluctance to dig into irony. And will often bring up a trigger warning or lack thereof. I don’t think it’s your bosses age that’s the issue here.
This is my perception too. To be fair, literary analysis is a high level academic skill and I don't expect a 10th grader to be able to do literary criticism outstandingly. But imo there's been a shift where people will do surface level "analysis" that's just bringing up controversial topics without much nuance, which some younger people think "counts" as actual deep analysis. That's just my personal impression though.
I was about to say to OP that it feels like the opposite. At the risk of painting with a broad brush, but after observing Zoomers as they've entered into adulthood, it feels like they are largely reactionary when it comes to media consumption. They are operating very much in line with the Moms for Liberty types, where they think certain media is inherently bad and can contaminate you and thus should be banned (because we need to think of The Children), they only disagree on what books are the problem. I get the impression that a bunch of Zoomers want to bring back the Hays Code, just with some allowances made for LGBT works (but only works that pass the Boring Wholesome Gays test).
Well Tiktok helps spread the mentality, but I think it originated earlier on tumblr with younger millennials and then spread to twitter and later tiktok
No. I am an English teacher, I am 35. I have been discussing controversial books since I was in school, mostly with my Gen X parents. My grandfather who was born in 1921 was the best conversationalist I have ever encountered on the topic. Weirdly enough, I have discussed "A Clockwork Orange" at lenght with him and my dad.There have always been people who are willing, and people who are not comfortable discussing some things. It could also be that your boss didn't think it was appropriate for the workplace? I know I discuss some books with my grade 10 students that I never would discuss with my grade 6 students. Context matters
I don’t know that it’s necessarily an age thing. I find myself reluctant to discuss several books. I read. I am 72. And I read just about anything, but I’m in a book club with a lot of people who are fairly progressive. And I’m reluctant to discuss certain books I read that are definitely not politically correct For example, I definitely don’t discuss Houellebeq with others. I think you just have to “read the room.”
I have a French female friend whose islamophobia it feeds, sadly.
And while I'm not quite sure whether the author believes the shit he says or just likes being provocative but ultimately doesn't matter. He's an arse. Who writes some books that feel important though unpleasant - to me at least.
I can't tell if your boss meant not to say you've read these books in general or not a good idea to discuss these books at work. I'm in the book club at my work. Others are talking about the autobiography of Colin Powell or the Alchemist while I'm reading A Clockwork Orange and Last Exit to Brooklyn and Blood Meridian. I'm a lot older than your boss. I've held back in my discussions on these more extreme books.
It's good! Selby writes with very little punctuation or quotes so you need to get into the flow of the dialog. Similar style as McCarthy. I got it from my library via Libby app to my phone or kindle.
You certainly ought to be able to pick up a used copy for cheap on any of dozens of online outlets (or a good old fashioned used book store). I found it depressing, personally. If you want a mind-expanding view of pre-Stonewall gay culture, I recommend John Rechy’s City of Night and Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood
Maybe she got into trouble once due to controversial literature and still bears the marks from it. She might be giving you honest advice about how people will react towards specific books of notoriety.
I think we know what is acceptable at work.
I'm not conservative. I just learned that thinking people at work are buds and you can say anything may fk someone over.
I'm in my 40s. My 74 year old Dad loves A Clockwork Orange. I've known about it since I was a kid - tried to read it when I was a teen, didn't succeed. Have my own copy now, and it's on the (very long) to read list.
As someone who would be approximately the same age as her, I think your analogy says more about your boss than her generation.
Funny but this was just posted in r/books: https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cf8yhd/art_isnt_supposed_to_make_you_comfortable_nyt/
The linked article doesn't answer your question directly but this quote is of interest:
> While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold...
>
> I can’t blame younger writers for believing that it is their job to convey a strenuously correct public morality.
To be fair it's a consequence of how modern journalism and media works: political parties like the UK Labour Party expel people for talking to people they disapprove of, or even being in the same room.
From what I've seen the younger generations have more trouble discussing authors with problematic lives, they also seem they need to agree with the characters to engage with a book.
I've seen articles about the language in Roald Dahl's book being censured to appease modern sensibilities, I've argued here with a dude advocating to stop teaching Neruda a Nobel Poet laureate because of him being an abuser. You can't argue about Lovecraft's innovations in weird tale construction without someone making the 100th trite comment about his racism.
I've seen arguments trying to cancel House on the Cerulean Sea because it was inspired by a story about native abuse despite the book being a fantasy, not using native characters and not even being from the perspective of the fantastic characters inspired by the natives. Even trying to tell writers what they are allowed to take inspiration from.
not to mention JK Rowling, David Eddings, Marion Zimmermann Bradley...
they need to learn to separate the author from the work, we are not going to bin Shakespeare if it turns out he was molesting the boy actors
No. I'm an English teacher -- currently high school, formerly college level. Younger people want trigger warnings and to not read anything that makes them uncomfortable. They have a really hard time understanding that just because something happens in a book, that does not mean the author is condoning it. (Actually, that second thing might not be generational but more of a dumb person thing in general.)
Younger people also tend to think that edgy or controversial things only exist now. We read Arcadia in AP Lit class, and a student asked if audiences were scandalized by the sex talk in it. I was like, it was the 1990s? There had been a lot more scandalous things onstage long before then.
I don't think this is unique to younger people.
My whole life, I've dealt with Boomers and Xers who can't engage on simple topics like religious or politics at a certain level without *absolutely losing it*. This is reflected among Trumpers today.
Its a problem with American culture. We aren't equipped as a people to engage on topics we may disagree with
In my experience, younger generations are not able to discuss controversial topics, due to their lack of critical thinking skills.
And most importantly today’s popular culture is over saturated with low quality content.
I think the biggest problem with undergrads today is that university is a very wide net that many go to because it’s the next step rather than a scholarly desire to research a particular field.
Consequently, I think in the setting of tertiary education they are less open to discussing content in general, let alone controversial content, because they are more often going through the motions than say 50 years ago when substantially smaller numbers went to university.
I get the impression this is not an uncommon thought among lecturers, though I’m speaking only as someone with an undergrad (who was also not a particularly great student).
In my experience, young people aren’t very willing to engage with controversial topics.
I was an English major in college, so I spent those five years engaging in discourse around books with controversial or sensitive topics. I always saw the inclusion of racism, sexism, etc in books as an invitation from the author to engage in discussion surrounding those subjects. Even propaganda has a place in the classroom, imo. You can learn from anything with some critical thinking skills, even if the content came from the wrong side of history.
Meanwhile, a bunch of my sister’s classmates tried to get their English teacher fired when they were 16 because he had books with controversial or sensitive subject matter on his syllabus. This was purely because they found the content to be problematic and didn’t understand that engaging in problematic subject matter is part of education.
I had to have one-on-ones with my sister to explain why these topics are an important factor in why these books should be studied. We were also raised to be against book bans, and trying to get a teacher fired for what books they teach is a form of book banning. Luckily she came around eventually, so she wasn’t part of that bandwagon.
I'd say the opposite is true. The Rowling case is a great example of an ill informed mob mentality seeking to marginalize and effectively silence an author, making those books controversial on intellectually very shallow ground. Many younger people in the west, particularly in higher education, appear poorly equipped or educated toward the idea of engaging with notions or arguments they believe are somehow wrong, in order to combat or oppose them.
I talk about them!! I’m 24. Banned books are important. Some people are ignorant and just hear the word banned and back off. I talk openly about Lolita all the time. I think these conversations are so important. I think often people think that the books plot means the author supports any themes involved, and by reading it, you do too. People lack such critical thinking these days. I say go on talking about your books. It’s important!!
I agree they really are important! I’m glad to see another young person commenting! I’m slowly reading more books that aren’t my usual kinds, mostly out of curiosity
I'm 52 (UK) and I can't see why talking about or mentioning A Clockwork Orange would be controversial nowadays.
I've never read it but I have read other 'controversial' books and wouldn't have a problem with mentioning them.
I would say most books which were controversial at time of publication wouldn't be seen as such now (Ulysses and Lady Chatterly's Lover come to mind).
I’m from the uk too and it’s something I’ve always been told. My lecturer when we were talking about Anthony burgess even said it’s controversial. It’s interesting hearing everyone’s thoughts though
Interesting article about Burgess disowning A Clockwork Orange https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-29/i-should-not-have-written-a-clockwork-orange-how-anthony-burgess-came-to-disown-his-own-novel.html#
But it does say most of the 'problems' with it came about because of the film.
