Stand On Zanzibar - Books Within The Book

Books Within The Book

Quotations from books by Chad C. Mulligan, a former sociologist turned iconoclastic social commentator, appear throughout the novel to illustrate or contrast plot points. The books are:

  • The Hipcrime Vocab, a satirical collection of dictionary pseudo-definitions similar to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. "Hipcrime" is one of Mulligan's neologisms; his definition in the book is: "You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope."
  • You're an Ignorant Idiot — a series of pieces poking holes in "common sense" and received wisdom.
  • Better ? than ?
  • You: Beast — a "popular science" book, condensing the science of mob psychology, population pressure, and biological imperative so that readers living in the increasingly populated world can better understand their own environment.

Read more about this topic:  Stand On Zanzibar

Famous quotes containing the words books and/or book:

    The society would permit no books of fiction in its collection because the town fathers believed that fiction ‘worketh abomination and maketh a lie.’
    —For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.
    Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)