We don’t agree on the quality of the writing in the book. You might really like the message (as disturbing as that might be), but you shouldn’t let that get in the way of objectively criticizing the quality of the book. U.C. badly needed an editor. But like I also said, that’s OK. Mr. Ross never intended it to become a widely published book. But since it has become one, it’s entirely appropriate to be critical of a work put into the public domain. Especially when folks declare it the most awesome ever . . .
I am not a literary critic but I do know what I like. UC was an engrossing novel I found hard to put down. The characters were real enough and the plot line plausible (though plausibility is hardly a requirement for a novel). The amalgam of fact and fiction was done well enough that anyone not familiar with the
gun culture would have a foundation upon which to build when he was done reading the novel. In its favor the novel did not suffer from what I call the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL syndrome. Hard for me to define that but think R A Heinlein and compare his early writings to those later in his life.
Absolutely necessary to develop the characters? Perhaps. But in this case Henry Bowman was more than simply a well-developed character fleshed out with a few flaws to make him believable. I thought he came across as a very disturbed sociopath. And the few flaws John gave him weren’t enough to make him believable. He had none of the actual problems that make a character believable and authentic. People have family problems; he had no family problems because he had no family. People struggle over finances; he had no money problems because he was wealthy. No matter what he set his hand to, he had the Midas touch.
Sociopath? Really? You better look up sociopath. Bowman was hardly a sociopath. That said the rest of your description doesn't hold up either. HB is a character in a novel, developed in a way that allowed the plot to develop along the lines the author wanted. Each of the things you describe above are developed in a way that is realistic and plausible. No Family - dad died at age - what 12 or so. Happens all the time. Mom died when he was an adult. Very close to Uncle. I'd say he had a family and a good one. Finances - well off through good planning by the family you say he didn't have and his own business acumen re: geologist. He wasn't lucky or fortunate as you imply the character or his family worked for everything he had. Me thinks you should reread the book.
Some writers are artists with the written word, and write stories purely for the sake of telling a good story without trying to make political statements.
Some... but most if not all eventually make a statement of some sort. It's part of the process. It is what it is.
That’s not the case with John Ross. He’s not a literary talent, he’s a polemicist. He’s a lot like Ayn Rand in that the novels they both wrote contain personifications of their ideas in story form. They sermonize and advocate their ideas through the stories they wrote. And in both cases the heroes of the stories are the ultimate, unrestrained personification of their ideas, champions defined through their uninhibited behavior. Incidentally, Ayn Rand sorely needed an editor, too.
Yeah...
So...
What's your point. Are authors not allowed to prosletize. If so the number of books written through out history would be way way fewer.
This is not merely a story. This is a polemic. And as a polemic, it’s rather disturbing. More to the point, in a polemic the hero in a story can tell us a lot about the author, the polemicist. Ayn Rand’s novels tell us a lot about who she was, not just her beliefs but also her personality. What bothers me most is not what his story tells us about who Mr. Ross is. I could care less about that. What bothers me is what it tells about the portion gun culture who celebrates it as a kind of anthem.
What better way to get the readers attention than to shock them. Mr. Ross wasn't writing a Doctoral Thesis he wrote a novel with the intent of explaining to those inclined to listen how we got where we are today re: gun rights and incidentally provided a fictional scenario to rectify the problem.
Hollywoods business is just that to entertain and by the way they do quite a bit of proseletizing. By your standards most movies and TV shows today should never be produced.
Werewolf, this book is not about revolution and revolutionaries. It’s about gaining power through assassinations, fear and intimidation. That sort of behavior has consequences all its own. John Ross conveniently ends his book with barely a mention of where that sort of behavior eventually leads a nation to become. Once we begin down that path, it guides a nation’s destiny. France’s revolution took that path, and it didn’t end with freedom and justice for all. This book is a blueprint for despotism and the repression of freedom, not the advancement of it.
Bullfrog, this book is a fictional account of how one man orchestrated and executed a plan to restore fundamental rights to Americans and he did it without starting a general revolution. Some tyrants died. It happens. In real life and in books.
As I mentioned before, if you want a body of work to celebrate, Jeff Snyder’s collection of essays Nation of Cowards was written during the same time frame and in the same backdrop of Ruby Ridge, Waco and Bill Clinton’s Assault Weapons Ban as U.C. That should be the gun community’s anthem, not this sociopathic, poorly-written drivel of a polemic disguised as a novel.
I disagree. The gun community has been polite and appeasing for too long. It's how we got to where we are. We don't need a revolution or political assasination to get our rights back. But we do need to stop pussyfooting around with those who would deny us our natural rights.
Ross' novel is fiction but fiction that makes one think.