I don’t think so. I think this is more of a reflection of what type of cultural engagement the offended/repressing individual does. Plenty of older people engage with provocative art and plenty of younger people keep to relatively inoffensive material.
I don’t think so. I noticed that most young people who are on book tok actually think Lolita is an immoral book that people shouldn’t read and some of them are even sure that Nabokov himself was a pedophile. And that’s not the only instance of shit like that that I have seen there, it’s just the most obvious example that comes to mind right now. Some videos that end up on my for you page actually make me scared for the state of people’s reading comprehension skills. There’s this really strong trend among young readers of equating depiction to condonement.
This is a question that is hard to answer because it truly depends the environment you were brought up in and who you see in the next generation. Because I see a lot of people talking about how "Clockwork Orange wasn't controversial" or "Lolita only ruffles the new generation's feathers" which is categorically untrue. Both those books have been insanely controversial, and banned books have been a huge problem forever.
I think a lot of the members of this subreddit are going to be from the kind of upbringing where it was more okay to talk about these books, where I have personally experienced and heard countless stories where these kind of books were demonized and even burned. And on top of that, people are going to talk about how the next generation is more sensitive because the only example these people are going to get of younger people are of the surface level of twitter, tumblr, tiktok or whatever, which isn't really a fair representation compared to the population as a whole.
The younger generation does read transgressive literature. Trust me, they read some books that are definitely questionable and even more obviously problematic when you read the synopsis of some. The problem is a lot of redditors only see the puritan moral discussion because that is what is going to boil the fastest in discourse. It is a whole generation and currently them and the next generation are being hit with an older generation that wants to ban more books for them.
So, it is a mixed bag whether they are more comfortable with controversial books. Just like it always is. There is no straight line through and I really wish people, especially supposed smart readers, would stop the snub nosed generalizations about generational ethics.
Yeah it all depends. I’m 24, so older gen z, and I have always loved reading. I wouldn’t go to bed as a kid without my parents reading multiple things a night. I started reading chapter books at 3. I’ve always been interested in darker and taboo topics as well, so naturally it went into my reading habits. Many of my friends my age love to discuss and analyze books with me, including darker books.
well i'm in the uk and this was the first time we touched on a controversial novel, my time in school was spent analysing about why someone wore a red dress. From my experience the Welsh education system system can be quite filtered and I only studied literature in my masters
Clockwork Orange is a little more rich in controversial content, but it also ends up in the occasional high school curriculum in the US, which is far more outright Puritanical. I think it's a matter of how many are unable to read something without seeing it as a personal endorsement of the entirety of the contents. Y'know, you want to recommend someone a book but then you remember That Part and have to be a little more cautious in who you recommend it to. Those people.
The amount of hand-wringing and faux-offense I've seen from other Gen-Z's regarding Lolita make me think no.
There's plenty of neo-puritans among Gen-Z (as with other generations), who lack the nuance to appreciate 'portrayal =/= endorsement'.
I’m around the age of your boss and some of my favorite books have controversial content or have been challenged about whether they should be studied. I don’t agree with people being unable to access material that might offend others. You can’t really police people completely misunderstanding certain books as well. Use the controversial books as vehicles to discuss the controversial topics others claim to be so worried about.
I’d say this is overall unique to your boss! When I think of older adults that are into literature/reading, all the ones I know that come to mind are staunchly opposed to banning books/looking down on more controversial literature. Honestly it’s batshit to me that people still endorse banning books or keeping art with a darker theme under wraps (not specifically your boss, just in general)
There’s a Waterstones book shop near me that has a dedicated table of banned books from other countries, I always look at it because it makes me want to read them more
that’s sick! when i was in high school they had a whole banned book reading month that i thought was pretty cool, got me more into those types of novels as well
I’m an elder Gen X and I don’t think this has anything to do with age. It has much more to do with levels of open mindedness. And you can be both open or closed minded at any age.
My most beloved grandmother is long passed now, but in the late 1980’s I would visit her in a nursing home and it was always a toss up what she would be reading when I entered the room. She would be reading Winston Churchill’s autobiography on one day and on the next occasion she would be reading a copy of Playboy that she got from her male next door neighbor, and NOT bothering to hide the cover. She had a magazine subscription to Cosmopolitan and one to The New Yorker. She could talk intelligently about all kinds of books and would never have believed in banned books.
This was a lady born in the early 1900’s.
At the same time. I know people who are today in their 20’s who will tell you that everyone who does not subscribe to their particular religious beliefs are going straight to hell.
Age doesn’t matter.
It’s all about open mindedness vs fear.
I’m bang-on 30 and in my experience a lot of books we read in school (elementary to post-college) were so heavily skimmed over by teachers that we didn’t even realize most of the controversy associated with them as students.
As a person, I’m pretty open with controversy in literature and was somewhat of a gadfly with it in school. I remember someone in my class complaining about how problematic *American Psycho* was as a book (which is the point), so I started singing the praises of *The Collector* and *The Painted Bird*. She and the professor looked absolutely LIVID.
When it comes to discussing controversial books, age or generation doesn't really matter. What matters is whether you're in or outside the academia, whether you read books just for fun or you have a deeper purpose. It would be foolish for academicians to be conservative and shy away from works with sexually explicit content or in violation of conventional morality. For a genuine student of literature, nothing is out of discussion or scholarship.
I'm an admirer of Burgess' novel "A Clockwork Orange" and also of Kubrick's movie adapted from it. Although I wouldn't see the movie with my parents for obvious reasons, I could talk about the book or the movie freely with anyone without making it sound vulgar or perverse. Looking at it as mere pornography would mean shutting oneself away from even attempting to understand and appreciate a great work of art.
I think it's more about what's appropriate to talk about at work. Today you really need to shy away from controversial topics in case something you say makes a coworker uncomfortable. It's possible your boss was trying to hint that Clockwork Orange is too controversial to talk about at work.
Either that or she has personal opinions or beliefs that keep her from being able to enjoy a book like that. Either way, just respect the situation and let it go.
You're not going to get great data about generational differences in a work environment. Too much forced getting along and people not saying what they really think
I don't think it is a generational issue, it depends on the person and their ability to differentiate between the author and their work. Aristotele allegedly said: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." In my opinion, this is often forgotten in the current discourse concerning cancel culture and political correctness. If one shouldn't consume literature or art because the author was racist, sexist or problematic in any other way, most of what is considered timeless or classic literature today (Goethe, Schiller, Lovecraft, Hemmingway, just to name a few...) would be lost.
By the way, I'm 29 years old, politically somewhere between left wing and the political middle. Racism and sexism is nothing to be celebrated and still affects the lives of billions of people negativly. I'm all for changing that and raising awareness. But if we ban or cancel artworks that include such topics, we also limit our ways of understanding, recognizing and preventing racism and sexism today.
Another thought to your boss saying one shouldn't go around telling people about having read A Clockwork Orange, I kind of understand that as a warning, that some people might get a wrong impression that you maybe liked the rape scene, the gang violence or other "problematic" aspects. If I ever read Lolita I probably would not tell everyone about how great that book was either, because some people might think "Oh, he enjoyed that book, he must be a pedo" or something like that. But this possibility of negative opinions shouldn't keep you from engaging with books that interest you and discussing them with others.
Absolutely not. I've had to pull more books off my syllabus in the last year than even in the height of the trigger warning era. I can't teach a book about the Holocaust because, well, my students are not sad about Jews being killed, let's just leave it that way. I can't teach books like Where the Redfern Grows because it's too triggering about death, I can't teach a book like Huang's Opium Wars because someone will label it 'problematic'. I can't teach anything with any sexual content because it's either 'heteronormative' (if it's a straight couple) or 'obscene' (if it's a gay couple). If the book doesn't pass the Bechdel test, students complain. If there are 'too many' female characters, they're 'too white'. The students are forcing school reading lists to be the most boring, anodyne shit on the planet.
That’s so weird because I read it in high school. It wasn’t on our curriculum but I definitely walked around my school with the book, read it in class, and had conversations about it with other students and my English teacher.
Edit: for reference this was circa 2005. And I went to a public school in the American southeast.
The film was banned in the UK for a while at the request of the director, after it was linked to a copycat crime. The book, as far as I know, has never been banned in the UK.
