Sunday, March 22, 2020

Modern Classics Summarized: Stranger In A Strange Land


I enjoyed this sarcastic summary of Stranger in a Strange Land.

I read and reviewed this book myself back in 2006.  Although I'm not proud of my review.  To put it mildly.  In fact, I really cringe whenever I go back and read my old review.
I think part of the problem is that back in 2006, I was philosophically sympathetic towards free love.  Or at least, I wanted to be philosophically sympathetic towards free love.  But something inside of me was telling me that even though the philosophy sounds very good on paper, this wasn't how the real world worked.  And that confusion resulted in a incoherent review.

If I had more of a critical spine, I perhaps could have written something with a bit more intelligent analysis.  Something like the above video did.

I only vaguely remember the book at this point, so I don't remember it well enough to critique the video on its faithfulness to the source material.  But I'm going to trust that it is.  The parts I do remember seem to be faithfully represented on the video.

Love it or hate it, Stranger in a Strange Land is a modern classic of sorts.  So it's probably something you should be familiar with if you want to sound intelligent at cocktail parties.  I recommend just watching the video instead of reading the book.

1 comment:

Whisky Prajer said...

Super-entertaining, but I shudder to think how much work she put into that. Wonder how the hours add up?