Book-burning wank, with bonus superhappyfun double plus banning!

churchoferik on LJ is a community devoted to loving and worshipping all things Leroux. For the unintiated, Gaston Leroux wrote Phantom of the Opera, which was later appropriated and many feel butchered by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber in the eighties.

M. Webber has a friend, Frederick Forsyth, who wrote a book that purported to be the sequel to Phantom of the Opera, called Phantom of Manhatten. This books is widely loathed by the fandom "phandom." I myself have not read it, but whatever.

Anyway. shadowbree posts to the comm, saying that she borrowed her library's copy of the book and ritually burned it in her backyard. The first few comments are supportive of her actions.

What the hell? No. You never burn a book, no matter how much you hate it. That just ain't cool.






This entire post and comment made me cry.

You fucking BURNED A BOOK!?! You burned a book because you didn't like it. I don't care what book it was, you FUCKING BURNED A BOOK! I've NEVER hated anyone online. But, I think I hate you. Burning that book actually makes me want to go out and buy a copy just so there will always be one safe. It has nothing to do with the content, the story or anything else....it's just the fact that YOU FUCKING BURNED A BOOK! WTF is wrong with you. I'm sick...I have to go throw up.






That is so totally not cool. I threw the book in disgust, I laughed when I got it and it looked like the person who had had it before me tried to drown it, but I would never never NEVER in a million years actually burn a book, and I would never be the one to try to drown it myself. Books are precious to me, no matter how awful they are. I would never willingly or knowingly act as a destroyer of a book.






I agree. Just because you don't like a book doesn't mean that no one else does - I'm sure there is someone out there who does like Phantom Of Manhattan (not me personally - I didn't like it either but I can think of plenty of times when I loved something that my friends hated. And I have seen reviewers on Amazon who did like it.)

It would have been different had you bought or been given the book and then decided to burn it - because then it would have been yours and you could technically do whatever you wanted to it. But burning a library book is just wrong - a) it's not yours (so you are technically stealing it) and b) you are depriving other people from enjoying it. Yes, yes I know, PoM was awful but that's only our opinion - imagine someone took your library's only copy of Leroux or Kay and decided to burn it because they didn't like it.







All I can offer to that is "wtf?" You're hilarious.

It was a STATEMENT. The book is still around. Tons of copies are still around. She was making a STATEMENT. Are you so mired in your little "omg I'm gonna throw up" tirade that you can't see that?






Wow. Overreact much? People use newspapers as kindling and burn it all the time. Should we keep all the newspapers in the world too?






I once scratched up the CD of a man who I hated...and I burned the CD insert in effigy. Does this make me a bad person in your eyes too?

At any rate, I'm not going to get into some big immature argument over this. But I will say this...there is a HUGE difference between HItler calling for burning of all books of a certain type. And someone making one statement with one book in her own backyard. If you can't see that, then *I* feel sorry for you.






And so forth. And don't miss this fascinating little subthread, where someone is banned for saying that they thought Forsyth had a point about Leroux's inconsistancies.