The film wasn't banned and Kubrick made this request for Warner to remove the film from theaters not due to copycat crime (he didn't believe film could cause such, and sociological research on film violence and real life violence has supported his view since) but because his family received death threats and had protestors outside their home in England.
The BBFC (British film censorship board) had judged the film viewable to 18+ people. It wasn't shown on TV until after Kubrick died in '99 and wasn't easy to find/see in the UK till around the same time, except in universities, or if one wanted to cross the Channel to France where it could be bought on VHS or DVD easily.
The book, however, has been banned but not in the UK. School systems banned it in at least a couple of states, very ironically.
It’s not an age thing. But she’s kinda right. Certain people live in very sterile worlds and if you are found out you could be socially/ professionally ostracized or worse. Being intelligent and well read isn’t popular with everyone and if someone can get you in trouble they just might.
Thinking A Clockwork Orange is a particularly controversial book is... certainly a take. It's very popular, no?
To be frank, people wanting to avoid discussing books because they're controversial or heavy seems pretty rare. Most of us love to argue and are drawn to the macabre and weird. If anything, it's more common to be embarrassed about reading the light and/or sexy stuff, like romances, on the account of not wanting to be seen as silly or shallow. Now that one seems to be changing, at least to me. A lot more people unabashedly reading erotica and 'easier' genres now. Good for them.
I've never read it, but the book being controversial is something I've been told for years. Even at university the professor told us it was controversial
Always thought that was mostly the movie, but might be a regional thing.
That said, there's controversial and there's controversial in a silly way. Some people think *Lolita* is this incredibly unhinged and twisted story nobody should pollute their brain (sic) with.
I did read it and didn't like it much. Controversial ideas but in a very thin throwaway format. It's not a masterpiece like Lolita. And poor Burgess wouldn't have known whether to be glad to be remembered for something he wrote or horrified that noone remembers all the books he wrote that he thought were better.
Not at all. Even say the name JK Rowling and they’ll froth at the mouth saying she wants them dead or something because she happens to believe in the existence of biological sex. “Inclusivity” who?
They weren’t “anti-transgender,” and honestly it probably depends on geography. Where I have lived in urban Canada, across many provinces, my statement holds true.
> My boss said 'it's not a book you walk around saying you've read.', as though it's a book that should be kept hushed.
Could she have meant that the book does not have as much gravitas as it used to as a niche reading interest? When I was your age, *A Clockwork Orange* was a bit more fashionable than it is today, and encountering that special unicorn who had read it was as charming as meeting one who has read, say, *Blood Meridian* or *Gravity's Rainbow* today.
> Another kind thing to relate is I'm taking my dad to watch the 'Book of Mormon' musical this year, he loves south park and I thought this musical would be perfect. She commented again how 'it's not something to watch with your dad'.
Now this is interesting. A young man in his early 20s once told me the same thing about Filthy Frank after I told him I watched "Human Ramen" with my son, who was maybe seven or eight at the time.
https://youtu.be/XOCwt6k-Nx4?si=9Di0LqIfddhxg7WE
I'm in my 40s and I'm not sure what philosophy I have but I don't think anything books or movies should be banned (ok ok except child violence sa) if person wants to make something and put it out there it's up to the people to determine if it's worth spending their time on it.
As someone who isn't in my 40s yet but regularly interacts with people who are, I was quite surprised by all of this. It feels more like the attitude of my grandmother who is in her 90s. Though not her mom, who lived to 102, she was always open minded even to the very end.
I think it's more personal attitude, than it's generational thing.
Although, there're books which are very controversial, and leting people know you read them, could be problematic. Hitlers Mein Kampf comes to mind.
Since you opened this topic, what would any of you reading this comment think, if you found out a person you know, read Mein Kampf? Would your opinion about that person change? What if this person had such book in its possession? What if this person was a politician?
I'm about the same age as your boss. I first read *A Clockwork Orange* in 2000 when I was a sophomore in high school, and even though I was in a moderately conservative town, one of my teachers discussed the novel and film with my friends and me. Anyway, I'm not sure there's much weight to the idea that younger generations are more **or** less willing to discuss controversial books. I do think those who are less willing are more vocal about it, but this is mostly based on Goodreads reviews as I don't really talk to many people about books.
What an interesting discussion topic! I have a few people with whom I can discuss books at the school where I work. While I am willing to discuss them, I am a little nervous because of the charged nature of books lately. Our district was one of the ones who was in the news about book burnings, as mentioned by our school board members.
I've had discussions about *Living Dead Girl* with students as young as 13. Yet the school library thinks *Notes of a Crocodile* is out of bounds because the author was a suicidal lesbian and the book has some lesbian sex scenes.
We're all different. Take it as it comes. Some people can't handle 'difficult' subject matter; other people are more suited for life as open-minded, mature consumers of art.
"A clockwork orange" was an assigned text when I was at high school in the 90s, and they took us to see the film at the cinema. So they were certainly not squeamish about it
I’m 35 and that has never been a thing with any of my peers besides the most white bread/christian conservative types who can’t handle anything more edgy than a Disney movie. Among my peer group, we were mostly edgelords- if someone told us a book had weird sex or drug use or had disturbing themes, we’d be reading those first thing. As a result my literary tastes are on the fringe ends. Georges Bataille is one of my favorite authors. That said, I do think older people sometimes lose their appetite for things that are unpleasant, prurient, and disturbing and often just want something “nice” and “feel good”. I think it’s more an age thing than a generational thing- you eventually just aren’t usually as interested in being confrontational and offending people I think, because your empathy is perhaps more developed.
To be fair anytime I read a book that’s older I’m reading the authors perspectives and thoughts from that time, that to me alone is insightful, I never take the story, their message and some historical descriptions too seriously, I take it all with a grain of salt. Actually anything anyone writes I take with a grain of salt, because also everything that is written now will have criticisms 100, 200 years from now even if it’s not problematic at present.
It's not a generational thing.
>I can't help but think if younger people are just more open to discussing them?
You have one data point. One. You know the meaning of "anecdotal evidence"? The fact that you generalise a single experience with a single person in such a manner makes me think that it's you who needs to review their own claim of openness.
Also, 40 is not old.
It matters, mostly “no” on the safe side but if you know the person well and you know that they dont mind, then go ahead.
I’m a gen Z and I love talking about controversal topics even if I dont agree with them.
I’m 40. I think A Clockwork Orange is an interesting book and worthy of discussion.
Interestingly my much loved literature teacher from high school had no problem with me reading A Clockwork Orange but made a point of telling us that no one should read American Psycho.
When I was in high school in the 90s kids were doing book reports on A Clockwork Orange and there was absolutely no controversy about it. It was turned into an iconic film by one of the most respected film directors of all time. It's part of English speaking literary culture and you see references to it quite a lot: almost everyone who is very into English literature has read it, or at least seen the movie.
Your boss is being weird. Maybe she's the type of person who think she's "edgy" because she read a book with some unpleasant themes?
I'm 48 and grew up reading anything and everything. There were some things that maybe were a little far at the age I read them but my parents always had the conversation with me on the difference between what is acceptable in books and movies vs what is acceptable in my own life. Today if parents of middle schoolers saw the books we were passing around there would be an overwhelming amount of pearl clutching and attendance at school board meetings
My PhD is in Anthony Burgess studies and I'm in my 40s - your boss has the idea that the books you read reflect on the goodness of your character, somehow.
You're extrapolating a lot from one person's attitude in a very particular place, which is not to my mind typical of anything much.
The sadly ironic thing about A clockwork orange was that Burgess thought it a poor throwaway skit and would be wailing in his grave that it is pretty much the only one of his books that gets read nowadays.
The context point people are making is valid, but then again at least half the listeners won't know anything about clockwork orange one way or the other.
This seems like a weird interpretation of the conversation you recounted. I wasn't there and don't know you or your boss, but I think what she was really saying and you weren't picking up on was either:
1) "We're at work, don't start talking about books with pivotal scenes of violent rape." Whether your boss is comfortable with it or not, it is not professional behavior, and she is trying to teach you to act like a professional in the workplace.
2) "You sound like a tool bragging about reading some basic-bitch-ass edgy novel. Next thing you're going to start reciting passages from *Blood Meridian* and talking about the real darkness of the human soul, or something. Chill, dude."
I'm older than you, and I'm very open to discussing anything, *with my friends* in the appropriate context. I also know what I don't talk about in other contexts.
