The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all
of the great best-sellers.
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Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.
v. s pritchettFreed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. ... This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.
herbert marcuseToday we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.
kenneth rexrothOne recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.