Ben Lewis (2)
Auteur van Hammer & Tickle
Voor andere auteurs genaamd Ben Lewis, zie de verduidelijkingspagina.
Over de Auteur
Ben Lewis is a columnist for Prospect magazine. His award winning film Hammer and Tickle, the inspiration for this book, appeared on the BBC. He lives in London.
Werken van Ben Lewis
Tagged
Algemene kennis
Er zijn nog geen Algemene Kennis-gegevens over deze auteur. Je kunt helpen.
Leden
Besprekingen
Hammer and tickle : the story of communism, a… door Ben Lewis
Good jokes, repeated and repeated, with clumsy prose
I think Ben Lewis's research methods and conclusions were interesting and insightful. The book is primarily a narrative of his research process, which can be slow at moments but gives credibility to his ideas. He skillfully blends jokes into the story. I learned a lot about the people who lived under the USSR by reading the jokes, and I laughed.
Jokes are nostalgic, the narrative is boring although seems quite authentic.
Lewis says that an eighth of the people in the gulag were there for ‘telling anecdotes’, a figure that he finds small but I thought sizeable enough. The joke about the notorious White Sea canal project, built by prison labour, goes as follows:
Who built the White Sea canal?
The right bank was dug by those who told jokes…
And the left bank?
By those who listened.
The point of punishing joke-tellers was to demonstrate that the state would tolerate not the smallest or most casual expression of dissent, as Roy Medvedev tells Lewis. There’s a joke about that as well:
What is the difference between Stalin and Roosevelt?
Roosevelt collects the jokes that people tell about him, and Stalin collects the people that tell jokes about him.
More here: http://aroundtheedges.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/the-seven-wonders-of-communism/… (meer)
Who built the White Sea canal?
The right bank was dug by those who told jokes…
And the left bank?
By those who listened.
The point of punishing joke-tellers was to demonstrate that the state would tolerate not the smallest or most casual expression of dissent, as Roy Medvedev tells Lewis. There’s a joke about that as well:
What is the difference between Stalin and Roosevelt?
Roosevelt collects the jokes that people tell about him, and Stalin collects the people that tell jokes about him.
More here: http://aroundtheedges.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/the-seven-wonders-of-communism/… (meer)
Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk
Gerelateerde auteurs
Statistieken
- Werken
- 2
- Leden
- 135
- Populariteit
- #150,831
- Waardering
- 3.2
- Besprekingen
- 6
- ISBNs
- 26
- Talen
- 3