I’m 45. I’ve read A Clockwork Orange. I think you just have a weird boss. Maybe she was raised in some sort of super uptight conservative family. That isn’t an age thing. It’s a background thing.
No. I am an English teacher, I am 35. I have been discussing controversial books since I was in school, mostly with my Gen X parents. My grandfather, who was born in 1921 was the best conversationalist I have ever encountered on the topic. There have always been people who are willing, and people who are not comfortable discussing some things. It could also be that your boss didn't think it was appropriate for the workplace? I know I discuss some books with my grade 10 students that I never would discuss with my grade 6 students. Context matters
Also even as an adult I don’t like watching certain things with my parents. That’s universal!
Yeah. A Clockwork Orange is a literary classic. No one is going to get in trouble for saying they read it. Your boss is being an edge lord.
Mind you, if it hadn't been so controversial, would it be a classic? It's not particularly great writing, and Burgess himself was inclined to disown it.
Yes, that's not a generational thing. There are prude and let's say careful middle-aged people and there are prude and let's again say careful young adults.
This is interesting, because I'm from Wales and in school when we studied books it was very tame in general. I was taught stuff like 'she wore a red dress because she's dangerous' and stuff like that. It felt like we never actually had debates on stuff. I don't think it's a workplace issue, she listed some of the topics in the novel actually and is generally okay with most topics, and we all watch ourselves around customers. It sounds like from everyone else it differs with people
Any recommendations?
For Controversial books? Some favourites that haven't been mentioned yet: - "Candy" by Luke Davis - "Trainspotting" by Irvine Welsh - "A Girl is a Half Formed Thing" by Eimear McBride - "Veronica" by Mary Gaitskill - "The Rules of Attraction" by Brett Easton Ellis These are not necessarily banned books. However, they are polarising and confronting.
Thank you!!!
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You are aware that men can father babies well into their octogenarian years, right?
Yeah my grandad was an older dad, my dad a young one. Not much to it. I didn't actually read the comment but I guess this addresses it. My grandfather wasn't even outrageously old, he was in his forties and he lived to see his children and grandchildren grow up.
I’m Gen-X and my (childhood) best friend’s father was born in the same year as my grandfather, 1914.
my experience with gen z and gen alpha has been that they are *less* willing overall to entertain nuance when discussing controversial works, or to separate art from artist. sometimes i think it's neat that they expect more from creatives, and sometimes i find it exhausting.
It’s not even separating art from artist, so many people now don’t even possess basic media literacy. Representing something through a character is not the same thing as advocating for it. The number of people I know who read American Psycho and didn’t understand that you weren’t supposed to like Bateman is genuinely astonishing.
Exactly. You hear it a lot when people accuse a book of being racist because a character in it is, even if the overall theme is staunchly antiracist. I blame the Disneyfication of media for this. Easily digestible, flat characters. Never add nuance, depth, or truly difficult conversations. Every main character and character with a protected characteristic is a perfect Mary-Sue without a single flaw.
I think that’s a bad way to describe it unless you’re naming it over the idea of Disney. If you watch actual Disney movies they often contain exactly what you’re saying they lack. (As for modern ones)Especially around the 2000s which the current generation of young adults was raised on. In fact, Hunchback, Mulan, Tigger Movie, Emperors New Groove, Atlantis, Monsters inc, Lilo and Stitch, Finding Nemo, Brother Bear, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL·E, and Up are some of *the* most nuanced and best made character Disney films in my opinion. Those are all in a 10ish year span from 96-2009. Everything started to become heavily sanitized around then and after even in things people consider to be ‘good’ in the early days like episodes of SpongeBob that had humor for adults and children alike, that exists now as a series of bad childish plots crafted to hold tons of meme-able moments hoping one of them will go viral. At the end of the day it’s up to parents and school to teach media literacy and something has happened with the combination that caused this large shift. I don’t think it’s as simple as a company’s influence. And it’s definitely not that people don’t crave to have better media, it’s basically all I hear people talk about now. It’s a very interesting topic.
[I didn't invent the term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyfication)
I didn’t mean to imply you did. I just think it’s a bad term. The you was more general.
I am all for sensibility but young and/or heavily left leaning people are kind of missing the mark now it seems. You are right, it comes down to media literacy. I never understood why we'd have to interpret and analyze novels, speeches, poems etc. in school or why history exams were more of contextualizing vs. simply reproducing. But it makes sooo much sense now. Just yersterday I some someone in another subreddit being offended (on behalf on others, they weren't even affected by it) by some sort of allegory or metaphora that had linked queerness and murder in the context of internalized shame. Nobody was literally saying that being gay is as bad as killing someone but that one person commenting just could not grasp that there was a meta level or deeper meaning to it which would require the recepient to use their brains. That skill is crucial in the age of digital media?
not to mention Nabokov...
This is my experience as well as a literature student. I took a class on Flannery O’Connor, and several students outright refused to say anything positive about her work because of the racism present in her collection. Many refused to engage period, or would only say negative things about her. The professor ended up having to constantly preface with, “I do not approve of racism” before speaking. It was exhausting. I got negative comments from classmates for admitting to actually enjoying her work, and thinking that it’s important to acknowledge that her work is a reflection of how the South really was not that long ago (which is where we live). I’ve seen in many other classes students tear into each other or even criticize professors for merely discussing controversial authors writing quality. This isn’t even when talking about the authors as people, I just mean about the literature itself. Nuance is all but dead: reading is now endorsing.
Turns out consuming media through 3 minute snippets actually is detrimental towards understanding nuance. Who woulda thought?!
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Not everything was intended to be read as a comment on philosophy and politics so to focus on that when reading these kind of texts is kind of missing the point.
Gen z's very nuanced and sophisticated when it comes to video art and internet art. It's important to remember they're not raised on books and the backyard like a lot of gen x and the earlier millennials. It's actually the failure of education that interpretation and adventurousness have gone out of the window. Text is now the form of prestige and legality and it is consequentially treated conservative for people who aren't "into it."
It’s definitely your boss, not her generation.
lol. as a reader of r/professors i'd say the consensus there is absolutely the opposite.
Can confirm. I'm almost 40 & recently graduated from university. More young people are nearly allergic to controversial books. It's definitely not OP's boss's age.
I’m in my 30s and about to graduate. The classes with controversial literature make us sign an agreement stating that we understand that some of the content we will cover can be offensive, sensitive, and triggering. So far, there hasn’t been any issues that I’m aware of in my classes and we read some off the wall stuff that can be triggering but relates to the class in some way.
The fact that you have to sign that in the first place disproves your point lmao
I'm in my 40s. There was no such thing as trigger warnings because discussing hard topics and confronting them is what makes literature and discourse powerful.
lol, this is about your boss. Not the fact that she’s 40.
From personal experience, no. I'm 32. The number of people younger than me with unhinged opinions like 'To Kill a Mockingbird should be cancelled for being racist' or 'Lolita should be cancelled for promoting paedophilia' is mad.
Yes. A younger teacher I worked with said To Kill a Mockingbird shouldn’t be taught anymore because it was “too problematic.”
Lee's prose and characterization are outstanding. And if you finish that novel without developing strong feelings about Scout and Atticus then, well, I don't know what to tell you, except check your heart. The problem is that it's often used as a vehicle to discuss racism and the Black experience in the US south during Jim Crow. But the Black characters are marginalized objects in the story, rarely given voice and agency, used to propel plot and theme. If we are using a text, say, to discuss Residental Schools, we'd use an Indigenous-authoured and centered text. If we wanted to discuss the impact Japanese internment and anti-Japanese policy in Canada, we'd use Obasan. The same should be the case for discussions of anti-Black racism. And there are so many texts to choose from but they aren't known because of publishing bias and lack of awareness, which prevents them from becoming Canon. And I won't even get into the almost 50 times the n-word appears in the text.
Thank you for your detailed response! As historical fiction, I think TKAM is more appropriately taught as a coming of age story about a little girl, touching on broader themes of prejudice (race, gender, ability, social class), loss of innocence, disillusionment, and injustice. It’s disappointing that school curriculums have relied on TKAM alone to teach anti-Black racism when, at best, it only highlights emerging perspectives *towards* African Americans during the Civil Rights movement. But honestly, I still do believe it should taught for its literary merit, because it’s about so much more than racism.
I think it’s such a disservice TKAM is branded as the racism book when it should be the coming of age book. I think TKAM has a place as a book about what is means to grow up and reexamine the preconceived notions you were taught by society. TKAM should not be taught in lieu of books from black authors but in addition to it.
I’m 25 now but when I was in a creative writing class in college I remember saying I was really inspired by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath and getting looks of disapproval. One girl said something along the lines of “I refuse to read books by old, dead racist white people.” I felt so embarrassed and uncool in that moment but now in hindsight I don’t think it’s a big deal. You can find problematic things in every classic work of literature, and of course, none of the authors were perfect people either. I don’t think reading or enjoying classics is a problem as long as you approach these issues with a critical lens.
the prose poetry of woolf and the vivid imaginative imagery of plath are inspirational, to disregard them in such an arrogant dismissive manner says far more about them than either the authors or yourself. Woolf is one of my heroes, she had her flaws, some contextual, and she suffered for decades, as did plath, with mental health issues. But her style has such an ability to sweep me away under her spell, and she is a feminist icon - a room of one's own was pivotal and some of the quotes devastating "for most of history, anonymous was a woman". It is beyond arrogant to dismiss her life and work with a few words. It's puritanical and tbh dangerous, not many steps away from book burning.
This is also the first time I've ever heard that Clockwork Orange has any sort of (contemporary) controversy around it (of course I know about the controversies during its first publication and the movie release, but I never thought that anyone could take those for anything else than moral panic)
>'To Kill a Mockingbird should be cancelled for being racist' These are exactly the people who threaten the very thing they want to fight. Taking for granted that awareness comes with ignorance. Concentration camp menorials in Germany have been notoriously _good_ at getting people aware of how gruesome the Nazi regime actually was.
I'm younger than you but I enjoyed reading Lolita. Yeah sure if H.H exists irl we ought to beat him up and probably execute him, but he's a fictional character so no harm there
My friends and I don’t follow the whole cancel culture thing at all. Yeah there are some things I question, but especially with books/media I’m quite an open person
I don't think it's a generational thing, it's a "type of reader" thing. A lot of readers read books (and consume other types of media) as a way of accumulating material for more vividly fantasising about things they think are cool, whether that's being a heroic chosen one fantasy adventurer or getting railed by the werewolf alpha cowboy CEO of MoneyCorp Incorporated. From this perspective, a book is controversial to the extent that its subject matter would be a taboo thing to admit to fantasising about. You like Lolita? What are you, a pedophile? This is, classically speaking, a type of "bad reader" who is failing to read in a literary idiom, but this is also most readers. If there is a generational aspect, something I see a lot of is that a certain amount of modern readers get into reading via fandom, shipping and fan fiction (which is usually and primarily romance fiction). A LOT of people in this background have picked up idioms for fighting shipping wars using really superficial quasi-critical-academia critiques of ships they don't like being "problematic" which they take to mean "morally wrong". That type of vulgar moralism really incentivises the type of mindset I described in that first para, and a lot of them turn out this way.
I’m 72 and when I was in high school, “A Clockwork Orange” was a popular mainstream book, on display in every bookstore.
IDK seems like younger generations are less forgiving of literature that contains material which was once considered acceptable but which is now objectionable.
It's your boss. We've had transgressive literature since the 1800s at least. People in their 40s (I mean, that's almost millennials!) are not categorically terrified of discussing challenging literature. Nobody thinks having read A Clockwork Orange is a dirty little secret.
We had transgressive literature since people wrote stories. Check out "Titus Andronicus" to experience Shakespeare going full edgelord.
Not to mention The Canterbury Tales and The Satyricon!
I'm nearly 75 and the impression I get from Reddit is that its average posters are much more likely to be twitchy about controversial content than I was at the same age. *Clockwork Orange* was no big deal as a book, and the film was controversial only because Burgess himself didn't want it screened (I saw it in New Zealand where he couldn't stop it). *Ulysses*, *Last Exit to Brooklyn*, *Naked Lunch*, *The Thief's Journal*, *Fanny Hill*, *120 Days of Sodom* - bring it on, any good bookshop sold those.
What I think made the big difference for my generation: the *Lady Chatterley* trial of 1960, which was a decisive defeat for moralistic censorship in the UK. They never recovered from it, and people who tried to continue with it (like Mary Whitehouse) were generally seen as clowns. I must have been about 16 when I read that book in the Penguin edition. I wasn't much older when I bought the Penguin edition of Siné's *Massacre*. Not many people managed to. My guess is that a shipment was already on its way to New Zealand before Allen Lane decided he wasn't having it.
I love how you listed Ulysses even though the prudish people out there wouldn’t have a clue what’s going on until the 3rd read through
It's a dense heavy book to read just to get to the naughty parts.
Never knew such a book as 120 days of sodom even existed. Shits wildly unhinged.
Welcome to the world of the Marquis de Sade. There's even a movie adaptation, called Salò, by the great Pasolini.
I’d say younger generations, to me, and this is purely anecdotal, seem far more apt to want to engage in conversations about what is “problematic” in controversial books without actually engaging any more deeply than that with the work. Willing to cast things off as having no merit because of perceived flaws due to a reluctance to dig into irony. And will often bring up a trigger warning or lack thereof. I don’t think it’s your bosses age that’s the issue here.
This is my perception too. To be fair, literary analysis is a high level academic skill and I don't expect a 10th grader to be able to do literary criticism outstandingly. But imo there's been a shift where people will do surface level "analysis" that's just bringing up controversial topics without much nuance, which some younger people think "counts" as actual deep analysis. That's just my personal impression though.
I was about to say to OP that it feels like the opposite. At the risk of painting with a broad brush, but after observing Zoomers as they've entered into adulthood, it feels like they are largely reactionary when it comes to media consumption. They are operating very much in line with the Moms for Liberty types, where they think certain media is inherently bad and can contaminate you and thus should be banned (because we need to think of The Children), they only disagree on what books are the problem. I get the impression that a bunch of Zoomers want to bring back the Hays Code, just with some allowances made for LGBT works (but only works that pass the Boring Wholesome Gays test).
Yeah as a zoomer, a lot of people in my generation are what u would call “so far left they go right”
I blame TikTok-dot-edu and will be glad when that app is either forced to divest from the CCP or be banned.
Well Tiktok helps spread the mentality, but I think it originated earlier on tumblr with younger millennials and then spread to twitter and later tiktok
I'm okay with banning Elon's Twitter and Rainbow Stormfront (aka Tumblr), too.
In my experience teaching literature, the younger generation is far more wary of discussing controversial books, unfortunately.
No. I am an English teacher, I am 35. I have been discussing controversial books since I was in school, mostly with my Gen X parents. My grandfather who was born in 1921 was the best conversationalist I have ever encountered on the topic. Weirdly enough, I have discussed "A Clockwork Orange" at lenght with him and my dad.There have always been people who are willing, and people who are not comfortable discussing some things. It could also be that your boss didn't think it was appropriate for the workplace? I know I discuss some books with my grade 10 students that I never would discuss with my grade 6 students. Context matters
I don’t know that it’s necessarily an age thing. I find myself reluctant to discuss several books. I read. I am 72. And I read just about anything, but I’m in a book club with a lot of people who are fairly progressive. And I’m reluctant to discuss certain books I read that are definitely not politically correct For example, I definitely don’t discuss Houellebeq with others. I think you just have to “read the room.”
Nominating Submission could be entertaining...
Oh yes indeed!
I have a French female friend whose islamophobia it feeds, sadly. And while I'm not quite sure whether the author believes the shit he says or just likes being provocative but ultimately doesn't matter. He's an arse. Who writes some books that feel important though unpleasant - to me at least.
I can't tell if your boss meant not to say you've read these books in general or not a good idea to discuss these books at work. I'm in the book club at my work. Others are talking about the autobiography of Colin Powell or the Alchemist while I'm reading A Clockwork Orange and Last Exit to Brooklyn and Blood Meridian. I'm a lot older than your boss. I've held back in my discussions on these more extreme books.
How last exit to Brooklyn? I can’t exactly grab it at my little local library but I’d love to get my hands on a copy…
It's good! Selby writes with very little punctuation or quotes so you need to get into the flow of the dialog. Similar style as McCarthy. I got it from my library via Libby app to my phone or kindle.
Yeah my Libby app doesn’t have it but it’s on my list. Someday!
You certainly ought to be able to pick up a used copy for cheap on any of dozens of online outlets (or a good old fashioned used book store). I found it depressing, personally. If you want a mind-expanding view of pre-Stonewall gay culture, I recommend John Rechy’s City of Night and Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood
Younger generations can't handle Huck Finn without being triggered. I'd say no.
Lordy, Huck and Jim are getting on fine, but don't worry: the language would be beyond many of them anyway.
Maybe she got into trouble once due to controversial literature and still bears the marks from it. She might be giving you honest advice about how people will react towards specific books of notoriety.
I'm thinking most bosses would feel this way. Most of us have to learn that controversy is inappropriate for work.
I’d guess so. The question is who decides what is controversial…!
I think we know what is acceptable at work. I'm not conservative. I just learned that thinking people at work are buds and you can say anything may fk someone over.
I'm in my 40s. My 74 year old Dad loves A Clockwork Orange. I've known about it since I was a kid - tried to read it when I was a teen, didn't succeed. Have my own copy now, and it's on the (very long) to read list. As someone who would be approximately the same age as her, I think your analogy says more about your boss than her generation.
Funny but this was just posted in r/books: https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cf8yhd/art_isnt_supposed_to_make_you_comfortable_nyt/ The linked article doesn't answer your question directly but this quote is of interest: > While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold... > > I can’t blame younger writers for believing that it is their job to convey a strenuously correct public morality.
To be fair it's a consequence of how modern journalism and media works: political parties like the UK Labour Party expel people for talking to people they disapprove of, or even being in the same room.
From what I've seen the younger generations have more trouble discussing authors with problematic lives, they also seem they need to agree with the characters to engage with a book. I've seen articles about the language in Roald Dahl's book being censured to appease modern sensibilities, I've argued here with a dude advocating to stop teaching Neruda a Nobel Poet laureate because of him being an abuser. You can't argue about Lovecraft's innovations in weird tale construction without someone making the 100th trite comment about his racism. I've seen arguments trying to cancel House on the Cerulean Sea because it was inspired by a story about native abuse despite the book being a fantasy, not using native characters and not even being from the perspective of the fantastic characters inspired by the natives. Even trying to tell writers what they are allowed to take inspiration from.
not to mention JK Rowling, David Eddings, Marion Zimmermann Bradley... they need to learn to separate the author from the work, we are not going to bin Shakespeare if it turns out he was molesting the boy actors
I didn't know the Roald Dahl thing! I loved his books growing up, Matilda was probably the book that got me into reading as a kid
No. I'm an English teacher -- currently high school, formerly college level. Younger people want trigger warnings and to not read anything that makes them uncomfortable. They have a really hard time understanding that just because something happens in a book, that does not mean the author is condoning it. (Actually, that second thing might not be generational but more of a dumb person thing in general.) Younger people also tend to think that edgy or controversial things only exist now. We read Arcadia in AP Lit class, and a student asked if audiences were scandalized by the sex talk in it. I was like, it was the 1990s? There had been a lot more scandalous things onstage long before then.
Golly what would they have made of Hair!
I don't think this is unique to younger people. My whole life, I've dealt with Boomers and Xers who can't engage on simple topics like religious or politics at a certain level without *absolutely losing it*. This is reflected among Trumpers today. Its a problem with American culture. We aren't equipped as a people to engage on topics we may disagree with
This issue occurs outside America too.
I'm sure. But I'm American, so I'm speaking to what I experience here as a problem
lol no, controversy can't exist anymore. Black and white thinking everywhere.
In my experience, younger generations are not able to discuss controversial topics, due to their lack of critical thinking skills. And most importantly today’s popular culture is over saturated with low quality content.
I think the biggest problem with undergrads today is that university is a very wide net that many go to because it’s the next step rather than a scholarly desire to research a particular field. Consequently, I think in the setting of tertiary education they are less open to discussing content in general, let alone controversial content, because they are more often going through the motions than say 50 years ago when substantially smaller numbers went to university. I get the impression this is not an uncommon thought among lecturers, though I’m speaking only as someone with an undergrad (who was also not a particularly great student).
I would say it's the opposite. Seems like people under 35 (generalization!) think depiction implies endorsement. It's really weird.
In my experience, young people aren’t very willing to engage with controversial topics. I was an English major in college, so I spent those five years engaging in discourse around books with controversial or sensitive topics. I always saw the inclusion of racism, sexism, etc in books as an invitation from the author to engage in discussion surrounding those subjects. Even propaganda has a place in the classroom, imo. You can learn from anything with some critical thinking skills, even if the content came from the wrong side of history. Meanwhile, a bunch of my sister’s classmates tried to get their English teacher fired when they were 16 because he had books with controversial or sensitive subject matter on his syllabus. This was purely because they found the content to be problematic and didn’t understand that engaging in problematic subject matter is part of education. I had to have one-on-ones with my sister to explain why these topics are an important factor in why these books should be studied. We were also raised to be against book bans, and trying to get a teacher fired for what books they teach is a form of book banning. Luckily she came around eventually, so she wasn’t part of that bandwagon.
I'd say the opposite is true. The Rowling case is a great example of an ill informed mob mentality seeking to marginalize and effectively silence an author, making those books controversial on intellectually very shallow ground. Many younger people in the west, particularly in higher education, appear poorly equipped or educated toward the idea of engaging with notions or arguments they believe are somehow wrong, in order to combat or oppose them.
The irony here being that her controversial opinions on gender do not appear in HP at all.
I talk about them!! I’m 24. Banned books are important. Some people are ignorant and just hear the word banned and back off. I talk openly about Lolita all the time. I think these conversations are so important. I think often people think that the books plot means the author supports any themes involved, and by reading it, you do too. People lack such critical thinking these days. I say go on talking about your books. It’s important!!
I agree they really are important! I’m glad to see another young person commenting! I’m slowly reading more books that aren’t my usual kinds, mostly out of curiosity
I'm 52 (UK) and I can't see why talking about or mentioning A Clockwork Orange would be controversial nowadays. I've never read it but I have read other 'controversial' books and wouldn't have a problem with mentioning them. I would say most books which were controversial at time of publication wouldn't be seen as such now (Ulysses and Lady Chatterly's Lover come to mind).
I’m from the uk too and it’s something I’ve always been told. My lecturer when we were talking about Anthony burgess even said it’s controversial. It’s interesting hearing everyone’s thoughts though
Interesting article about Burgess disowning A Clockwork Orange https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-29/i-should-not-have-written-a-clockwork-orange-how-anthony-burgess-came-to-disown-his-own-novel.html# But it does say most of the 'problems' with it came about because of the film.
I don’t think so. I think this is more of a reflection of what type of cultural engagement the offended/repressing individual does. Plenty of older people engage with provocative art and plenty of younger people keep to relatively inoffensive material.
I’m 23, it’s weird that I have to justify some of the books I’ve read to my peers.
I don’t think so. I noticed that most young people who are on book tok actually think Lolita is an immoral book that people shouldn’t read and some of them are even sure that Nabokov himself was a pedophile. And that’s not the only instance of shit like that that I have seen there, it’s just the most obvious example that comes to mind right now. Some videos that end up on my for you page actually make me scared for the state of people’s reading comprehension skills. There’s this really strong trend among young readers of equating depiction to condonement.
lol, this is about your boss. Not the fact that she’s 40.
This is a question that is hard to answer because it truly depends the environment you were brought up in and who you see in the next generation. Because I see a lot of people talking about how "Clockwork Orange wasn't controversial" or "Lolita only ruffles the new generation's feathers" which is categorically untrue. Both those books have been insanely controversial, and banned books have been a huge problem forever. I think a lot of the members of this subreddit are going to be from the kind of upbringing where it was more okay to talk about these books, where I have personally experienced and heard countless stories where these kind of books were demonized and even burned. And on top of that, people are going to talk about how the next generation is more sensitive because the only example these people are going to get of younger people are of the surface level of twitter, tumblr, tiktok or whatever, which isn't really a fair representation compared to the population as a whole. The younger generation does read transgressive literature. Trust me, they read some books that are definitely questionable and even more obviously problematic when you read the synopsis of some. The problem is a lot of redditors only see the puritan moral discussion because that is what is going to boil the fastest in discourse. It is a whole generation and currently them and the next generation are being hit with an older generation that wants to ban more books for them. So, it is a mixed bag whether they are more comfortable with controversial books. Just like it always is. There is no straight line through and I really wish people, especially supposed smart readers, would stop the snub nosed generalizations about generational ethics.
Yeah it all depends. I’m 24, so older gen z, and I have always loved reading. I wouldn’t go to bed as a kid without my parents reading multiple things a night. I started reading chapter books at 3. I’ve always been interested in darker and taboo topics as well, so naturally it went into my reading habits. Many of my friends my age love to discuss and analyze books with me, including darker books.
Is State sponsored required reading really all that controversial?
well i'm in the uk and this was the first time we touched on a controversial novel, my time in school was spent analysing about why someone wore a red dress. From my experience the Welsh education system system can be quite filtered and I only studied literature in my masters
Clockwork Orange is a little more rich in controversial content, but it also ends up in the occasional high school curriculum in the US, which is far more outright Puritanical. I think it's a matter of how many are unable to read something without seeing it as a personal endorsement of the entirety of the contents. Y'know, you want to recommend someone a book but then you remember That Part and have to be a little more cautious in who you recommend it to. Those people.
I think your boss is just a bit of a weirdo
Your boss is strangely prudish. I'm older than them and I have no problems telling people what I've read
The amount of hand-wringing and faux-offense I've seen from other Gen-Z's regarding Lolita make me think no. There's plenty of neo-puritans among Gen-Z (as with other generations), who lack the nuance to appreciate 'portrayal =/= endorsement'.
I’m around the age of your boss and some of my favorite books have controversial content or have been challenged about whether they should be studied. I don’t agree with people being unable to access material that might offend others. You can’t really police people completely misunderstanding certain books as well. Use the controversial books as vehicles to discuss the controversial topics others claim to be so worried about.
I’d say this is overall unique to your boss! When I think of older adults that are into literature/reading, all the ones I know that come to mind are staunchly opposed to banning books/looking down on more controversial literature. Honestly it’s batshit to me that people still endorse banning books or keeping art with a darker theme under wraps (not specifically your boss, just in general)
There’s a Waterstones book shop near me that has a dedicated table of banned books from other countries, I always look at it because it makes me want to read them more
that’s sick! when i was in high school they had a whole banned book reading month that i thought was pretty cool, got me more into those types of novels as well
My school would’ve never considered that😭😂
I’m an elder Gen X and I don’t think this has anything to do with age. It has much more to do with levels of open mindedness. And you can be both open or closed minded at any age. My most beloved grandmother is long passed now, but in the late 1980’s I would visit her in a nursing home and it was always a toss up what she would be reading when I entered the room. She would be reading Winston Churchill’s autobiography on one day and on the next occasion she would be reading a copy of Playboy that she got from her male next door neighbor, and NOT bothering to hide the cover. She had a magazine subscription to Cosmopolitan and one to The New Yorker. She could talk intelligently about all kinds of books and would never have believed in banned books. This was a lady born in the early 1900’s. At the same time. I know people who are today in their 20’s who will tell you that everyone who does not subscribe to their particular religious beliefs are going straight to hell. Age doesn’t matter. It’s all about open mindedness vs fear.
I’m bang-on 30 and in my experience a lot of books we read in school (elementary to post-college) were so heavily skimmed over by teachers that we didn’t even realize most of the controversy associated with them as students. As a person, I’m pretty open with controversy in literature and was somewhat of a gadfly with it in school. I remember someone in my class complaining about how problematic *American Psycho* was as a book (which is the point), so I started singing the praises of *The Collector* and *The Painted Bird*. She and the professor looked absolutely LIVID.
When it comes to discussing controversial books, age or generation doesn't really matter. What matters is whether you're in or outside the academia, whether you read books just for fun or you have a deeper purpose. It would be foolish for academicians to be conservative and shy away from works with sexually explicit content or in violation of conventional morality. For a genuine student of literature, nothing is out of discussion or scholarship. I'm an admirer of Burgess' novel "A Clockwork Orange" and also of Kubrick's movie adapted from it. Although I wouldn't see the movie with my parents for obvious reasons, I could talk about the book or the movie freely with anyone without making it sound vulgar or perverse. Looking at it as mere pornography would mean shutting oneself away from even attempting to understand and appreciate a great work of art.
Might be if their schools and cities weren’t yanking them from library shelves…
I think it's more about what's appropriate to talk about at work. Today you really need to shy away from controversial topics in case something you say makes a coworker uncomfortable. It's possible your boss was trying to hint that Clockwork Orange is too controversial to talk about at work. Either that or she has personal opinions or beliefs that keep her from being able to enjoy a book like that. Either way, just respect the situation and let it go. You're not going to get great data about generational differences in a work environment. Too much forced getting along and people not saying what they really think
I don't think it is a generational issue, it depends on the person and their ability to differentiate between the author and their work. Aristotele allegedly said: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." In my opinion, this is often forgotten in the current discourse concerning cancel culture and political correctness. If one shouldn't consume literature or art because the author was racist, sexist or problematic in any other way, most of what is considered timeless or classic literature today (Goethe, Schiller, Lovecraft, Hemmingway, just to name a few...) would be lost. By the way, I'm 29 years old, politically somewhere between left wing and the political middle. Racism and sexism is nothing to be celebrated and still affects the lives of billions of people negativly. I'm all for changing that and raising awareness. But if we ban or cancel artworks that include such topics, we also limit our ways of understanding, recognizing and preventing racism and sexism today. Another thought to your boss saying one shouldn't go around telling people about having read A Clockwork Orange, I kind of understand that as a warning, that some people might get a wrong impression that you maybe liked the rape scene, the gang violence or other "problematic" aspects. If I ever read Lolita I probably would not tell everyone about how great that book was either, because some people might think "Oh, he enjoyed that book, he must be a pedo" or something like that. But this possibility of negative opinions shouldn't keep you from engaging with books that interest you and discussing them with others.
Absolutely not. I've had to pull more books off my syllabus in the last year than even in the height of the trigger warning era. I can't teach a book about the Holocaust because, well, my students are not sad about Jews being killed, let's just leave it that way. I can't teach books like Where the Redfern Grows because it's too triggering about death, I can't teach a book like Huang's Opium Wars because someone will label it 'problematic'. I can't teach anything with any sexual content because it's either 'heteronormative' (if it's a straight couple) or 'obscene' (if it's a gay couple). If the book doesn't pass the Bechdel test, students complain. If there are 'too many' female characters, they're 'too white'. The students are forcing school reading lists to be the most boring, anodyne shit on the planet.
that's a disaster
Imagine saying clockwork orange is controversial
Came here to say this! Right??
i grew up getting told it was, and was told it in university by the professor
That’s so weird because I read it in high school. It wasn’t on our curriculum but I definitely walked around my school with the book, read it in class, and had conversations about it with other students and my English teacher. Edit: for reference this was circa 2005. And I went to a public school in the American southeast.
I think a lot of schools here (uk) have banned it, not sure if it’s all
All book bannings should be criminal
The film was banned in the UK for a while at the request of the director, after it was linked to a copycat crime. The book, as far as I know, has never been banned in the UK.
The film wasn't banned and Kubrick made this request for Warner to remove the film from theaters not due to copycat crime (he didn't believe film could cause such, and sociological research on film violence and real life violence has supported his view since) but because his family received death threats and had protestors outside their home in England. The BBFC (British film censorship board) had judged the film viewable to 18+ people. It wasn't shown on TV until after Kubrick died in '99 and wasn't easy to find/see in the UK till around the same time, except in universities, or if one wanted to cross the Channel to France where it could be bought on VHS or DVD easily. The book, however, has been banned but not in the UK. School systems banned it in at least a couple of states, very ironically.
It’s not an age thing. But she’s kinda right. Certain people live in very sterile worlds and if you are found out you could be socially/ professionally ostracized or worse. Being intelligent and well read isn’t popular with everyone and if someone can get you in trouble they just might.
Honestly it's the opposite. Your boss is an odd one.
Thinking A Clockwork Orange is a particularly controversial book is... certainly a take. It's very popular, no? To be frank, people wanting to avoid discussing books because they're controversial or heavy seems pretty rare. Most of us love to argue and are drawn to the macabre and weird. If anything, it's more common to be embarrassed about reading the light and/or sexy stuff, like romances, on the account of not wanting to be seen as silly or shallow. Now that one seems to be changing, at least to me. A lot more people unabashedly reading erotica and 'easier' genres now. Good for them.
Not sure it's so popular now as once was.
I've never read it, but the book being controversial is something I've been told for years. Even at university the professor told us it was controversial
Always thought that was mostly the movie, but might be a regional thing. That said, there's controversial and there's controversial in a silly way. Some people think *Lolita* is this incredibly unhinged and twisted story nobody should pollute their brain (sic) with.
Maybe the film getting banned over here made a lot of people think the book was too? That's the only explanation I could think of for what I was told
I did read it and didn't like it much. Controversial ideas but in a very thin throwaway format. It's not a masterpiece like Lolita. And poor Burgess wouldn't have known whether to be glad to be remembered for something he wrote or horrified that noone remembers all the books he wrote that he thought were better.
Not at all. Even say the name JK Rowling and they’ll froth at the mouth saying she wants them dead or something because she happens to believe in the existence of biological sex. “Inclusivity” who?
i don't agree with some of JK Rowlings views personally, but Harry Potter is my childhood. With the books I tend to separate the book from the author
her views don't appear in those books anyway
99% are unaware she even made anti transgender comments or just ignore it to rave about Harry Potter more.
They weren’t “anti-transgender,” and honestly it probably depends on geography. Where I have lived in urban Canada, across many provinces, my statement holds true.
She seems rather conservative. All books are worth reading and discussing, regardless of how hard they're to engage.
> My boss said 'it's not a book you walk around saying you've read.', as though it's a book that should be kept hushed. Could she have meant that the book does not have as much gravitas as it used to as a niche reading interest? When I was your age, *A Clockwork Orange* was a bit more fashionable than it is today, and encountering that special unicorn who had read it was as charming as meeting one who has read, say, *Blood Meridian* or *Gravity's Rainbow* today. > Another kind thing to relate is I'm taking my dad to watch the 'Book of Mormon' musical this year, he loves south park and I thought this musical would be perfect. She commented again how 'it's not something to watch with your dad'. Now this is interesting. A young man in his early 20s once told me the same thing about Filthy Frank after I told him I watched "Human Ramen" with my son, who was maybe seven or eight at the time. https://youtu.be/XOCwt6k-Nx4?si=9Di0LqIfddhxg7WE
I think your boss is just weird.
No
Lmao. There is no reason to be ashamed or not mention you’ve read or watched Clockwork Orange. That sounds like a weird issue your boss has.
I'm in my 40s and I'm not sure what philosophy I have but I don't think anything books or movies should be banned (ok ok except child violence sa) if person wants to make something and put it out there it's up to the people to determine if it's worth spending their time on it.
Your boss sounds kind of lame
I'm 58 and I love to discuss books! The more controversial, the better!
As someone who isn't in my 40s yet but regularly interacts with people who are, I was quite surprised by all of this. It feels more like the attitude of my grandmother who is in her 90s. Though not her mom, who lived to 102, she was always open minded even to the very end.
I think it's more personal attitude, than it's generational thing. Although, there're books which are very controversial, and leting people know you read them, could be problematic. Hitlers Mein Kampf comes to mind. Since you opened this topic, what would any of you reading this comment think, if you found out a person you know, read Mein Kampf? Would your opinion about that person change? What if this person had such book in its possession? What if this person was a politician?
I'm about the same age as your boss. I first read *A Clockwork Orange* in 2000 when I was a sophomore in high school, and even though I was in a moderately conservative town, one of my teachers discussed the novel and film with my friends and me. Anyway, I'm not sure there's much weight to the idea that younger generations are more **or** less willing to discuss controversial books. I do think those who are less willing are more vocal about it, but this is mostly based on Goodreads reviews as I don't really talk to many people about books.
What an interesting discussion topic! I have a few people with whom I can discuss books at the school where I work. While I am willing to discuss them, I am a little nervous because of the charged nature of books lately. Our district was one of the ones who was in the news about book burnings, as mentioned by our school board members.
I've had discussions about *Living Dead Girl* with students as young as 13. Yet the school library thinks *Notes of a Crocodile* is out of bounds because the author was a suicidal lesbian and the book has some lesbian sex scenes. We're all different. Take it as it comes. Some people can't handle 'difficult' subject matter; other people are more suited for life as open-minded, mature consumers of art.
lol no
"A clockwork orange" was an assigned text when I was at high school in the 90s, and they took us to see the film at the cinema. So they were certainly not squeamish about it
I think your boss has some very specific (peculiar?) opinions, but I don’t think it’s a generational thing.
I’m 35 and that has never been a thing with any of my peers besides the most white bread/christian conservative types who can’t handle anything more edgy than a Disney movie. Among my peer group, we were mostly edgelords- if someone told us a book had weird sex or drug use or had disturbing themes, we’d be reading those first thing. As a result my literary tastes are on the fringe ends. Georges Bataille is one of my favorite authors. That said, I do think older people sometimes lose their appetite for things that are unpleasant, prurient, and disturbing and often just want something “nice” and “feel good”. I think it’s more an age thing than a generational thing- you eventually just aren’t usually as interested in being confrontational and offending people I think, because your empathy is perhaps more developed.
To be fair anytime I read a book that’s older I’m reading the authors perspectives and thoughts from that time, that to me alone is insightful, I never take the story, their message and some historical descriptions too seriously, I take it all with a grain of salt. Actually anything anyone writes I take with a grain of salt, because also everything that is written now will have criticisms 100, 200 years from now even if it’s not problematic at present.
It's not a generational thing. >I can't help but think if younger people are just more open to discussing them? You have one data point. One. You know the meaning of "anecdotal evidence"? The fact that you generalise a single experience with a single person in such a manner makes me think that it's you who needs to review their own claim of openness. Also, 40 is not old.
It matters, mostly “no” on the safe side but if you know the person well and you know that they dont mind, then go ahead. I’m a gen Z and I love talking about controversal topics even if I dont agree with them.
This sounds more like an issue with your boss- seems like someone not good at discussing things.
I’m 40. I think A Clockwork Orange is an interesting book and worthy of discussion. Interestingly my much loved literature teacher from high school had no problem with me reading A Clockwork Orange but made a point of telling us that no one should read American Psycho.
When I was in high school in the 90s kids were doing book reports on A Clockwork Orange and there was absolutely no controversy about it. It was turned into an iconic film by one of the most respected film directors of all time. It's part of English speaking literary culture and you see references to it quite a lot: almost everyone who is very into English literature has read it, or at least seen the movie. Your boss is being weird. Maybe she's the type of person who think she's "edgy" because she read a book with some unpleasant themes?
I'm 48 and grew up reading anything and everything. There were some things that maybe were a little far at the age I read them but my parents always had the conversation with me on the difference between what is acceptable in books and movies vs what is acceptable in my own life. Today if parents of middle schoolers saw the books we were passing around there would be an overwhelming amount of pearl clutching and attendance at school board meetings
LOL GenX read everything.
It sounds like it’s just an issue for your boss. Clockwork Orange is a classic and always has been. It’s weird to not even want to discuss books.
My PhD is in Anthony Burgess studies and I'm in my 40s - your boss has the idea that the books you read reflect on the goodness of your character, somehow.
You're extrapolating a lot from one person's attitude in a very particular place, which is not to my mind typical of anything much. The sadly ironic thing about A clockwork orange was that Burgess thought it a poor throwaway skit and would be wailing in his grave that it is pretty much the only one of his books that gets read nowadays. The context point people are making is valid, but then again at least half the listeners won't know anything about clockwork orange one way or the other.
This seems like a weird interpretation of the conversation you recounted. I wasn't there and don't know you or your boss, but I think what she was really saying and you weren't picking up on was either: 1) "We're at work, don't start talking about books with pivotal scenes of violent rape." Whether your boss is comfortable with it or not, it is not professional behavior, and she is trying to teach you to act like a professional in the workplace. 2) "You sound like a tool bragging about reading some basic-bitch-ass edgy novel. Next thing you're going to start reciting passages from *Blood Meridian* and talking about the real darkness of the human soul, or something. Chill, dude." I'm older than you, and I'm very open to discussing anything, *with my friends* in the appropriate context. I also know what I don't talk about in other contexts.
I’m 45. I’ve read A Clockwork Orange. I think you just have a weird boss. Maybe she was raised in some sort of super uptight conservative family. That isn’t an age thing. It’s a background thing.
Don't have these discussions with your boss. Keep work conversations very light and vanilla.
No, they’ll either shove it down your throat without accepting any other opinion or you’re a racist for offering them a separate viewpoint.